How Important Was Grunge As A Musical Movement?

(except I'd given up by 1995)

x-post to ― slugbaiting (rockapads)'s namedrop. Ha. I put out a Sugarshack record! Actually upon inspection of Discogs, it appears I put out 2... (1993 seems so long ago right now). End reminisce.

Sugar Shack is exactly the kind of thing that I thought of as grunge back then. Hair, distortion, noise, garage, punk roots.

to me, the biggest development of the "grunge" era was the popularization of independent labels and being a music nerd, mainly because of kurt cobain. i honestly don't listen to too much Nirvana at this point, but Cobain will always be a hero of mine for opening up my conception of what music could be. i was 11 i guess when Nirvana broke, and since i was not really a rock fan before that (hair metal type shit was just not for me) it was kind of revolutionary sounding. i had been listening to mostly hiphop since that's what EVERYONE at my pittsburgh public school was listening to. some of that stuff may have been underground to most people, but it was just the most common shit to us since everyone knew about it. but Nirvana sounded like nothing i had heard, and upon reading about them, it was Kurt's non-stop giving props to various labels and bands that made me realise you had to go out of your way to find these things. immediately, i started digging deeper. the grunge-alternative connection via Dinosaur Jr., Jane's Addiction, REM, Sonic Youth, etc opened up me to labels like SST, Caroline, Sub Pop, and all those kind of typical bands.

by the time i was 12 i was trying to go to Lollapalooza to see all this music, but i didnt get there till i was 13 in 93. and that was some eye opening shit. all the second stage acts, the variety of genres (seeing bands like Fishbone, Front 242, and Arrested Development play in a row basically went on to define how i expect to hear music to this day), all the subculture shit associated with the music..... that was some very powerful shit. i started going to high school a few months later in the college neighborhood of Pittsburgh which left me exposed on a daily basis (we took public transportation to school so i got to fuck around after school as much as i wanted) to all the underground record shops, head shops, etc that were basically there for people much older than i was. this was like crack to my friends and i who ate it all up. basement punk shows, smoking blunts and drinking 40s with the hiphop crew, raving, crate digging, etc. this was our life starting when we were 13 years old, for some of us it never stopped. and really, it's all because "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a pop hit. i can't thank Kurt Cobain enough, i can't imagine what my life might have been like without him. big fucking ups, RIP.

http://www.outpost-daria.com/images/mystik_spiral.gif

If I have to explain to my kids what the 90s were for some reason, I'll save myself a lot of time and show them that picture. Maybe I'll play a 4 non blondes song too.

whoa, nice to see some love for Sugar Shack! Some great music came out of TX in the late 80s, very early 90s.

Dino Jr was total grunge - can't understand you guys are debating this.

I wouldn't put SY in that category but back then they were def. championning the scene (cf. 91: the Year than Punk Broke) and appropriating the sound and the style ('Dirty' era)

my early teens paralleled pipecocks, only from a crappy northern irish perspective. spent 11-16 in bands constantly, hanging round practice rooms smoking doobs and hitting strong white cider. Im glad i got it out of the way early on so by the time i was 18 i could smell a ripoff coming. thinking back on it thats where my love of heavy, messy music comes from and my hatred for bandwagon jumping.

it was Melody Maker not NME championing grunge back in 89

Absolutely. NME had nothing to do with grunge.

Yeah, and IIRC, ET was using the grunge word to describe a few different things before it got firmly affixed to Seattle stuff. Should be mentioned though that the first guy that was really championing all the early Sub Pop stuff before it even got a mention in the music weeklies was John Peel.

No surprises there though.

Don't really know what NME was championing in 1989

Madchester maybe?

Bradford and the Sundays?

Anyway grunge was too rocky for the NME in 1989

NME was always behind Melody Maker. Infact NME was usually looking for the new smiths

Okay yeah, it was MM. NME was all Madchester with some Napalm Death thrown in, IIRC. I'm trying to find and online version of that MM middle-of-the-magazine spread they did on Seattle- that was the Everett True thing I'm thinking of, probably.

http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the-sub-pop-rosta-18th-march-19891.jpg

???

http://archivedmusicpress.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/everett-trues-guide-to-the-sub-pop-scene-18th-march-1989/

Grunge Bands You've Written Off/Pointedly Ignored because of their name:

Cat Butt
The Thrown-Ups

Nice to see that article.

Thanks NickB- that's it.

RAGING PRIMAL GRUNGINESS

any more articles from 88-94 around online?

SEATTLE'S NEW GENERATION OF THRASH METAL MERCHANTS

The NME mostly ignored grunge back in 1989. And they're still looking for the next Smiths.
http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/stone-roses-cover-18th-nov-1989.jpg?w=410&h=585

This is a great comp if you willing to pay an arm and a leg for it.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/SubPop200.jpg

That Charles Burns really ripped off the Fever Ray album art.

NME still looking
This weeks NME

http://i41.tinypic.com/6r7tw5.jpg

LOL, who is the NME's target audience? More suited to the MOJO crowd methinks.

Mojo had a john lennon cover this month

Mojo did have a while back
http://cover.mojo4music.com/uploads/Images/399x567/633504167189422999.Jpeg

(from that Melody Maker scan, about Beat Happening)

"Cramps meets Marine Girls meets Jonathan Richman meets Screaming Trees and are run over by a passing tractor."

I never tire of this b.s. band-chemisty-set hyperbole from the british music press. As far as I know, they invented it.

man that MM spread is great. love the picture of Tad.

Melody Maker used to be so great. It's a real shame what it eventually turned into.

Okay, that Melody Maker article from 1989 is INCREDIBLE.

i want that MM issue

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2003651721_nirvana050.html

I'm going to dig out my old Tad lp.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sub-Pop-200-compilation-LP-Nirvana-Soundgarden-Mudhoney_W0QQitemZ120388045280QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMusic_on_Vinyl?hash=item120388045280&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

or sealed
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sub-Pop-200-Nirvana-Beat-Happening-3X12-SEALED_W0QQitemZ150333866518QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMusic_on_Vinyl?hash=item150333866518&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

http://cgi.ebay.com/POISON-IDEA-RECORD-COLLECTORS-ARE-PRETENTIOUS-CD-NEW_W0QQitemZ280325101513QQcmdZViewItemQQ_pidZ3130379QQ_mediaitemZ1QQptZMusic_CDs?hash=item280325101513&_trksid=p4295.c0.m312&_trkparms=240%3A1318

not directed at you or anything, btw. just strikes me funny to see grunge records as collectibles.

man that MM spread is great. love the picture of Tad.

otm

rockapads> even back then that stuff was out my price range. Over on another board I post on DFFD(the board that used to be the Southern Lord Forum), a guy posted his entire Soundgarden collection. Must be worth a fortune and he bought it all when it came out.

I have always viewed the "grunge" tag as a construct of a media that did not understand where this music was really coming from. When Nirvana, Mudhoney, Melvins, Dino Jr etc. were releasing their first records, my friends and I regarded it as a continuation of punk rock. We live in Saskatchewan for fuck sakes. The idea of this shit being some specially named sub-genre was laughable.Especially coming from writers that seem like they should know better.
What it became though was no joke. The horrible garbage shat out by Pearl Jam, STP, Candlebox, etc. shortly after the mainstream explosion of Nirvana has left a streak of shit through rock n' roll until now. All of these awful bands like Nickleback, Puddle of Mudddd, Staind can be blamed on the myth of "grunge" and Nirvana. It's Cobain's fault but he can't be held resposible if that makes any sense.
Too bad his championing of Flipper and the Wipers didn't stick better with the mainstream instead of those who think aping the sounds of Nirvana, vacantly too(ie:Nicleback et al as stated above) makes for compelling rock n roll.
To this day I find listening to Nirvana a bit painful due to the constant retread of their sound in modern "rock". And I loved their records when they came out.
This point of view had no effect on my love for Mudhoney though for what it's worth.
(...ps Sugar Shack were great.)

i think you have to credit Nirvana for the rise in popularity of punk, indie, and alternative as well as the wackness of "modern rock". to me, the good far outweighs the bad, especially since it is very easy for me to never hear Creed, Nickelback, etc. also, i'm not sure anyone out there is aping the sound of Nirvana, at least not that i've ever heard. even back in the day, it was always knock offs of Pearl Jam that were huge, not Nirvana. i can't even think of one post-Nirvana band that sounds even remotely like them.

also, i think Mudhoney just aged a little better than a lot of this other stuff because they always remained raw. this is not a quality that mainstream rock ever ripped off, it keeps their sound a little more fresh because of it.

there are some pretty bad rock radio bands these days that are more on the Nirvana than PJ in terms of influences -- Seether and Puddle of Mudd in particular have been really ubiquitous on the radio the last couple years.