Poll: Bandwagonesque v. Nevermind v. Loveless

I still own that one!

I wouldn't peg HIM as Christian rock

Actually, I think they're more goth.

xhuxk, wasn't so much complaining about you including that album as that it was mentioned in the 2 posts that followed.. Out of all the albums you mentioned.. I like your list.

I'm trying to remember what my favorite albums were in 1991. Have a feeling that what I liked most wasn't anything that had come out that year. Vaguely remember a number of things by bands/musicians I liked coming out that year that were all kinda disappointing -- Out of Time, some Morrissey album, the Ministry album mentioned upthread ...

SERIOUSLY can we talk about Yerself Is Steam a bit more here?

"Amy Grant is super nice. Like, amazingly stunningly nice."

i think she's sexy too! in that nice wholesome clean white teeth kinda way.

has anyone mentioned this album yet?

http://www.touchandgorecords.com/images/catalog/fullsize/277-1.jpg

"Also: if I didn't know one jot about Amy Grant's beliefs, I wouldn't peg HIM as Christian rock."
Probably why they were so upset then, if that's the one she went secular on.

"i think she's sexy too! in that nice wholesome clean white teeth kinda way."
http://www.worthprotectionsecurity.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/orbit-gum-girl-7264701.jpg
who would win?

nirvana begat so much, so many bands that don't even sound a bit like nirvana...so many kids picked up guitars because of them, friends i know that play electronic music now, or black metal, or weird psych or all kinds of shit...

I voted for Bandwagonesque because I think it will lose anyway.

No snark intended: what about Nirvana inspired so many bands to pick up guitars? The Pixies and Jane's Addiction were having gold records and lots of college hits. Was it Nirvana's multiplatinum that did it?

Yes.

Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Motley Crue etc. inspired lots of people to pick up guitars, too.

Sure, but by and large the bands they started sounded like Motley Crue; also I don't know that MC was as across the board successful as Nirvana was. (Not saying they weren't; I don't know if they were or not.)

Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Motley Crue etc. inspired lots of people to pick up guitars, too.

― xhuxk, Monday, July 6, 2009 10:50 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah no shit but skot was acting like all nirvana spawned was post grunge shit like nickelback and creed

here's a perfect example i found - jay reatard....

Memphis-based punk rock juggernaut Jay Reatard has adopted a fistful of musical approaches since he first began recording in his bedroom, writing and recording frantic punk, synth punk, power pop and straightforward rock & roll tunes at a frantic pace since releasing his debut EP in 1998. Reatard was born Jay Lindsey and dropped out of school when he was 15, owing to boredom with conventional education and a problematic home life. Lindsey became interested in rock & roll when he heard Nirvana via MTV, and in his mid-teens he began writing songs. After seeing Memphis punk blues legends the Oblivians open for Rocket from the Crypt, Lindsey was inspired to try something similar and created the Reatards, which initially was just Lindsey, who sang, played guitar, and beat on a bucket with a stick for the benefit of his four-track cassette machine.

[i]Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Motley Crue etc. inspired lots of people to pick up guitars, too.

― xhuxk, Monday, July 6, 2009 10:50 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink</i

xhuxk you were like getting big black 7 inches sent to you in the mail for free, you don't know the impact nirvana had to kids in 91 in small towns, pre-Internet

"yeah no shit but skot was acting like all nirvana spawned was post grunge shit like nickelback and creed"

i'm saying that all the stuff that i actually HEAR is the shitty stuff. like, on the radio.

thing is that probably 90% of the kids who were got into alt-rock/grunge/indie/etc after Nevermind loved Crue or GNR or Metallica or Def Leppard or Aerosmith and might've gone into rock at some point anyway before that stuff gave them a particular direction to go in that might've been a little more DIY and seemingly open to anyone who wanted to try.

amy grant paved the way for creed more than nirvana, I'm guessing. how many christian acts successfully crossed over before her?

kurt talking about shit like vaselines and raincoats and meat puppets and etc etc i think was just as important as nirvana's music

by and large the bands they started sounded like Motley Crue

xp Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if tons of people in '90s grunge and death metal and rap-rock and industrial and pop-punk and pop-country bands started out covering bands like the Crue and Poison etc. So I'm not sure about "sounded like" part.

Crue (who I don't even like much btw) had a #6 LP in 1985, a #2 in 1987, a #1 in 1989, and a #2 best-of in 1991. So they obviously sold pretty well, though right, Nirvana may have outsold them overall. Less certain Nirvana outsold Guns N Roses or Def Leppard or Bon Jovi, though. (Not denying Nirvana were influential, obviously; they were hugely influential. Just saying they're hardly alone in that.)

yeah totally -- I wasn't that into Nirvana and actually liked Pearl Jam more, but KC totally pointed me toward SY, Meat Puppets, etc. and that was in itself a huge deal for me.

xpost

Motley Crue, Pearl Jam, and GNR all outsold Nirvana.

imo there's a certain plateau at which sales don't really matter that much -- like those bands all sold more than 5 or 10 million, they all permeated the monoculture so let's just talk about what kind of different impacts they made instead of just comparing numbers.

xp I mean, the biggest recent hit cover of a Motley Crue song was by Carrie Underwood, who doesn't exactly play the same kind of music. Most widely herd recent Def Leppard covers have been by Taylor Swift.

Eddie Vedder played Sonic Youth, Slant 6, and Klark Kent on his Pearl Jam "pirate" radio show. Then Jeff Ament or somebody busted out some Outkast. Later Eddie played some Foo Fighter demos and talked about Ms magazine.

maybe loveless would be a better album if there were more stuff on it like the b-side of "only shallow" ("sugar" if i'm remembering correctly?), straightforward, dreamy, and hooky, instead of the monochrome jet engine guitar thing blasting all over the place

monochrome jet engine guitar thing blasting all over the place

you do get that this is exactly why ppl like it so much, right

mudhoney peter fonda biker sample intro beats everything primal scream ever did.

even Primal Scream's Peter Fonda biker sample intro?

^^^yeah I didn't get that either. like, its cool when one band does it, but terrible when another band does the exact same thing? does not compute

doesn't have to happen every song, is what i'm saying. there are dynamic shifts on nevermind loveless lacks in comparison

The not-so-dissimilar production choices on Loveless and Nevermind were more influential than the songs: the aqueous, briny-rich of the former (Smashing Pumpkins), the quartz-hard thickness of the latter (Sonic Youth, Garbage). At a certain point both sounds converge and turn into goth again.

mudhoney peter fonda biker sample intro beats everything primal scream ever did.

even Primal Scream's Peter Fonda biker sample intro?

Neither as cool as when Genesis P. did it on Jack the Tab.

The "neither as cool" bit was a joke by the way [/ILM]

Eddie Vedder played Sonic Youth, Slant 6, and Klark Kent on his Pearl Jam "pirate" radio show. Then Jeff Ament or somebody busted out some Outkast. Later Eddie played some Foo Fighter demos and talked about Ms magazine.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, July 6, 2009 7:15 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh man i thought those 'self-pollution radio' specials were the coolest thing ever when i was 13

mudhoney peter fonda biker sample intro beats everything primal scream ever did.

"even Primal Scream's Peter Fonda biker sample intro?"

yes! the way they used it sucked!

scott do you not at least like "burning wheel" or "accelerator"? both those songs bang massively imo

"shoot speed kill light"?

were there really all these kids blindly and sadly listening to cinderella and bon jovi until nirvana showed up? all this "vast pre-internet wasteland" talk. didn't anyone have mtv or access to spin magazine at the very least in 1991? didn't even really lame mall stores carry sst records? or was there no desire to explore other avenues until teen spirit was shoved down the throats of nirvana converts?

i feel like people romanticize this band a weeeeeeeeee too much sometimes.

i get the love. don't get me wrong. and i believe they changed people's lives and all that. but you would have to be living in a pretty deep hole in 1991 to not be at least a little bit aware of alt-rock in general.

i haven't listened to everything primal scream has done. every video i ever saw just seemed really lame to me. kudos for hiring an ex-member of Felt though! that i support.

xpost

It does seem odd that I could live in a half-a-horse town in the middle of England and know about all these bands that apparently blew minds when Cobain repped for them but maybe it's an age thing.

ignore the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ScuQqa-WY

well, I was 9 in 1991, and that was about the year that I became actively interested in popular music. I liked GNR and Def Leppard and Aerosmith, and then when Pearl Jam and Nirvana came out I started to like bands like that more. i'm sure the teens and college students of that era were already up on that stuff but for younger kids it was a big deal, it's really a generational thing,Scott.

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ROepOxoGw&feature=related

that's enough PS for now

or was there no desire to explore other avenues until teen spirit was shoved down the throats of nirvana converts?

I think this is the case. At my highschool, the population of kids that dressed like jocks - presumably to fit in - seriously diminished when Nirvana hit.

wait, i take it back! i just figured it out in the backyard smoking a cigarette! it's what soulja said. it's an age thing. if you are 11 and don't follow music much and then you turn 12 and grunge hits and you love it and it doesn't sound like yer brother's crue collection than of course it is like the world has turned and it is revolution.

sorry, should have thought of that.

I was a senior in high school at the time, and Nevermind was the cassette of choice blasting out of cars in the parking lot; but not more so than Achtung Baby, Use Your Illusions I-II, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and a few others. I couldn't hear the differences in greatness between "Come As You Are," "The Fly," "Justified and Ancient," and Amy Grant's "Good For Me," sorry. I KNEW Nirvana were special cuz I read SPIN and Rolling Stone.

in 1985 i was already a big husker du fan - zen arcade spoke to me, blah, blah, blah - but when i heard this it seemed to create beauty in my troubled acid-addled head in such a meaningful way...you know, music can really hit you. and this really hit me. in a way that nirvana never could later. but nirvana were cool. except when they weren't. like the time that doofy dude through his bass up in the air and it landed on his face. and like when they were idiots on headbangers ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PImYNoVrsl0

same thing at my school. no other band ever had anything close to an impact like that. that's a pretty huge deal. all of a sudden it wasn't cool anymore to be a dick. maybe there are places where my bloody valentine or teenage fanclub had that kind of impact. i wouldn't know. anyways it's hard to separate how much nirvana changed what cool meant (and way for the better) with how great that album is

xpost

Well, no, no one turned into unicorns and handed out flowers in the hallways thanks to Nevermind. Quite the reverse: it was the same as it ever was, except now that the assholes were listening to Gang of Four with the misfits.

I mean, Nirvana was pop music in 1992.