How Important Was Grunge As A Musical Movement?

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This has to be the only grunge thread ever to devolve into a Greek mythology debate. This is why I post to this board in the first place.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:06 (nineteen years ago) link

Grunge is kind of more like Hephaestus than Apollo (the downtrodded husband of Aphrodite who sees her running around with Ares because he's got a bum leg), but I don't know if you're allowed to be Hephaestusian.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:11 (nineteen years ago) link

What I'd give for a large sock full of horse manure...

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:13 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't see how you could listen to "Papercuts" or "In n' Out of Grace" or "End of the Universe" and NOT call that mess Dionysian.

David Coverdale hired Steve Vai and Aynsley Dunbar = APOLLONIAN

this is simple, people.

And yes, echoing Shookout, the godliness of the Screaming Trees can't be affirmed enough.

― Monetizing Eyeballs (diamond), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:20 (nineteen years ago) link

Wait, so what was the conclusion, was Apollonia grunge or not?

http://www.angelfire.com/film/princepurplerain/apollonia.jpg

― wetmink (wetmink), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:23 (nineteen years ago) link

Chuck's Mudhoney hate makes me sad until I realize he hasn't had a new thought about them in 15 years.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:24 (nineteen years ago) link

damn, my Apollonia pic got hosed

― wetmink (wetmink), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:26 (nineteen years ago) link

this'll have to do

http://www.operagloves.com/Modernstars/PrincesBeauties/apollonia-2a.jpg

― wetmink (wetmink), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 04:28 (nineteen years ago) link

anyone remember what his ECW entrance music was?

"Come Out And Play" by The Offspring

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 07:04 (nineteen years ago) link

That sounds about right. I remember thinking he shoulda picked something grungier.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 07:26 (nineteen years ago) link

I remember seeing Mudhoney, and Nirvana and Tad when they played in the UK (OK, I know it was probably "all over" by then) and it was pretty fucking thrilling at the time, I must admit.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 07:48 (nineteen years ago) link

When I read a feature on "grunge fashion" in the observer magazine, the appeal of the whole thing keeled over a bit, and it got killed off for me by a combination of pearl jam, and the senseless things (*) new grunge inspired direktion.

*(insert name of any 3rd rate late '80's-early '90's lammo brit "indie" band here)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 07:51 (nineteen years ago) link

Inasmuch as it didn't even really exist at all, except as anything other than minor sub-sub-genre, it was of no importance at all. It ain't dead - there are still bands playing that sort of stuff today, just as there were bands playing that sort of stuff for 20 years before the word "grunge" began to be applied to it; and in the process, transform (the word "grunge") itself from an adjective to a noun.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 12:31 (nineteen years ago) link

I think a lotta the best rock, esp. Rock, as in 60s x 80s, is D x A, a/o v-versa (spelling the last out so yall woudn't think I was kissing the Voice again). Consider Spector (drum rituals at edge of Wagnerverse), Bea'uls (just-so songs, chirped 'n' bashed, as felames screeeeam. They retreat from latter, but Fortress O' Solitude incl. myndimplsions {"A Day In The Life"], and even explosions ["Yer Blues"]) Who (concept albums x destructo/misc. stoopid m'assive, onstage & off) Zep (obvious); ditto D x A of: Prince, Madonna, Hairmetal. Also Nirvana, to the extent that, in B'ham at tleast, they had the most pellucid onstage *sound*(voice, instruments, overall ambience) of anyone, despite dire room acoustics, and this in midst of K.C..s flaming-life-in-the-headlines.

― Dallpark, Tuesday, 24 August 2004 13:16 (nineteen years ago) link

Wouldn't grunge be Dionysian?

Grunge = introverted, sarcastic, angry, chaste, restrained, self-conscious, heroin, hardcore

Hair Metal = extroverted, shallow, playful, libidinous, transgressive, self-forgetful, cocaine, glam

While grunge (like any loud rock music) still partakes of a Dionysian element, I would say that it represents somewhat of a retreat to a more Apollonian restraint. This is especially notable in its sartorial conservativeness and relative asexuality.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 13:44 (nineteen years ago) link

True. also see "passive-aggressive" & other DearAbby-speak above.

― Dab, Tuesday, 24 August 2004 14:13 (nineteen years ago) link

Malfunkshun, and by possibly clueless "association, Mother Love Bone (seen the boot ROOTS OF PEAL JAM, which might've been where I went astray-not sure, since I don't have any of these to check now), these I thought of as sort of glam-grunge: a parodic A x D? Apollo via parodic framework? Parodic of hairmetal's own semi-clueless (yet hitmaking!) unwitting parody of glam (incl. glammy [costumed macho catchy] Slade's songs covered by Hairmetal)Also glam-grunge maybe parodic of grunge antiglam?

― da, Tuesday, 24 August 2004 15:06 (nineteen years ago) link

haha grunge is "chaste"

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Tuesday, 24 August 2004 21:56 (nineteen years ago) link

YEAH, MUDHONEY WERE COMPLETE sXe VIRGINS WHO SPENT THEIR TIME PLAYING CHESS AND VOTING

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:02 (nineteen years ago) link

I seriously think ever single Mudhoney song was about sex. I can't think of one that's not as I sit here right now.

― Monetizing Eyeballs (diamond), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:06 (nineteen years ago) link

while they were pretty monomaniacal there are some that aren't. off the top of my head, "Blinding Sun," "I Have To Laugh," "The Straight Life," "1995," "Fearless Doctor Killers," etc.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:14 (nineteen years ago) link

what about Suck You Dr...err nevermind.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:16 (nineteen years ago) link

Right around the time Nevermind and Ten blew up it was no longer cool at my high school to be a dickhead. Jeremy spoke and said Poison and Warrant and jocks are assholes. And then about two months later Snoop and Dre and Cypress Hill shook everything up again. It's easy to look back and make fun of the whole thing, but for a little bit, when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was on MTV constantly, high school halls and bathrooms and locker rooms were a little safer for non-alpha-males.

― tom brown, Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Well at my school the Pantera/Slayer fans wouls still happily kick your ass and call you a faggot throughout the whole thing. The Dr. Dre kids totally left us alone.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:35 (nineteen years ago) link

Plus Eddie Vedder once rubbed his shit in my mom's hair and then smacked her in the face with the microphone, so whatever.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 22:38 (nineteen years ago) link

Is your mom Kurt Cobain?

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:07 (nineteen years ago) link

yes

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:11 (nineteen years ago) link

I wish I could find, scan and copy here the Columbia House circular circa 1995 that put Brian Adams in the grunge section.

The question "how important was grunge" means nothing until you define grunge, and even that means nothing here because ILM has already decided that Nirvana was a worthless band, and this is all just clever jabs at passing fads. Grunge was what indie is, a hip genre label that helps you sell stuff. A question like "How Important Of A Single was Smells Like Teen Spirit?" might get us a little closer to the answer I think we're after, but still.

― Shaun (shaun), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:47 (nineteen years ago) link

"...because ILM has already decided that Nirvana was a worthless band"

more like a small bunch of very vocal detractors have decided they're a worthless band.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:58 (nineteen years ago) link

(i don't really think there's THAT much consensus here at ILM)

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:59 (nineteen years ago) link

For the record, Nirvana was the reason I learned to play the guitar and got seriously interested in music in the first place. Whether they want to admit it or not, for many people my age and younger their influence can not be underestimated. Take that, hipster scum.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:04 (nineteen years ago) link

OTM.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:05 (nineteen years ago) link

Good point. So another good question is why are people so embarassed by old passions?

― Shaun (shaun), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:48 (nineteen years ago) link

I think it has more to do with indie one-ups-manship and going out of their way to say they love some obcure crap record and hate the stuff that they and everyone they know loved growing up. It's not embarassment, it's a pose.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 04:10 (nineteen years ago) link

"obscure crap record"

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 04:10 (nineteen years ago) link

it's a bit of both dude. While I stand by what ORIGINALLY impressed me about Nirvana (scary goofy guys playing crazy hooks and making movingly murky shit that didn't really make sense), I'm embarassed by how quickly I swallowed the reasons SPIN and Rolling Stone gave me for REALLY liking Nirvana. Through Nirvana (who on first exposure struck me as both the SCARIEST heavy metal band ever - my god they're so sloppy and chaotic! - and the first heavy metal band I ever liked) I learned about indie guilt and mainstream disdain and faux-superiority, blah blah.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 05:48 (nineteen years ago) link

I credit Nirvana for being a gateway band, but damn if I'm gonna pretend their faults (mushmouth, suicidal anguish - and yeah, since I DON'T wanna blow my head off I'm gonna call that a fault - and indie guilt, faux superiority) aren't faults.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 05:50 (nineteen years ago) link

mushmouth
suicidal anguish
indie guilt
faux superiority

I never said Nirvana was perfect, but FFS these are virtually rock n roll prerequisites!

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 06:35 (nineteen years ago) link

the only thing that matters is the Melvins

― Igor, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 08:02 (nineteen years ago) link

I seriously think ever single Mudhoney song was about sex. I can't think of one that's not as I sit here right now

I can think of lots that aren't, and many that are only obliquely. I mean do you really think that a song like "Suck You Dry" is about sex? If it is, it's a particularly negative view of sex. Writing songs about how much you hate sex is very grunge. Writing songs that celebrate sex is very hair metal.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 12:28 (nineteen years ago) link

All the more reason hair metal is dionysian and grunge is appolonian.

― wetmink (wetmink), Thursday, 26 August 2004 00:13 (nineteen years ago) link

How then shall we speaketh of GnR? Dideth not ye Axl reviel everything under the Sun, not sex only? At one time or another that is. For he did sing unto sweet childe of his before he had to killher turn around I got a use for you. And how does this effect our view on GnR overall, and perhaps even Velvet Revolver, and STP, and the Weiland solo, and Talk Show--aiiieee, I have ventured too farrr

― Donostic, Sunday, 29 August 2004 02:18 (nineteen years ago) link

Dudes, hold up: you've got to understand that the Dionysian / Apollonian divide -- in art terms, which don't necessarily have to do with everything Nietzsche said about it -- is about form, probably more so than content. The Dionysian is about unstructured emoting, life-as-lived, including tragedy and darkness. The Apollonian is about form and beauty, hence my pointing out above that hair-metal is some of the most relentlessly formal rock of the past few decades; not only is the music itself incredibly constructed, but the images, the personality, the feel, they're all seriously overconstructed, to the point of straight theater. (And even "comedy" theater, which is to say that everyone gets laid in the end.) Def Leppard = practically the most Apollonian thing ever. But here's what I realize, right. Plenty of groups -- I dunno, Ratt, or L.A. Guns, or basically early sleazy low-budget pre-chart hair metal -- certainly managed to seem like they weren't incredibly formal about it (which, well, who does look formal when compared to Def Leppard? but still); and if you want to claim GnR as some kind of seriously Dionysian post-hair tipping point, you have to admit some of that stuff seeping backward. And now i realize: hair metal is Apollo selling Dionysus. Hair metal is overconstructed comedy theater that claims to be a deep drama instructing you toward frenzied, emotive abandon. The form and even a lot of the content (pop melodies! floofy production! massive ballads! embarrassingly lucid metaphors!) are all Apollo, but the supposed hedonistic message is the opposite. (Cause by the peak of hair metal it would not really have rocked to be all like: "Shout at the devil! Then spend six hours adjusting the gate reverb on the snare drum!")

Grunge was more truly Dionysian in that it claimed to be all grunt-level emoting (Dionysian) and satisfied, mostly; for one thing it didn't have strict chart-hit order and was sort of loose and when there were guitar solos they were true wandering emoting blurts (not the pert perky ten-second wave-hellos of hair). There was more disordered moaning and shouting, and in some cases more collective shouting, both of which are totally Dionysian. All of which makes it funny that for certain Apollonian eggheads, grunge sounded better than hair.

― nabiscothingy, Sunday, 29 August 2004 10:56 (nineteen years ago) link

saying grunge was over in '89 is ridiculous, i can't think of anything more purposefully contrarian than claiming a movement is over two full years before 99% of the country even knew about it.

i admit it's almost impossible for me to be objective about grunge b/c it really was the first music i was passionate about, and for better or worse it sparked my love of music in general. obviously i had to unlearn alot of the things grunge taught me, but i'll never back down from thinking nevermind was an amazing pop record and that in utero was a wonderfully ugly, cathartic masterpiece. i'm also pretty defensive of pearl jam, cos somebody's gotta be.

― Josh Love (screamapillar), Sunday, 29 August 2004 12:01 (nineteen years ago) link

The only thing I can say about grunge is I wish it had been much less influential. Beacause of it, rock is no dead yet.

― daavid (daavid), Monday, 30 August 2004 01:24 (nineteen years ago) link

If it's not dead then why has it gone to hell?

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Monday, 30 August 2004 01:27 (nineteen years ago) link

can someone write a script to replace all occurances of "rockist" on ILM with "dionysian"? it would really raise the tone of the place....

― m0stly clean (m0stly clean), Monday, 30 August 2004 02:29 (nineteen years ago) link

Oh man has anyone seen the Music Choice commercial where the guy's girlfriend is dancing the Funky Chicken to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? It's the new funniest thing ever.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 3 September 2004 20:56 (nineteen years ago) link

-- Josh Love (heaveninrowboat...), August 29th, 2004.

dude, you had me until that last sentence...;-)

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 4 September 2004 00:58 (nineteen years ago) link

Grunge has made a ton of money for Doc Marten's Inc/Corp/whatever in the US.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Saturday, 4 September 2004 01:47 (nineteen years ago) link

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