Grunge 'explosion' was more lamestain hype than alt.fact
BRACE YOURSELF for the nostalgia overload that will mark the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermindnext month, and all the attendant strokey-beardy picking over the bones of a musical genre that had more headlines than hits.
Grunge, while not quite a post- ironic Gen X media hoax, was a daft moment in musical history. It only really produced two and half good songs, and the truth about Nevermind is that it was really only ever a coffee-table accessory – certainly not an era-defining piece of musical work. And were Nirvana really anything more than an indie Mötley Crüe?
It was then-Melody Maker writer Everett True who is credited with "discovering" the genre that never really existed, when he wrote a cover story on Sub Poprecords in 1989. The so-called "grunge explosion" occurred at a time (the early 1990s) when the mainstream broadsheet media began producing film/music supplements to go after a younger demographic, and the only story in town was the squall of noise then emanating from Seattle.
There was also the rise of everything “alt”. Suddenly, in the early 1990s all you had to do was to put that prefix before any tired old phrase and Abracadabra! You had an eight-page cover story of some meretricious nonsense.
The term “grunge” didn’t even originate in Seattle – it had long been in use on the Australian music scene. And if you really want to know about the prototypical grunge band, you’d have to look to Perth and the work of The Scientists. It certainly wasn’t Seattle’s Green River, who usually take the credit.
Granted, Pearl Jam (who hated the grunge description with a bitter passion) were, and still are, a great band. But for a real musical movement you need more bands than you have fingers on one hand.
And there was all that awful pseudo-sociological hand-wringing around grunge. To a breathless Newsweek, Kurt Cobain was the "poet of alienation" (um, one of his favourite bands was The Bay City Rollers) and "grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars . . . This is the sound of psychic damage". WTF?
The media got what it deserved when the New York Timesgot to work on an in-depth analysis of the "grunge revolution". A reporter rang Sub Pop and got talking to the receptionist, Megan Jasper. The reporter wanted to hear all about "grunge talk", and an exasperated Jasper made up a series of terms on the spot, among them "lamestain" (an uncool person), "harsh realm" (to be said when a bad thing happens to you) and "swingin' on the flippity-flop" (hanging out with your friends). Jasper's off-the-cuff doggerel was duly printed in the paper of record on November 15, 1992 as the "Lexicon of Grunge: Breaking the Code".
The only reason grunge stayed around for more than its allotted 15 minutes was that the music industry (as it had done with punk before) decided to only sign up grunge bands and spend millions trying to break them in the hope that one of the urchins would produce a Nevermind.
By all means dig out your “The Best Grunge Album in the World – Ever!” But while Smells Like Teen Spirit remains one of the truly great singles of all time (even if it is just a rewrite of Boston’s More Than a Feeling), you’d be hard- pressed to find much that still stands up. Anyone for the last of the plaid shirts?
Mixed bag
Can't get enough of the version of Heroes and Villains (one of their best ever songs) on the new version of The Beach Boys' Smile, due in a few weeks
Oh Gawd, just remembered – I gave my mobile phone number to Courtney Love when I met her last year. After she sees this column, I won't be able to answer it for three months.
