"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

too funny...

Soundgarden, Primus, Alice in Chains -- these are 90s rock acts that "everyone" listened to, but none of them hold much critical sway anymore. Even assuming that MCR wind up in that category, don't critics benefit from knowing what Soundgarden, Primus, and Alice in Chains were about?

Further complication: part of why bands like that don't "hold critical sway" is that we ignore the people for whom they were formative -- people, so far as I can tell, in nu-metal acts. Same probably goes for the Get Up Kids.

????
Nickelback (sadly) sound more like Nirvana than Poison or Ratt!

Yes, if only to avoid having to "grapple" with them. We were too busy here drooling over transient novelty American acts like Jeff Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan, Will Oldham, DJ Shadow, etc.

Yeah, you find out that Godsmack isn't as original as you thought.

I would agree that if you have pretensions toward "big picture" criticism, then you should at least be familiar with someone like MCR. But that doesn't mean you have to buy into Ultragrrrl's premise that you have to believe they are central to music.

which I suppose they historically haven't.

?!?

Chris OTM.

Without Nirvana, there'd be no MCR. Without MCR there'll be no...?

And isn't Pfork the "young critical establishment"? They seem to care about MCR in roughly the same measure that they care about CCR.

"plenty of stuff by people whose fans are *younger*"

and

"half as fun or catchy as Poison or Ratt"

Also, somebody should force Ultragrrrl to read this:

Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

North America has scores of Mallcore/emo bands that are covered by
Alternative Press
http://www.altpress.com/

In the UK they aren't many of these type of bands, e.g the awful "Funeral for a Friend" have had a slice of commercial success.

Maybe becuse Teenpop ROCKS more than Teenrock does? (Just a thought.)

I'm sure in a decade or two when these kids are pushing a stroller through B&N and they see some book that establishes the favorite bands of their teen years in the critical canon that they'll take a look.

Er, just for the record, for most 26-year-olds I know, and even 24- and 25-year-olds, Nirvana was HUGE HUGE HUGE. They are certainly the reason I started listening to non-pop music, and indeed, for most of the people that age I play music with, it can be sorta hard to get them out of the Nirvana mindset sometimes.

The line usually peddled re: Nirvana was that Nevermind got a lot of attention but then In Utero was seen as something of a sophomore slump and they were regarded as fading before the suicide. I was pretty much teaching myself to sing by listening to that album, so I can't vouch for that either way, but I think that's the established narrative.

If Nirvana was regarded as important, I think it was for bringing underground music to the mainstream--someone or other from the Pacific NW saying "they were actually a good band having success" or something like that. Maybe today the problem is that the underground is already transparent to the mainstream, that the barriers to entry have been lowered. I dunno. It's an interesting question.

is my chemical romance the one w/the alice in wonderland video?

Without Nirvana, there'd be no MCR. Without MCR there'll be no...?

That's kind of the question. What will it mean, years down the line, that a lot of people grew up on stuff like this? What'll it mean that a lot of people grew up putting themselves in musical opposition to this stuff, hating it and reacting against it and feeling likt it was everywhere? Maybe nothing, maybe something -- it'll be people who know something about the genre who'll be best at figuring it out.

(Chuck you're right about Mikael; keep him working.)

-- The Man Without Shadow

Nirvana meant a lot to me when i was 16, but it was more for the music they led me to - all the american 'underground stuff' that preceded them - than any particular identification with the lyrics or anything. tho kurt's unsubtle anti-macho stance was something i appreciated.

Also: Bright Eyes

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

You really think that's interesting?

xpost Anthony how could that not be interesting/meaningful? I feel like any critic who's not at least a little curious about what that means and how that works is ... well, weirdly uninquisitive! It's one thing if you think you know those subgenres and know what they mean and just aren't interested -- if you feel like you've dealt with them enough -- but otherwise hell yeah, it seems fascinating enough for me.

I was the only one who has Lovespirals on mine. That they're obscure and MCR are huge is the obvious point of difference, but I don't think Jess and I are running for a position in terms of who is the best amateur sociologist here.

It was a remarkably productive tension, though, which it isn't anymore.

Nabisco's right, but I find it pretty hard to write about that class of bands in any interesting way, which is not even the case with other rock bands, it's just the emo ones. I just end up grumping like an old man. It does seem remarkably derivative, but maybe it would be better to regard that as a conscious borrowing rather than just lazy defaultism.

note also that it's technically a 2004 album and got 7 votes in that year's P&J:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/ballots-votedfor.php?titleid=250905