As The Crow Flies 11.07.08: Slacker-Chic

Posted by Chris Crowing on 11.07.2008

This week, Grunge gets the bird’s eye treatment, along with sundry thoughts and ruminations on politics, French metal heads and some sweeping statements that even I think may not be wise....

Last week, I started off with taking apart and taking a good long look at one of the musical scenes which seem most prevalent in these times. This is a scene that has passed me by a bit, as I'm a bit too old to really buy into that kind of thing anymore. This week, I'll have a look at the scene I was too young to appreciate and only came to after the fact.


As The Crow Flies over…Grunge

Grunge is like Emo in more ways than those of us who hold it close to our hearts would like to admit to. From a small core scene, it went stratospheric spreading beyond all reasonable genre confines into a ubiquitous and all encompassing marketing label, which ended up being a millstone around the neck of many of its longer surviving acts.

Like Emo, grunge drew derision from the more established fields of alternative music, with the stadium and glam rockers saying it was miserable and boring and the heavier, thrashier side saying it was a weaker, flash in pan alternative to ‘real' heavy metal.

Likewise, the fashion choices of the Grunge followers was derided by both mainstream culture and the more extreme edges of the musical fraternity, while being co-opted by a generation of (now) influential fashion designers, filmmakers and general pop-culture icons.

The folks who hold the moral high ground had a field day with the supposed ‘slacker' ideals of grunge, it's semi-nihilistic outlook and made a great deal of noise about how this ‘Generation-X' thing shouldn't be allowed, and the moral fiber of the nation was being eroded by this pernicious and deviant ‘youth subculture.

Sound familiar?

In my not so humble opinion it should, because as the Cylons say, "all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again," and so it has proved. Anyways, from these broad strokes and clumsy attempts at a week to week segue I'll start at the best place to draw a straight line from… the beginning.

Grunge is widely regarded to have originated in America's Pacific Northwest and in my studies, this seems quite accurate, with the likes of Green River active in Seattle from as early as 1983, and more illustrious members of the scene such as Soundgarden, Tad, Mudhoney, L7, Screaming Trees and some lesser lights like Nirvana having their first significant releases in 1987 and 1988.

You can follow the growth of grunge as an analogue through one band, and it does NOT involve Kurt Cobain. Green River are widely considered one of the founders of Grunge, being one of the first to create that particular brand of punk & metal, as well as having future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament among their number.

Green River eventually morphed into Mother Love Bone when Ament and Gossard wanted to look for a more prestigious label than Sub Pop, and following rave reviews Mother Love Bone's momentum was torpedoed when singer, Andy Wood OD'd before their first record was released. This in turn led Wood's former roommate, Chris Cornell to arrange a tribute record to Wood, under the guise of Temple of the Dog released in April 1991, which featured Cornell, Ament and Gossard, and two members of Ament and Gossard's new, post Mother Love Bone band, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready also made appearances.

That new band was Pearl Jam who were destined to be one of the leading lights of the grunge mega-wave that was soon to hit.

All this merely serves to illustrate that there was a deep and rich Grunge scene long before it hit the mainstream in late 1991 with Nirvana's Nevermindalbum, swiftly followed by the success of Pearl Jam's Ten.

There is an almost palpable divide between the down & dirty Grunge scene from before 1991 which of course continued in the undergrowth (personified by bands like Tad & Mudhoney) and the bands who achieved prominence on the back of the initial successes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, adding Alice in Chains and Soundgarden to their number to create Grunge's Big Four. This is not all that unusual when a genre gets big, with those who stay in the fringes doing their best to distance themselves from the wanton sell-outs. All of this has happened before…

For the sake of not writing the most sprawling and incoherent column ever, I'll limit my definition Grunge to those bands which prospered mostly in the early nineties, rather than expanding it to encompass alternative rock, which would throw these broad strokes wider than is reasonable, and would finally make an utter mockery of any attempt at genre definition.

That said there must be some genre defining characteristics of Grunge, so let's try and nail them down.

For me (and remember this is a VERY general definition) the musical characteristics of grunge are…

…actually, I can't define them, as it seems to me that the thing that musically unites those bands labeled as Grunge are their desire to NOT be like the big stadium rock bands of the 80s, to avoid the narcissistic excesses of Motley Crue to avoid the pervasively saccharine quality of Bon Jovi and the bowel clenchingly cheesy aspect of all forms of metal and hard rock from Poison through to Ozzy Osbourne.

They did this by adopting more rough & ready (and much cheaper) production values, which led to warmer, more human songs.

They did this by writing personal, confessional songs which had more in common with college rock like R.E.M. and the Pixies (especially in the case of Nirvana) or the ‘classic American songwriters' like Neil Young or a young Bruce Springsteen.
They did this by mixing in a little of the original heavy metal spirit, from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest with some classic hard rock hooks from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin (see Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.)

As a wider scene, Grunge encapsulated all of these aspects, with the levels differing within each band to produce a rather diverse field of musical influences.

Perhaps the greatest unifying factor in Grunge as it was in the beginning is the geographical closeness of the bands. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Tad, Mudhoney and the Screaming Trees all hailed either directly from Seattle, or from the vicinity of the Pacific Northwest.
It is entirely possible that the distinctive character of that land, it's famously liberal outlook as a retreat for poets and artists, it's frontier spirit and north European climate (raining all the time) not to mention the cultural effect of a large number of north European descendants mixed in with a prevalent indigenous culture could well have a lot to do with the lasting appeal of Grunge.

Or maybe not, but it's the kind of thing I like to think has an effect.

In popular culture of course, any musical genre or scene is as much defined by the style (or lack) of its adherents as the actual music produced by the bands concerned, and grunge's ‘slacker' look is a truly iconic one, to rival the stereotypes of any other genre.

The key points of the grunge style are the long, scruffy hair, (different to the long hair of the 80s glam bands in that it is left down, rather than hair-sprayed into place, more in common with the flower children of the 60s, and the thrash metallers of the 80s than Nikki Sixx or Jon BonGiovi) the worn clothing and the plaid pattern shirts (practically the uniform of the working classes of the Pacific Northwest) not to mention to ubiquitous smell of marijuana and fast food. It is easy to dismiss these as the hallmarks of 'alternative culture' (what a wonderfully dismissive phrase) since the 1960s but it is only in the Grunge period that these passed over into popular culture.

A good friend of mine has said that Grunge never existed, a group of bands from a localized area just wanted to go a simpler way, and it caught on. While it is hard to differentiate the original Grunge wave from their Northwest origins, it spawned a sea change in 'alternative' music (I am growing to hate this phrase, but I'll continue to use it for want of a better one, suggestions on a postcard please.) Bear with me.

As far as I can see in the 1987-1994 window of Grunge's scene-wide apotheosis, several things changed for the better in music.

The biggest heavy metal band in the world, my beloved Metallica abandoned their proggy, multi riff songwriting approach and stripped back to a more chord based, Black Sabbath influenced sound - whatever your opinion of the Black Album it was a significant change, because after that heavy metal's leading edge soon had a far more organic, groovesome, Sabbathy feel - see Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power and subsequent albums and the rise of Machine Head. Now I like my 80s thrash as much, if not more than the next person, but metal was on a steep slope to prog or cheese and it took the clearing of the head that was Grunge to revitalize it. I know a lot of folks won't like or agree with that, but it's my column and I'll rant if I want to.

Not only that, but the same period saw a massive widening of the range of alternative music, finding an audience through increased coverage on MTV, and eventually the internet, with Industrial music coming to the fore through Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, Riot Grrl being a significant genre for a time, and as Grunge ground to a halt with Kurt Cobain's cooling finger on the trigger, the door had been kicked open and pop--punk, nu-metal and eventually Emo sauntered into the mainstream giving us bands as successful and diverse as Hole, Green Day, Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance. For my two cents, (and that's less than a penny in my money) if Grunge hadn't happened as it did, when it did - then all the interesting music that I love now may well have stayed in the shadows and the darkness, and those dark times in the late 90s where it seemed everything was sheer cheesy chart pop or bad recycled dance music may have won the day.

In it's mutated, sleekened form of 'alt.rock' (again, I hate the phrase, but needs must suffice) Grunge's successors dominated the late 90s, with the enormous success of the Smashing Pumpkins, the Foo Fighters, Creed, Staind and later (less gloriously I'd say) Puddle of Mudd and Seether so in the scheme of things, Grunge has survived far better than most scenes within the wider world that we call rock.

As The Crow Flies over…Grunge - a summation

OK, so I rambled a bit and lost my thread, but that was always going to happen when I decided to talk about a group of bands that I hold in quite high affection (couldn't you tell?)

I'd say that Grunge was a reaction to the overblown neon eighties, a stripping down of musical techniques and values, a return to first principles, with the emphasis on emotion and 'keeping it real' as it were. Someone else could no doubt write a long, well referenced article about how Grunge was entirely put together by the evil corporate suits, and I'd say that was true, once Nirvana and Pearl jam had blown open the door. But at the start, in its heart, it was never a scene, it was never a marketable entity, it was just some guys who all happened to come from the same place trying to make some noise that meant something to them, or meant something more than just getting on the biggest stage with the brightest lights.

I said at the start of the column that Grunge was a time and a place in music that passed me buy, as I was too young to really feel it, so it's entirely possible that the thoughts expressed here are those of someone who has missed the point and created a wistful fantasy land that suits them - like talking about the Old West or the days of the clans in Scotland as a halcyon time without pain or suffering. Then again, maybe I'm right and Grunge was a cleansing for popular music that needed to happen. It has certainly given me a great many albums and songs that I will cherish for my whole life.

The Murmur Round the Murder

Seasick Steve - I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left - I've loved Seasick Steve since the first time I saw him on the BBC's coverage of Glastonbury some years ago. Sitting in a field with just a really beaten up old guitar and a stomp box that seems to consist solely of old industrial tape and completely OWNING the bands that were headlining with his back to basics old blues man travelers' tales. This album is more of the same, although with the added bonus of a wonderful collaboration with Nick Cave and the Grinderman boys. If you like your old school, storytelling blues songs without excess baggage; this is the easy listening album of the year for you. My personal favorite track would be "Chiggers" talking about the little biting mites that make a home out of your socks if you walk through the brush in the Deep South. Makes me itchy just thinking about it.

Gojira - The Way of All Flesh - I've been hearing good things about Gojira for years, with folks imploring me to try out their previous record From Mars to Sirius but I never got round to it. But eventually the badgering paid off and I went and shelled out actual cash for their new record.

Now this is NOT going to appeal to everybody, because Gojira are heavy with a capital H, but also lack any of the fashion elements that characterize some extreme metal bands. Which is surprising considering they are the only heavy French band I can think of, and they are NOT the pretentious fashionistas of their scene. Bizarre.

That said they are intelligently heavy, and there is a lot of very clever songwriting tricks and guitar magic going on over and around what seems at first glance to be a rather mundane death metal background. This suits me just fine, as a lot of death metal is all bark and no bite, whereas with Gojira there is little bark and a whole lot of bite.

The album is full of riffs that demand a few moments of cathartic head banging (especially "Toxic Garbage Island") and some really nice little time changes that make you sit up and take notice.

One thing that I can't quite like is the unfortunate drum tuning which only shows up in the heavy double kick drum sections, and there is a REALLY annoying 'thwock-thwock' noise that comes out which is for me 'St Anger Snare' bad and unforgiveable and completely takes away form the heaviness and impact of the song. Nonetheless this is some of the most compelling death metal I've heard in a while, and I'll soon be delving into their back catalogue.

If you want a quick and easy idea of how they sound, take Tool and mix their proggy soundscapes with some of the simplistic style of Queens of the Stone Age and throw in some of the no nonsense metal of Sepultura. Now that's not quite how they sound, but it'll give you an idea, and there's not a hint of Jean-Michel Jarre to be seen.

Now my gift to you, is the video for the single from the album, the awesome "Vacuity"



Quoth the Raven

Yeah, I'm really pushing it with these Crow themed segment titles, but once I get a theme I tend to run with it till it unravels completely. This bit is for my current affairs and Scotch & Wry style final thoughts.

Of course I have to pass comment on your presidential elections this past Tuesday. I'm happy that the progressive candidate got in, and if Barack Obama lives up to a tenth of his potential and promises, then he'll be the best thing to happen to the Western World as a whole, let alone the USA in a long long time. That is if the vested interests and old guard let him, or some KKK type doesn't manage to kill him. Then again, a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress does give the Barack a real platform to achieve the change he has promised and once again we live in interesting times.

All that said, my opinion of John McCain has improved over the past few weeks, and his constructive magnanimity in defeat is an example that many bitter Republicans would do well to imitate thus healing a horribly divided and scarred nation rather than deepening those old, ulcerated wounds with fresh bile.

Now onto the really important business of the Glenrothes by-election and this weeks eliminations in the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

I am joking by the way, why so serious? Anyways, that's me done for this week. I think I'm all blown out by these genre overviews, so next week I'm taking on a whole country and I'm going to look at Scotland's contribution to modern popular music. Hell yeah, I feel like a missionary!

Till next week, if you're not in bed by midnight, go home.

Chris