Does anyone miss Grunge or The Seattle Sound?

[deeaa*]

Oh yeah...I just listened to Temple of Dog album while driving...me likes.

There was a lot of bad grunge too, and I don't honestly even know what qualifies as Grunge, but in the 90's there were many bands that were very guitar-centered and, most importantly, were not feeling commercially driven. Rather something honest, something a bit raw and original. That's always the best. Of course producers soon took over and commercialized much of it, but the vibe was certainly there.

And that to me is always the most important thing about bands. They need to sound honest. Sure, some album worked over 5 years in studio can sound good too, but in general I just prefer a coarse honest drunken take of noise over that. And grunge was largely just about that.

[sunvalleylaw]

Oh yeah...I just listened to Temple of Dog album while driving...me likes.

Right on. Some good stuff there.

There was a lot of bad grunge too, and I don't honestly even know what qualifies as Grunge, but in the 90's there were many bands that were very guitar-centered and, most importantly, were not feeling commercially driven. Rather something honest, something a bit raw and original. That's always the best. Of course producers soon took over and commercialized much of it, but the vibe was certainly there.

And that to me is always the most important thing about bands. They need to sound honest. Sure, some album worked over 5 years in studio can sound good too, but in general I just prefer a coarse honest drunken take of noise over that. And grunge was largely just about that.

I agree with what you say, and I like a lot of the Seattle sound (really Puget Sound sound, as some of those bands, including Nirvana, were not from Seattle but more south in Spanaway (AIC), and Olympia/Aberdeen (Nirvana)).

But about the section of your quote that I bolded, I completely agree!!! What bugs me about discussions that sometimes occur about "Grunge" is that a bunch of local music, which was largely less produced and overall had some of the qualities that were discussed here was labelled and boxed up together by Time magazine and the rest of the national media, then later, after being labeled and boxed, was blamed for killing rock and stuff like that. Hogwash!!!!! Those arguments are huge overgeneralizations, are inaccurate, and are like saying the spotted owl killed logging in the 90s, when it was really that the timber companies had run through their old growth forests and there was none left to tear down. Metal as it existed at that time, folded on itself to some extent.

Green River and later Mud Honey were bands that no one even remembers anymore, and which started a movement toward a fusion of punk, heavy metal, and for lack of a better term, "alternative", though that really doesn't add anything. Green River and Mudhoney were local acts, and were not polished or produced, because they really were tavern or bar acts. They influenced Cobain, along with a lot of others, and also Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. I always felt that the larger Seattle sound of the time (I really like that better than the grunge label) was a cross between punk and hard rock, or heavy metal. But AIC had a much more lush sound, Nirvana's sound was very stripped down, not very technical, and filled with angst (that I understood). Pearl Jam had its own thing going that came from Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam started out as being more related to its roots in Mother Love Bone, which folded after flamboyant (not very grunge) lead singer Andrew Wood died of an overdose. But Vedder found his lungs and really turned the band as he became the most major influence as time went on. He was very influenced by 70's Zeppelin-esque classic rock, and also all the proto punk of the 70's, along with the Ramones, etc.

So really, the discussion is much more complex than the "grunge" label allows. I do miss a lot of that Seattle sound and miss more that music like it is not more popular at this time. But there is some out there if you look for it. And really, the sound was founded in being rebellious, not popular. Once it got popular, things started to implode.

One other thought: I love going back and hearing the sound, but I am glad the bands that are still recording are not putting out lyrics (at least all the time) that are quite as depressed and angry as at least Nirvana and sometimes Pearl Jam and AIC were at the time. Though I really like the sound, I would rather be defiant than depressed.

[R_of_G]

SVL - Excellent post. You know your history on this subject.

I agree that the Seattle sound, for lack of a better term (because I hate the term grunge which was super-imposed on the music after the fact) grew organically out of the punk/post-punk and hard-rock/metal these guys were listening to. As often as the early punk bands are cited as influences by a lot of these bands, so is Black Sabbath. Like many musicians, the Seattle guys were able to blend their influences into a sound that was their own and yet still showed its roots.

I was never a big fan of the "grunge killed metal" theory. Metal killed itself, though of course, it didn't actually die, it just stopped being as much in the mainstream as it was in the late 80s/early 90s. I'd also make the argument that most of those hair-bands weren't metal anyway. Ballads with distortion isn't metal. Is it?

Either way, "grunge" didn't kill metal, though it may have provided some of us with a soundtrack to dance on metal's grave.