Quote:
Originally Posted by GayFrogs
As for grunge being dead in '94, I never understood that.
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Kurt was murdered/"suicided".
Kirsten Pfaff was murdered/"overdosed".
Layne began his reclusive descent into hell, addiction, and death in earnest.
Billy shaved his head, declared that "Grunge [is] dead" and started turning the Pumpkins into his post-alternative psuedo-industrial band.
Candlebox.
Bush.
By 1996 :
Soundgarden was breaking up.
Candlebox still existed.
So did Bush.
Layne was already losing teeth (saw his last show ever, opening for KISS at Kemper)
Courtney Love had "cleaned up" and went Hollywood for
People vs Larry Flynt...
But yeah, "grunge" wasn't ever a musical genre to me. It was totally a marketing ploy.
Jane's Addiction were an art-rock band.
Pearl Jam were always an arena rock band and had more in common with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and SRV than they did with Alice In Chains or Nirvana.
Alice In Chains was a metal band.
Nirvana was a punk band.
Stone Temple Pilots was like crossing Black Sabbath with Bowie and the Beatles, and really had absolutely nothing to do with Seattle, "grunge" fashion, or any of that shit other than their first album came out in 1992 so they got lumped in with all the other bands as "grunge" - just because it was convenient. It was category the industries could use to target a demographic.
When they had "Grungewear" at the GAP at the mall, when they had $49.99 flannel shirts and $120 pairs of Doc Martens with a Nirvana shirt on the mannequin in 1994...THAT is definitely when "grunge" died for me.
Marilyn Manson's first album came out that year, Floyd's
Division Bell, NIN's
Downward Spiral,
Far Beyond Driven by Pantera, Tom Petty's
Wildflowers,
Sleeps With Angels by Neil Young,
Tical by Method Man, Clapton
From the Cradle, Portishead's
Dummy, Beastie Boys
Ill Communication Snoop's
Doggystyle..and so did the Stones
Voodoo Lounge, along with Tesla's
Bust A Nut and the Black Crowes
Amorica so I had PLENTY of great music in my life that summer and it had nothing to do with "grunge" or Seattle.
Even the so-called "alterna-grunge" bands were putting out albums that were showing a scope and artistry far beyond the limitations that are ascribed to "grunge" and all it implies :
Vitalogy is Pearl Jam's most bracing work. It's not their best songs (Yield) or best sounding (No Code) or most iconic (some would say Ten, I say VS...) but Vitalogy is their most daring, most bracing...
Purple was a huge leap forward for STP - and yet, this album sounds it could have been recorded 20 years before it was...
Superunkown is a veritable masterpiece of modern music. It's on the level of the greatest albums ever recorded - calling it "grunge" isn't accurate. At different turns melodic, metallic, and even recalling elements of Stockhausen's theory of musiqué concreté at times...they all were leaving the "grunge" moniker behind, like a fart in the wind.
Just my $.02.