"Grunge is commercial garbage" Part I

Kurt Cobain, Grunge's poster boy.

Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in Seattle. The early Grunge movement revolved around Seattle's independent record label Sub Pop, but by the early 1990s its popularity had spread, with Grunge acts in California and other parts of the U.S. building strong followings and signing major record deals.

Inspired by hardcore punk and heavy metal, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song dynamics, "growling" vocals and apathetic or angst-filled lyrics. The grunge aesthetic is stripped-down compared with other forms of rock music, and many grunge musicians were noted for their unkempt appearances and rejection of theatrics.

Grunge became commercially successful in the first half of the 1990s, due mainly to the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, Alice in Chains' Dirt, and Stone Temple Pilots' Core. The success of these bands boosted the popularity of alternative rock and made grunge the most popular form of hard rock music at the time. Although most grunge bands had disbanded or faded from view by the late 1990s, their influence continues to affect modern rock music.

Often characterized by a sludgy guitar sound that uses a high level of distortion, fuzz and feedback effects, grunge fuses elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. The music shares with punk a raw sound and similar lyrical concerns. However, it also involves much slower tempos, dissonant harmonies, and more complex instrumentation—which is reminiscent of heavy metal. Lyrics are typically angst-filled, often addressing themes such as social alienation, apathy, confinement, and a desire for freedom.

Subterranean Pop Records.

Green River, the first ones in line.

Grunge bands had made inroads to the musical mainstream in the late 1980s. Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label when they joined the roster of A&M Records in 1989. A number of factors contributed to grunge's decline in prominence. During the mid-1990s many grunge bands broke up or became less visible. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, labeled by Time as "the John Lennon of the swinging Northwest", appeared "unusually tortured by success" and struggled with an addiction to heroin before he committed suicide at the age of 27 in 1994.

Origin of the term

Although writer Paul Ramball used "grunge" in a 1978 NME article to describe mainstream guitar rock, Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green River—and later Mudhoney—is generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe this genre of music. Arm first used the term in 1981, when he wrote a letter under his given name Mark McLaughlin to the Seattle zine Desperate Times, criticizing his band Mr. Epp and the Calculations as "Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!". Clark Humphrey, editor of Desperate Times, cites this as the earliest use of the term to refer to a Seattle band, and mentions that Bruce Pavitt of Sub Pop popularized the term as a musical label in 1987–88, using it on several occasions to describe Green River.

Arm said years later, "Obviously, I didn't make grunge up. I got it from someone else. The term was already being thrown around in Australia in the mid-'80s to describe bands like King Snake Roost, The Scientists, Salamander Jim, and Beasts of Bourbon." Arm used grunge as a descriptive term rather than a genre term, but it eventually came to describe the punk/metal hybrid sound of the Seattle music scene.

Mudhoney, the oldest band still active.

Alice In Chains.

Bands reaction to the label

Some bands associated with the movement have not been receptive to the label. Ben Shepherd, of Soundgarden said in a 2013 interview “That’s just marketing. It’s called rock and roll, or it’s called punk rock or whatever. We never were Grunge, we were just a band from Seattle." Mike McCready of Pearl Jam when asked about the genre in a 2006 interview with Entertainment Weekly, said " I used to be like, NO. WE ARE A ROCK & ROLL BAND. WE PLAY ROCK. WE PLAY HEAVY ROCK. WE'RE A HARD-ROCK BAND." Sean Kinneyof Alice in Chains said in an interview "I mean, before we first came out there was no ‘grunge’, they hadn’t invented that word. Before they invented the word ‘grunge’ we were ‘alternative rock’ and ‘alternative metal’ and ‘metal’ and ‘rock’, and we didn’t give a shit whatever, we were a rock and roll band!."

 

Characteristics

Grunge is generally characterized by a sludgy guitar sound that uses a high level of distortion, fuzz, and feedback effects. Grunge fuses elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. The music shares with punk a raw sound and similar lyrical concerns. However, it also involves much slower tempos, dissonant harmonies, and more complex instrumentation—which is reminiscent of heavy metal. Some individuals associated with the development of grunge, including Sub Pop producer Jack Endino and the Melvins, explained grunge's incorporation of heavy rock influences such as Kiss as "musical provocation". Grunge artists considered these bands "cheesy" but nonetheless enjoyed them; Buzz Osborne of the Melvins described it as an attempt to see what ridiculous things bands could do and get away with. In the early 1990s, Nirvana's signature "stop-start" song format became a genre convention. Allmusic calls grunge a "hybrid of heavy metal and punk". Although keyboards are generally not used in grunge, Seattle band Gorrilla created controversy by breaking the "guitars only" approach and using a 1960s-style Vox organ in their group.

Lyrics are typically angst-filled, often addressing themes such as social alienation, apathy, confinement, and a desire for freedom. A number of factors influenced the focus on such subject matter. Many grunge musicians displayed a general disenchantment with the state of society, as well as a discomfort with social prejudices. Such themes bear similarities to those addressed by punk rock musicians. Music critic Simon Reynolds said in 1992 that "there's a feeling of burnout in the culture at large. Kids are depressed about the future". Humor in grunge often satirized glam metal—for example, Soundgarden's "Big Dumb Sex"—and other forms of popular rock music during the 1980s.

Nirvana's early incarnation with drummer Chad Channing.

Ten era Pearl Jam.

Grunge concerts were known for being straightforward, high-energy performances. Grunge bands rejected the complex and high budget presentations of many musical genres, including the use of complex light arrays, pyrotechnics, and other visual effects unrelated to playing the music. Stage acting was generally avoided. Instead the bands presented themselves as no different from minor local bands. Jack Endino said in the 1996 documentary Hype! that Seattle bands were inconsistent live performers, since their primary objective was not to be entertainers, but simply to "rock out".

Clothing commonly worn by grunge musicians in Washington consisted of thrift store items and the typical outdoor clothing (most notably flannel shirts) of the region, as well as a generally unkempt appearance. The style did not evolve out of a conscious attempt to create an appealing fashion; music journalist Charles R. Cross said, "[Nirvana frontman] Kurt Cobain was just too lazy to shampoo", and Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman said, "This [clothing] is cheap, it's durable, and it's kind of timeless. It also runs against the grain of the whole flashy aesthetic that existed in the 80s."

One of the philosophies of the grunge scene was authenticity. Dave Rimmer writes that with the revival of punk ideals of stripped-down music in the early 1990s, with "Cobain, and lots of kids like him, rock & roll...threw down a dare: Can you be pure enough, day after day, year after year, to prove your authenticity, to live up to the music ... And if you can't, can you live with being a poseur, a phony, a sellout?"

Stay tuned for Part II...