Nirvana: ENOUGH already!

pearl jam/eddie vedder was far more influential to the sound of mainstream rock music in the late '90s/early '00s than nirvana

― bros before HOOS (voodoo chili), Tuesday, January 8, 2019 11:40 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno if i agree w this actually. or maybe i think the influence is just more obvious when someone is 'sounding like pearl jam' than when nirvana flows through their music, like nirvana created a blueprint (harmonic/melodic) that ppl could attach different sounds to whereas pearl jam was more like an overall feel and so you *know* when someone is biting pearl jam but (give or take a puddle of mudd) most of nirvana's influence became such a part of the fabric ... idk maybe i'm tripping.

Thing is that Nirvana are still a very unique sounding band, like loads of can approximate the thrashy punk energy and the pop choruses but there are very few bands who can get anywhere near Kurt's sudden register shift, let alone the distinctive zombie lurch that a lot of their songs have. And yeah Grohl's drums are central to songs like In Bloom and Scentless Apprentice.

I was in full hipster mode as Nirvana emerged, college radio dj'ing and hearing a dozen new records and going to two gigs every week, and playing in hopeless bands. From this perspective, the shock was that Nirvana ended up being the anointed ones, singing to Geffin for tons of money and hitting big with noise intact.

By the late-80s there was a clear pipeline for "alternative" bands to get a sizable profile, and there was a lot of commercial niches one could occupy between, say, Stickmen with Rayguns and R.E.M.

SPIN was on every newsstand, and Rolling Stone had a college radio chart made up of mostly major label acts. It took a few album/tour/fanzine cycles for any given band to raise a profile. So the thing was, once a band had major-label promotion behind them, there were already in their second phase. To someone getting all their tips from fanzines, opening acts and word of mouth, this felt like selling out. There was excitement when Husker Du signed with full creative control, like they might put out something as harsh as "Plans I Make" on Warner Bros. But that side of them had burnt off.

Stickmen sounds pretty close to early Sub Pop, now that I re-listen. Throb, sarcasm, and the skidding feedback. I think the term "grunge" may have even been tossed around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iiK0963YU8

"Grungy" was an adjective I recall us all using at the radio station to describe records coming through starting around '87, especially as Sabbath and Stooges became ascendant influences on bands moving out of their hardcore roots. You didn't want to say "metallic", even if Metallica and Celtic Frost were in rotation. 'Cause saying the word "metal" connoted pop metal for the most part. Green River were definately grungy, and were definately rising through the zine network with their Sabbath/Stooges sound. Summer of 88, Nirvana came through town when I was out of town, and made a big impression. I knew I'd missed something. I'd seen the U-Men a few years before. Soundgarden's early records went through the playlist bin and got enough attention that putting out an album on SST was a logical step, as did singing and getting marketed as a metal band. When I first heard Mudhoney's "You Got It", I thought it was gonna be huge. But like "Love Removal Machine" huge. That seemed like the upper limit for a band like that.

Bleach took off among my friends over the course of 1990. A friend sent me "Negative Creep" on a mixtape and it blew me away - Sonic Youth and Motorhead mashed together! In the context of the time and scene, Bleach was a record that ticked a lot of boxes. They might have put out the best Sub Pop record yet. But there was a feeling that some other Washington band might quickly surpass them. I was shocked when SPIN reported that they'd signed for a huge sum of money. As much as loved Bleach, I didn't think it was leading anywhere. Nevermind sounded slick in comparison on first listen. It took me a few plays to adapt to the glossier sound, but as it climbed the charts there was a sense of delight that a track like "Territorial Pissings" was headed into millions of teen bedrooms. Nirvana were the first band that moved through the system quickly enough that their spikes stayed sharp.

Can you go on about the unusual chord sequences and melodies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMUkMGNX0Uk

My only Nirvana memories are that I had heard "Bleach" more or less when it came out and wasn't that impressed by it or much anything from Seattle at that point. My friends went to see them play at tiny JC Dobbs in Philly, but I blew it off. I assume it was this show?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDDLhq3Rpmo

I didn't really think about the band much again until I several months later actually got a phone call from a friend in Texas who was raving about "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I remember checking it out on MTV and thinking, yeah, that's pretty cool! If I'm being honest, though, I liked the first Pearl Jam album (which came out a couple of months before Nevermind?) more, but none of my hip friends wanted to see them at the Troc six months or so after that Nirvana show. And you might be thinking, Pearl Jam bleh, classic rock, etc., and you might be right. But my memory of the two bands is that I never heard "Ten" blasting out of cars in the school parking lot, but within a few months every jackass was blasting Nirvana. (I want to say, from memory, that blasting Pearl Jam became more of a thing with the next album, but who knows.)

> Nirvana were the opening band of three bands this night.

early STP was the other band lol

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli),

The name of that in between band was STP but wasn't Stone Temple Pilots. I remember them being all female or had a female lead singer.

ah yeah that was Julie Cafritz's band after Pussy Galore

I'm gonna politely disagree with you, here's the horse's mouth:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/uncategorized/scott-weiland-recalls-that-1990-vegas-concert-with-nirvana-and-sonic-youth/

counterpoint:

http://www.grungeforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17050

...or do you think Weiland was so jacked up he imagined he was there? I see that there was this band with Julie & I recognize Jackie (from Dustdevils):

https://i.imgur.com/fzPt3VF.jpg

I could not convince any of the jerks in my high school social circle to drive into LA for that show, so I missed it. (I did not have a car at the time and my parents wouldn't let me drive one of theirs that far)

It wasn't 1990, but I did see early Stone Temple Pilots shortly after with one-time Sonic Youth labelmates fIREHOSE & The Butthole Surfers so it's not like they weren't ever openers on unusual lineups.

unplugged remains the thing i listen to the most from nirvana

I'm almost positive that Colonel Poo link is correct. I'm pretty sure I saw a Riot Girl band that night. I'm also positive it was a girl lead singer. I know Scott can be feminine but it was a all girl STP band that night.

Yeah, seems like Scott Weiland was in a fever-dream moment and probably didn't remember much of the 90s so he just inserted himself in to history naively.

sincerely dubious plate of scrambled eggs

from OP, alex always had such great turns of phrase

https://i.imgur.com/9gdMoKk.jpg

Setlist that night:

1. Love Buzz (Shocking Blue cover)
2. Floyd the Barber
3. Scoff
4. Dive
5. About a Girl
6. Spank Thru
7. Breed
8. In Bloom
9. School
10. Been a Son
11. Negative Creep
12. Blew

plus two hot bands

Weiland doesn’t say anything at all in the quotes about playing those shows; the reporter has obviously made a mistaken assumption, asked Weiland ~something or other~, and he has given a response about the two bands, without ever saying he remembers or played the gig.

in context, it seems more like someone asked him a question regarding his feelings for Sonic Youth and their influence

Man, Dustdevils. I haven't thought about them in a looooong while. Even when the major labels starting signing stuff they had no business signing, that era of early '90s noise never really escaped the margins, with the weird exception of Sonic Youth. That early Drag City/Matador stuff, AmRep, Sub Pop, Touch & Go ... just a total axis of guitar grind/grit.

There is def. an axis of 1980s/early-‘90s underground bands that didn’t “bubble up” (though many had members who found more success in other ‘90s bands) — Live Skull, Skunk, Death of Samantha, etc, etc.

Jesus, i was a disagreeable bastard, wasn't I.

HONOUR THE FIRE

Disarming thing about ILX is that it never goes away. I can age, grow, mature and start the natural process of mental erosion, but still....my frothy-mouthed opinions scream on in perpetuity here.

Dustdevils, great album cover

<3 alex u one of the greats

Cheers, but reading some of the stuff I scribbled here over the years is sobering with a severity no "Dry January" could ever hope to touch.

Don't look back, you can never look back.

He's an Artist..

I found the About a Son documentary to be lovely and compelling though also inevitably kind of sad.

My favorite example is probably Lithium--the first half of the chord progression is fairly common (D F#m Bm G), but the second half of the progression seems to modulate with every chord change (Bb C A C). Someone with more theory expertise can explain exactly what's going on, but that kind of progression is more common in, say, show tunes than rock music. It's surprisingly jaunty when you play it on the piano.

This is a good example. Bb works as bVI, which is a common chromatic substitutition for vi (Bm), borrowed from the parallel minor key; plenty of examples of this in Romantic music, e.g. Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh", m. 57. Interesting that it comes soon after the diatonic vi. ("Blackbird" puts them right after each other, btw.) C could suggest mixture from the Mixolydian mode (or maybe borrowing a dominant-functioning chord from the parallel minor key) but it's interesting that they use it before and after the diatonic A chord (V), which, of course, contains a C#, so the chromaticism is clear. Chris McDonald's "Exploring Modal Subversions in Alternative Music" (Popular Music, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct 2000), pp. 355-363) is pretty good on this broader subject. I could pass on a copy if anyone's interested in it and can't get their hands on one.

I think the glammiest, poppiest end of hair metal was already basically dead by 1990-91. It was probably bands like GNR and Metallica as much as anyone who drove the stake into its poodle-coiffed, coke-engorged heart. After that, even hair metal had to be a bit harder or smarter. Skid Row came across as darker and edgier than the glam bands of a few years earlier. This was also the era of progressive and technical hair metal like Queensryche, Tesla, Extreme, Winger, etc. Sure they had long hair, but these guys were serious musicians, man. It was kind of a late-mannerist phase, at least in retrospect. When Nirvana came along, it wasn't thirst for "authenticity" so much as for the hooks and hummable melodies that had slowly drained out of the increasingly grown-up pop metal scene.

― o. nate, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 9:32 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also 'alternative metal' stuff like Living Colour, Faith No More, and King's X was getting played on the rock stations I listened to at 10-11 in 89-90. Even at that age, I could tell that 'hair metal' had run its course by 1990; it wasn't even necessarily that shocking that the next thing in rock might become something more like the 'alternative' music MuchMusic was playing on CityLimits. I wouldn't have suspected how big it would be, though. It was still spine-tingling to hear "Teen Spirit" for the first time.

I know it's slowed down a full step on the record, but isn't the chord progression of Lithium (as played live / on a guitar)

Em Ab Db A C D B D

that's the same progression a step higher

except it should be E Abm Dbm

Yeah, the intervals are the same.

i guess it's all power chords so in terms of what you play major/minor doesn't matter

E-G#m would be v different from Em-G#. I'd be surprised if it were the latter but tbh I was taking voodoo chilli's word. Will go double check right now.xp And power chords would be different too.

Tbh, there's probably Nirvana bootlegs where various songs are played in different keys to the album versions. Not on purpose, but because the bands of the bands attitude to tuning.

Like, I'm quite sure I've seen footage where the guitar has gone out of tune, and Kurt is trying to tune to Krist, who is probably out of tune himself from thrashing his bass too hard and jumping around, or the other way around. The Nirvana live experience was never a polished affair.

The way Kurt would fret his power chords would accidentally generate a sus4 sometimes, e.g. the intro to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'

oh wait I mixed up where the Bb was

If the chord progression starts on E, which is a "sharp" key rather than a "flat" one, and it's all power chords, then I'd write it: E5 G#5 C#5 A5 C5 D5 B5 D5, and in that progression only the C5 really sticks out to me.

Reviewed it. Guitar is def playing power chords. The vocal melody does put F#s over the D5, B over the G5, and D over the Bb5, making triadic analyses of those (as I, IV, and bVI) reasonable, as well as a Bb over the first C5, which could give it a 7th chord feel. The vocal melody sticks to diatonic major material over the first, diatonic part of the progression, but you get C natural and Bb over the second half ("today I found my friends").

xps (Wasn't going to comment on the sharp key thing but yeah)

Bb over the first C5, which could give it a 7th chord feel.

(As bVII7 is even more common of a dominant substitution in jazz harmony, this could support voodoo chilli's Tin Pan Alley comparison perhaps?)

Lol yeah, should be written as A#, but for whatever reason, when I’m playing the piano, my mind always thinks “Bb” when I play that triad. And I always think of the Gb/F# triad as F#.

No, Bb is the correct notation for bVI in D! Reading Ab and Db in the key of D was hurting my head a little, though.

Reading Ab and Db in the key of D

*key of E

Good to know!

Also I'm listening to Live Through This again, and I'm fairly confident that Kurt had close to fuck all to do with the songwriting on it, contrary to the rumours that were circling for years. The chord progressions don't really display many of his hallmarks, and Courtney's melodic sense is quite distinct from Kurt's. The closest it gets to Nirvana is the riff on 'She Walks on Me' and even then there's something not-quite-Kurt about it.