Grunge Music Sissy Slapfight

[Endie]

Nevermind was, as some of the more balanced responses here have suggested, a very good album.  At the time, as i've said before, it wasn't as huge a deal as it was dressed up to be by bandwagoneers afterwards, a la the Doors, but it was an outstanding album.  But it was a cracking year for albums, and Nevermind didn't get rated as superlative until Kurt's little cry for help.  Too many people just think Nevermind was dominant.  I have had this argument so often that I end up reeling off the competitors, but you have the Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque was, arguably, superior.  You had My Bloody Valentine's epic Loveless, Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Massive attack's awesome Blue Lines.

I'm not certain, but I think that was the year of Metallica's eponymous album release, and if Enter Sandman is just as annoying as Teen Spirit and Lithium (through overplaying) it is also just about as as influential.   Soundgarden had a better album than Badmotorfinger to come, but were still hugely influential. I wasn't as much of a fan as most of Out of Time by REM, Achtung Baby by U2 (more of a pre-Joshua Tree guy), the Chillis (never been into the funk sound that much, though i liked the singles fine at the time).  Trompe wasn't the Pixies best, but was still great.  Someone mentioned use Your Illusion I: I didn't realise that was that year.

In summary, 1991 was an era-changing year, and arguing that Nirvana unleashed this change in music is post facto rationalisation that requires them to have gone back in time and played their album to a dozen other bands before those bands started recording seminal work.  Nirvana were directly responsible for the increased sales of Stone Temple Pilots (whose Big Empty is as good as just about anything by Nirvana) and Alice in Chains records.  And probably for the movie Singles.  That they have become so amazingly influential is substantially, though not by any means entirely, to do with heroin, marketing and shotguns.

[WindupAtheist]

You ramble off a list like VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk, Bauhaus, Synesthaesia/Frontline Assembly, Noise Unit, Informatik, etc.

This reads like a list of everything my emo/goth ex-girlfriend used to listen to.  I actually liked a reasonable amount of it, but I'm fuzzy on artist names and I never paid attention to song titles at all.  I'm sure there are songs by bands on this list that I like, but don't know/remember enough about to track down.

[Murgos]

I was 18 in 1990 and grew up listening to pretty much every punk band named in the last 20 responses plus stuff like Minor Threat, Dead Kennedy's, The Pogues, Slayer, King Diamond, Megadeth, Anthrax, Metallica and et al.  1990 was a HUGE year, before 1990 none of that shit got played on the radio.  How did you find out about it?  Someone handed you a cassette, or even a vinyl record, and said, "Dude check this shit out."  Good luck finding any of that stuff in the more main stream record stores even.

After Smells started getting airplay though the gloves came off and you could, usually at midnight, hear almost anything on some of the more adventurous stations.  Yeah, that's right, even Metallica had to wait for Nirvana to open the door.  Sure, One came out about a year earlier and got some play but it wasn't what opened the flood gates.

What's killing me now though is that I know there is a whole new generation of good music out there just being pushed down, you can't hear it on the radio or see it on MTV so it seems like it doesn't exist.  You have to go out to live shows and hunt it down.  Same as it ever was.

[Engels]

Thank you, Abogadro & others, for bringing some actual historical perspective into this.

Endie, I dig your opinion, but, may I ask, were you in the US at the time? I ask because the music scenes in the EU and AU were pretty different than the US under Reagan & Bush Sr. In the US, Nirvana was the battering ram that broke through the National quagmire of corporate musak.

Irony was, of course, that when I moved to Seattle in early 1993, the 'scene' was not grunge. You simply couldn't find it at local venues. Cornell owned a kickin club, the OK Hotel, down by Pioneer square where you could hear amazing bands, but none of them were grunge. Punk, goth, or some new fangled hybrid, like Sky Cries Mary or Diamond Fist Wernie, but grunge had been summarily expunged from the scene as the product of bored sons of blue collar hicks from Aberdeen, WA they actually were. The suddenly erudite Seattle scene had no room for such unsophisticated riffraff.

[stray]

My Bloody Valentine's epic Loveless

Personally speaking, no other album from that time impresses me more than that one. I'd like to say it was influential to me as a guitarist, but I couldn't replicate or learn from what Shields is doing if my life depended on it. No one has really, though many have tried.

[schild]

Irony was, of course, that when I moved to Seattle in early 1993, the 'scene' was not grunge. You simply couldn't find it at local venues. Cornell owned a kickin club, the OK Hotel, down by Pioneer square where you could hear amazing bands, but none of them were grunge. Punk, goth, or some new fangled hybrid, like Sky Cries Mary or Diamond Fist Wernie, but grunge had been summarily expunged from the scene as the product of bored sons of blue collar hicks from Aberdeen, WA they actually were. The suddenly erudite Seattle scene had no room for such unsophisticated riffraff.

Lucky you. The east coast middle-class/upper-class trust fund baby sector (a LOT of the east coast) was hit hard by this fucking movement and all it did was decrease my tolerance for the public and bring back flannel. And shitty jeans. Though, I guess baggy is better than the 80s two-sizes-too-small movement if I had to pick.

[schild]

You ramble off a list like VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk, Bauhaus, Synesthaesia/Frontline Assembly, Noise Unit, Informatik, etc.

This reads like a list of everything my emo/goth ex-girlfriend used to listen to.  I actually liked a reasonable amount of it, but I'm fuzzy on artist names and I never paid attention to song titles at all.  I'm sure there are songs by bands on this list that I like, but don't know/remember enough about to track down.

Most people who hear a lot of it like it (Informatik and Noise Unit excused from this conversation). Though, they'll make fun of it until they hear a good deal of the good stuff. VNV Nation and Wolfsheim are gateway drugs. I took Ookii to a VNV Nation concert and up until that point he thought synthpop was gay goth shit mixed with faggy new wave. Turns out he liked it a great deal.

[Engels]

Lucky you. The east coast middle-class/upper-class trust fund baby sector (a LOT of the east coast) was hit hard by this fucking movement and all it did was decrease my tolerance for the public and bring back flannel. And shitty jeans. Though, I guess baggy is better than the 80s two-sizes-too-small movement if I had to pick.

Funny thing about that is there was never really a 'grunge fashion' in Washington. Flannel and jeans were just what people wore, the same attire worn by thousands living in rural areas, which Seattle also pretty much is, shorn of the fair weather yuppies that come and go. Don't get me wrong, the 'erudite Seattle scene' I mention wouldn't have happened without Nirvana, so there is a debt of gratitude or resentment, depending on your opinion, but 'grunge' was a unspectacular, minor player in the actual, popular music scene here.

[stray]

My favorite band and musician from that area is and will always be Greg Sage/the Wipers. Bigger than Jimi imho!

[Endie]

Yes, Engels, you're right that, at the time, I was in the UK, where bands like the Smiths and the Sisters - and DJs like John Peel - had led to far more airplay being available for alternative music.  When Alien Sex Fiend makes it into the top 40, however fleetingly, then you know that the barriers can be overcome.

Coincidentally, stayed in Seattle twice in the early 90s (stuff with Microsoft), and was surprised, the second time (although I am less so, now), to find what you said: while grunge was still huge globally, and still being touted worldwide as part of the Seattle Scene, locally it had moved on.

[lamaros]

Heh. Love seeing people who were 8 years old at the time talking about what was or wasn't critical to a particular music scene. I know how my dad felt when I talked to him about The Who.  As someone who ran an Alternative format radio station before any of this was popular, I can tell you that it was a major deal.  We'd go to the administration looking to upgrade equipment and our transmitter and they'd be like "What's alternative? Never heard of it."  98% of the student body had the same reaction. Fuck, they were still listening to Madonna, Garth Brooks and Poison.  We were flailing away playing Misfits, Minutemen, Fugazi, L7, Black Flag, Jello Biafra, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Beck, Live, Danzig, Rollins Band, Primus, Tool, etc. Hell, Killdozer crashed at my house and I hung out with Rob Zombie in the basement of the 9:30 after their show (another totally kick ass set in such a small venue) because they wanted to chat up radio people because they were so desperate to  to get airplay. No one would listen to that stuff and thought we were all crazy.  These were bands very, very few people had heard of at the time. Two years later everyone was playing this stuff at their parties.  To think that this would have just "happened" is foolish. It took a breakout band, and Nirvana was it.  Soundgarden pushed up behind them, but had been working it for longer without the success that Nirvana created for them.  Pearl Jam surpassed them in some ways, but needed the door kicked in first (see below).

I suppose this matters for people who just have to share what they are listening to with the world.. but wasn't shild talking about personal preference?

The fact is these bands existed before Nirvana. Would exist after Nirvana. Would exist in spite of Nirvana. So what if Nirvana got them played on popular radio stations a bit more? It's clear from your own account that people were aware of these other bands despite that and listening to and enjoying them. So if we ignore some insipid desire to have our personal tastes expressed popularly what does it all matter? The only question I, as an individual who is quite happy to enjoy music myself and with my friends without worrying who the fuck is played on popular radio, is whether or not I like Nirvana, or bands that owe much of their existence to Nirvana.

If shild's answer to that is "I couldn't give a shit" then surely his position is reasonable.

On another note... surely "alternative" is a changing definition. One can hardly call most of the "alternative" bands on the radio today alternative, and thus there is a constant situation where music on the fringes has to break through. Thus Nirvana really did fuck all for alternative music in the long run, it just changed popular conception for a certain amount of time.

[stray]

I'm interested in popularity, etc.. It's just an extension of my interest in anything historical in general. Not just with music or art. There's a whole world out there, and not everything I talk about has to be about ME ME ME and what I personally care about.

[Abagadro]

If shild's answer to that is "I couldn't give a shit" then surely his position is reasonable.

The argument was being made that Nirvana and Nevermind were essentially irrelevant to the popularity of a certain type of music that "would have happened anyways" and that their popularity was driven solely by overplaying their record. I was responding to that (mostly). Plus, there is a big difference in saying "I don't like that" and "That music is terrible."  There is lots of music that I don't like that I can still appreciate its place in music history and recognize for its quality within its genre.

On another note... surely "alternative" is a changing definition. One can hardly call most of the "alternative" bands on the radio today alternative, and thus there is a constant situation where music on the fringes has to break through. Thus Nirvana really did fuck all for alternative music in the long run, it just changed popular conception for a certain amount of time.

Sort of. "Alternative" as a radio format back in the day meant you played stuff that wasn't out on major labels.  It had less to do with the type of music.

[lamaros]

I'm interested in popularity, etc.. It's just an extension of my interest in anything historical in general. Not just with music or art. There's a whole world out there, and not everything I talk about has to be about ME ME ME and what I personally care about.

I don't mean to be denigrating that kind of interest.

Though, being a pedant, I must point out the following:

It's just an extension of my interest [...] not everything I talk about has to be about [...] what I personally care about.

Seems a rather self defeating statement. 

[Signe]

Because the other thread was so serious?

[Mrbloodworth]

I just want to state, that my comparison (Cortney love VS Britney spears), was only in the looks of the two images i posted in the original thread.

[Mrbloodworth]

Irony was, of course, that when I moved to Seattle in early 1993, the 'scene' was not grunge. You simply couldn't find it at local venues. Cornell owned a kickin club, the OK Hotel, down by Pioneer square where you could hear amazing bands, but none of them were grunge. Punk, goth, or some new fangled hybrid, like Sky Cries Mary or Diamond Fist Wernie, but grunge had been summarily expunged from the scene as the product of bored sons of blue collar hicks from Aberdeen, WA they actually were. The suddenly erudite Seattle scene had no room for such unsophisticated riffraff.

Lucky you. The east coast middle-class/upper-class trust fund baby sector (a LOT of the east coast) was hit hard by this fucking movement and all it did was decrease my tolerance for the public and bring back flannel. And shitty jeans. Though, I guess baggy is better than the 80s two-sizes-too-small movement if I had to pick.

Oh boy, you know whats better? Guys in girl jeans.

Where do they put the nuts?

[Sky]

Stop making this about your personal tastes. Or mine, for that matter. Tap into your inner musicologist. If you have one.

You are talking about schild. His personal taste is fact.

PJ vs Nirvana. I was living in LA at the time, saw PJ at the Roxy. Unknowns in LA, the label was pushing them. I remember singing Teen Spirit while waiting outside.

[murdoc]

Listen to Against Me, Tiger Army, or the Distillers. Those are Rancid/Tim Armstrong influenced bands that are really freakin good.

I would like to 2nd this. Against Me hasn't left my car stereo since I bought it months ago.

[stray]

I have to correct myself though. Against Me doesn't have that gruff sound anymore. Still good though!

Tiger Army is really nothing like them, but they're the biggest cats on Armstrong's label right now. Good enough.

Basic point is though: Good, new-ish punk bands pop up all the time. Popular, easily found ones at that. Not everything devolved into Good Charlotte or whatnot.

[Simond]

Yes, Engels, you're right that, at the time, I was in the UK, where bands like the Smiths and the Sisters - and DJs like John Peel - had led to far more airplay being available for alternative music.  When Alien Sex Fiend makes it into the top 40, however fleetingly, then you know that the barriers can be overcome.

The Rave scene kicking off in the mid-late 80s helped things along as well - you had the charts full of cock rock, MOR tat and Phill sodding Collins but pretty much everyone under the age of 30 was either listening to John Peel et al (before R1 became completely crap) or going out into raves held in warehouses/fields/whatever and getting off their face on E. Then part of the rave scene ran headlong into the indie scene at the Hacienda, leading to Baggy...which then mutated into Britpop.

We're about due a new Next Big Thing, imo.

[stray]

We're about due a new Next Big Thing, imo.

Imho, she should be it. In the UK, that is.

[Sky]

Yes, Engels, you're right that, at the time, I was in the UK, where bands like the Smiths and the Sisters - and DJs like John Peel - had led to far more airplay being available for alternative music.  When Alien Sex Fiend makes it into the top 40, however fleetingly, then you know that the barriers can be overcome.

The Rave scene kicking off in the mid-late 80s helped things along as well - you had the charts full of cock rock, MOR tat and Phill sodding Collins but pretty much everyone under the age of 30 was either listening to John Peel et al (before R1 became completely crap) or going out into raves held in warehouses/fields/whatever and getting off their face on E. Then part of the rave scene ran headlong into the indie scene at the Hacienda, leading to Baggy...which then mutated into Britpop.

We're about due a new Next Big Thing, imo.

The good music is not in the top 40 or on the radio. In the 80s we were listening to Metallica and Mercyful Fate and Slayer and rocking at band parties in warehouses/field/whatever, getting off on mescaline or LSD. You brits, so funny. :P

Seriously, though. Don't gauge shit by top 40 or radio play, that just means it's sunk into the moronic mainstream. Good for the artists to make a payday, but utterly meaningless for true music fans.

[stray]

Moronic mainstream.. Geez.

[Endie]

Alien Sex Fiend popping their heads up in the top 40 for but a moment did not, for one second, suggest that they had gone mainstream.  With or without the facile "moronic" bit.

And if you didn't mean that then edit your damned quote pyramids.

And there was a lot of good stuff in the top 40 then, just as there is now.  Labelling it all as moronic is nonsense.  The Smiths were top 40, and while you may or may not like Morrisey's voice, what he and Johnny Marr were doing was pretty damn far from "moronic".  Maximo Park are not making "moronic" music.  Nor are Bloc Party or the Foos.  Kanye West, on a different tack, can sometimes do some pretty impressive stuff.  The Young Knives have had a lot of chart success recently, as have Sigur Ros.  Arcade Fire's next album release will go top 10 here, unless they decide to record it entirely on dulcimers with a polka beat.  My Chemical Romance may alienate some, but the Black parade was a huge hit and an excellent rock album.  Biffy Clyro: not moronic by any reasonable definition.  The Chemical Brothers: lacking in moronic attributes.  The Arctic Monkeys would be entitled to feel hard-done-by in the face of such condemnation.  The Cribs and the Pigeon Detectives might not be my thing, but I wouldn't label them moronic.

Yes, people buy dumb music.  But there is a lot of really exciting stuff at the moment, much of it on the edge of mainstream (the new single by Foals - not "the Foals" - is damn fine, for instance), that is worth listening to and selling well.

[schild]

I can't get into Bloc Party. Which is weird, because they sound like I should.

[stray]

Not sure if you're talking to me or Sky. If me, I'm just expressing disappointment with Sky.

[stray]

I can't get into Bloc Party. Which is weird, because they sound like I should.

Not sure why you wouldn't like them either.

Personally though, the Rakes are the better Gang of Four like band. Like them? A little more synth, maybe better to your liking.

[SnakeCharmer]

Seriously, though. Don't gauge shit by top 40 or radio play, that just means it's sunk into the moronic mainstream. Good for the artists to make a payday, but utterly meaningless for true music fans.

See...I never ever ever get this. 

If it makes top 40, it's not music anymore.  It's garbage. 

But if you starve, or they starve, or whatever, it's troof. 

What?

Led Zeppelin had every single one of their albums reach the top 10 in the US.  Moronic mainstream?

Um.  What?

Edit:  I'm not saying that ANYTHING on the top 40 is comparable to Zep.  Hell, I don't even know what IS on the top 40 these days....

[stray]

Funnily enough, Zep is back on the top 40 as we speak (some compilation/remaster release is pushing Stairway as a single).

[SnakeCharmer]

Aren't they due to have a reunion concert soon?  Or did that already happen?

[Margalis]

Top 40 today is pretty different from top 40 of yesteryear to my eye. Radio music has changed dramatically in the past 15 years or so.

[Endie]

The people here indulging in nostalgia long the lines of "oh, music was so much better when I was young" are fooling themselves.  The charts have always been full of dross, with a small number of excellent tracks dotted here and there.  We just remember the good tracks - of which there are bound to be quite a few over the space of a decade - and compare the current week's chart unfavourably with the combined high points of an era.

Once, when you were young and forming new neural pathways was easy, you quickly learned new music to like.  Now, because you've been listening to Achtung Baby and Automatic for the People for the last 16 years, it's hard and uncomfortable to listen to the flighty young flibertygibbets with their hippity-hop groovyness.

People mention Led Zeppelin (as always), so look at November 1971, the month Stairway to Heaven was released as a single (though it wasn't released in the US).  That's not chosen specifically to prove a point: I was 1 at the time, so had no idea what I'd find.  I used the UK chart, but the US charts at that point are, if anything, worse. The UK top thirty are:

   1 Slade Coz I Luv You
   2 Tom Jones Till
   3 Piglets Johnny Reggae
   4 Rod Stewart Maggie May / Reason To Believe
   5 T Rex Jeepster
   6 Benny Hill Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)
   7 Cher Gypsys Tramps And Thieves
   8 Springwater I Will Return
   9 Olivia Newton-John Banks Of The Ohio
   10 Redbone Witch Queen Of New Orleans
   11 Al Green Tired Of Being Alone
   12 Joan Baez The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
   13 Four Tops Simple Game
   14 Newbeats Run Baby Run
   15 Vince Hill Look Around
   16 Diana Ross Surrender
   17 John Kongos Tokoloshe Man
   18 Titanic Sultana
   19 Scott English Brandy
   20 Shirley Bassey For All We Know
   21 Who Let's See The Action
   22 Carpenters Superstar / For All We Know
   23 Middle Of The Road Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum
   24 Cliff Richard Sing A Song Of Freedom
   25 Bay City Rollers Keep On Dancing
   26 Cilla Black Something Tells Me (Something Is Gonna Happen Tonight)
   27 Fortunes Freedom Come, Freedom Go
   28 Move Chinatown
   29 Doors Riders On The Storm
   30 Nancy & Lee Did You Ever

It is, as now, possible to do what I did and pick out a few decent acts (although mainly with mediocre releases), but it's mainly awful, awful crap, and if you take a look at the 1960s charts on that site, they are even worse. Ken Dodd and the Diddymen.  Look at the top sellers year by year (which filters out quit a bit of the worst dross): Zeppelin doesn't have a single record in the entire 100 of the 1970s annual top selling records.  Donny Osmond, Lee Marvin and David Cassidy crowd them out.

Not sure if you're talking to me or Sky. If me, I'm just expressing disappointment with Sky.

It was to Sky, re the "moronic mainstream" remark.  I am pretty sure I agree with you.  And I love the Rakes.

[cmlancas]

You guys are making this too much about yourselves. And if you think the worse thing in music is Nirvana, then I have to say, you don't know what true pain can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8

I have to be honest, as cliche as it may be now, I was disappointed that this link wasn't Tay Zonday or Rick Astley.

[Sky]

You guys are right. The mainstream radio music listener is a paragon of musical erudition. Kanye is a musical genius and Fergie is the new Aretha.

 

Also, I'm very open-minded to music. I dig lots of new stuff, and am willing to take the heat, since people here apparently think Mars Volta somehow sucks despite being an amazing band. MCR and Fallout Boy are both great rock bands doing interesting stuff while maintaining a mainstream writing style. I originally hated Arcade Fire when I saw them on SNL, but after watching their Austin City Limits performance I was swayed. Still wouldn't buy an album, but they are doing some interesting stuff and I can dig a band that can change up their instrumentation like that.