[Everyneurotic]

well, you can say grunge is, from my appreciation:

-soundwise: it's about sticking a lot of fuzz pedals basically. it's bands trying to ape the stooges but putting some more sabbath or mc5 in the mix, as well as some psychedelic rock.

-geographically: it's bands that come from seattle

-chronologically: it's moody power pop that started sometime in the mid/late 80's, boomed in the early nineties and got ravished in the late 90's/early 00's (with nickelback, creed, et al.)

-vocally: it's singers trying to mimic john denver.

-psychologically: it's downer rock with infectious hooks.

-aesthetically: it's every band who wears flannel shirts, jeans, faded t-shirts, combat boots, hippie necklaces, long ungroomed hair, facial hair, nose rings, long hippie skirts (for the ladies), green and orange hair dye.


depending on all these and more, you can count in and out so many bands it's not even worth mentioning. i've heard every band from candlebox to the butthole surfers be called grunge just because it was what you called rock on the radio in the nineties.

bottomline (what i'm trying to say): genres are lame, most bands who are worth anything defy genres and those who doesn't probably suck donkey cock. most bands on the poll are cool but why do you have to bring an mtv-jizzed word (like crib) just because you are told it's the "cool" music to listen to? furthermore, while yes, the boredoms and the butthole surfers were signed to major labels, how many hits did they have on the radio? 1 between the two, most bands on the charts were the bands with the cute lead singer and big singalong chorus with the eye popping videos e.i. what happened during the hair metal days, it's not like neurosis or the cows became radio staples or unsane and antioch arrow ever appeared on mtv, so how can you tell me that the "underground became the mainstream?". it became more of the same, the underground was the underground and the mainstream was the mainstream...sure, bands could get signed to majors but what good does that leave us? in fact, it was shitty because most records released on majors by experimental, difficult bands (read: underground) are now out of print. my point is living in the past sucks, the mainstream sucked back then (except for a couple of bands) and the mainstream sucks now (except for a couple of bands), there was no real revolution, it was just a a non-defined (or multiple-defined) buzzword and a lot of clones.

[acousticrock87]

Grunge is what everyone else says it is. Cause I could care less.

[Everyneurotic]

Originally Posted by acousticrock87

Grunge is what everyone else says it is. Cause I could care less.

a post that makes sense!!

[GeneticKiss]

I love Seattle rock (that's what I call it), but hate the term "grunge"...

I chose Nirvana, becuz I think of all those guys they have the best mix of sludge and hooks.

[Norma J]

Apparently a journalist first coined the term 'grunge' to describe Neil Young.

[alyasa]

Originally Posted by HaydenAsche

Worst Genre Ever.

Ever, ever.

[Androol]

it wasnt about green river anyways. it was about the melvins. grunge is a very easy transition from sludge

[_slavo_]

for me Pearl Jam....I don't know why, I just have an afinity towards them.

[Cantankerous]

fucking skin yard.

[terminal pharmacy]

Originally Posted by LittlePuppetBoy

yes, that "genre" that made alt rock the new mainstream. Started in Seattle, taken by everyone else, which of the bands were the best?

started in australia by acts such as the saints, the scientists, radio birdman, ten years earlier than seattle.

[Pookie]

Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy

started in australia by acts such as the saints, the scientists, radio birdman, ten years earlier than seattle.

I don't get the connection. Good bands, but nothing to do with grunge.
The Saints were a pop punk band, The Scientists from what I've heard were more a garage band.

Good groups though.

[fishmonkey]

Nirvana and Soundgarden were my bands. Nirvana handed that porno mag down from the top shelf in the newsagents and just handed it to you. Never did care too much for mudhoney/p jam

[Androol]

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is such an amazingly brilliant Mudhoney album

[sonic sphere]

alice in chains for me

[therealglenstyler]

easy. This is a trick question because there are no good grunge bands.

[sonicl]

Originally Posted by Pookie

I don't get the connection. Good bands, but nothing to do with grunge.
The Saints were a pop punk band, The Scientists from what I've heard were more a garage band.

Good groups though.

A short history lesson:

Without The Scientists, there would be no Mudhoney.

Lesson over.

[Pookie]

Well that's not fair. I can hardly argue the point about The Scientists when you introduced me to them.

Just wait till I've heard more, I'll come back with a killer of an argument.

[porkmarras]

I'm with sonicl on this one but i'd correct him and say that without The New Christs there wouldn't be any Mudhoney.

[sonicl]

Mudhoney has never behaved like other rock bands. They were the one of the first Seattle bands to capture national attention but one of the last to jump to a major label. As long hair and "grunge fashion" (read: flannel and thrift shop clothes) became the wardrobe of choice for rock stars, Mudhoney were cutting their hair. While other bands advertised their private angst, Mudhoney interviews were gleeful snarkfests. Rather than follow the same endless treadmill as other bands, Mudhoney would take a year or two off to go back to school or play in innumerable side bands. And perhaps most remarkably, Mudhoney has remained together after most of their peers have faded.

Mudhoney's story begins in 1983 when singer/guitarist Mark Arm was introduced to guitarist Steve Turner by a mutual friend, Alex Shumway. Arm was majoring in English at the University of Washington and playing in a band called Mr. Epp and the Calculations (named for a high school math teacher). Turner would join Mr. Epp for the group's final months. Arm, Shumway, and Turner then teamed up with a Montana transplant named Jeff Ament and a classmate of Turner's named Stone Gossard to form Green River. Turner left after 1985's Come on Down (Homestead), and Green River continued with replacement Bruce Fairweather, releasing an EP, Dry as a Bone, and an album, Rehab Doll, on a local label called Sub Pop.

When Green River called it a day in 1987, Arm and Turner form Mudhoney with bassist Matt Lukin (former Melvins bassist and inspiration for the Pearl Jam song of the same name) and drummer Dan Peters while Gossard and Ament would wind up as founders of another legendary Seattle combo, Pearl Jam itself. Within months of starting out, Mudhoney emerged as standard-bearers for the fertile Seattle music scene, touring Europe and being interviewed by English rock journalists. After 1991's Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, the band jumped from Sub Pop to Warner Brothers, releasing three albums (the tepid Piece of Cake and the excellent My Brother the Cow and Tomorrow Hit Today).

During all this time, the members played in all kinds of outside bands: the Thrown-Ups, Monkeywrench, the Fall-Outs, Bloodloss, and Press Corps. Dan Peters filled in on drums for a pre-Dave Grohl Nirvana, while Turner has released two solo albums in a folk-pop vein. Arm toured with the reunited MC5 and played in Wylde Rattz with Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, and Ron Asheton.

Lukin left in 1999, and the band took another hiatus before re-emerging on Sub Pop with a new bassist, Guy Maddison (ex-Bloodloss/Lubricated Goat). For 2002's Since We've Become Translucent, the band expanded their sound, adding horns and recording with different engineers at different studios. They continued this approach with their new album, Under a Billion Suns.

Perfect Sound Forever spoke to Mark Arm about the band...


PSF: You mentioned that when you formed the band that you sort of had this idea of what you wanted the band to sound like. Do you want to elaborate on that?

MA: Well, you know, when we were kicking the idea of starting something out, we were really looking towards a couple of Australian bands--the Scientists and Feed Time in particular, as well as bands we loved for a long time like the Stooges and the MC5 and Blue Cheer and the Wipers, you know, and even Neil Young... and Alice Cooper. These were kind of like the things that had been with us for a while, and that we were not hearing at the time. I don't know if you really remember what college radio and mainstream radio sounded like in the mid-eighties, but bands like Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers and Big Black were by far the exception and not the rule. Most of alternative radio was, you know, the Cure, the Mighty Lemon Drops, and the Cult, and then on mainstream radio was just like the same shit we'd been hearing in the seventies plus Poison. So the brand of rock and roll that we were looking for was not being played, so we decided to make it ourselves.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/mudhoney.html

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

[porkmarras]

Ok?