1991. The Year Punk Broke. Or, more appropriately, The Year Assholes Started Listening To Better Music and Neil Young Became Fashionable. From all of the media coverage then and now, you'd think that 1991 was akin to 1968 or 1977. You'd think that there was this massive youth movement that everyone felt part of. Boy meets girl in their flannel shirts and move towards a grunge utopia where we'd elect a new President a year later put an end to conservative politics and Bush administrations for good. Yeah right.
I bought Nevermind in the fall of 1991. A friend of mine had played Bleach a few times and was talking about how great this upcoming album was going to be. I respected his opinion, and picked it up soon after it came out.
I bought Pearl Jam's Ten right around the same time. That one didn't last long at all. In fact I think I might have sold it back to buy Nevermind. I didn't really start to like the band until I saw them on Lollapalooza in 1992, but even then, my fandom was short lived. There weren't enough pearls in the jam.
But Nevermind. I remember liking some songs, but I couldn't understand why it had such a glossy polish on it. Kurt Cobain later said it was mastered wrong and ended up sounding like a Motley Crue record. I knew exactly what he meant and it was my main stumbling block with the record. It was probably the main reason why I shelved the record so soon after I purchased it.
This is how "grunge” arrived for me: One day I come home from class and the guy down the hall stops playing Def Leppard in mid-song. Cuts it right off. I don’t think too much about it, because I'm pretty sure that some metal meal ala "Cherry Pie" or a Van Halen "Poundcake" is about to be served. But there’s a moment of silence. Probably just long enough to take the cellophane off the CD. Then a familiar riff, big drums, and then everything gets quiet for a mumbled verse. Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Not the album, but just that song. Exclusively. Over and over again. The new Def Leppard had arrived.
So I shut my door and put on some Dinosaur Jr.
Truth be told, I spent a lot more time listening to and dissecting Achtung Baby than Nevermind that year. Lots more time. I’d always had a love/hate relationship with U2. They put out an album and I'd listen to it religiously, but by the time they went on tour their non-stop opinionating on everything imaginable, including religion, would drive me nuts. Too much Bono in the media. It's the reason I never saw them live.
Achtung Baby was a fascinating record though, and it more than made up for Rattle and Hum. It redefined U2 in a way nobody probably thought would be imaginable. It made them dark, somewhat dangerous, and definitely more of a rock band. Gone were the photo shoots of Irish castles, Joshua Trees and a stately looking rock band. This U2 had balls, and as overplayed as that record would become, I could still put it on and enjoy it today.
But Nevermind? It was everywhere, and it all seemed kind of silly. This wasn't a revolution as much as a progression. Kurt Cobain would dye his hair fuchsia and smash his guitar on Saturday Night Live, but anybody with a sense of rock history had seen those moves before.
Nevermind didn't do much for me at the time. Incesticide sparked new interest in them for me because it had a rawness and seemed like punk rock instead of this media phenomenon. But I wouldn't really get into Nevermind until In Utero came out. That was the Nirvana album that really won me over. Angry. Passionate. Haunting. Raw. It was everything that Nevermind was supposed to be.
Every rock-obsessed teenage kid has a band that kicks things wide open for them. For millions of kids it was Nirvana, but they were only the latest in a long line of inspiring bands. Big record labels had signed underground bands long before Nirvana. Husker Du, The Replacement, Sonic Youth and Soul Asylum all had major label contracts going back as far as 1985. College radio had existed for years. Labels like "alternative rock”, "independent rock” and "alternative" had been around for eons as well. Nirvana helped define a new market and give birth to a slew of imitators. They gave us "Grunge". Whatever that means.
And most of their listeners had no idea what Kurt was talking about. Nevermind was popular on the same level that made "Every Breath You Take” and "The One I Love” love songs for 80's proms and "Born In The USA" a re-election campaign song for Ronald Reagan.
Revolution doesn't come easy.
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4 comments:
Well, you and I have had our disagreements on bands in the past, but Nirvana happened to me in a somewhat similar way. I was too young to really get it at that point. I mean, I was 11 and thought Genisis was the greatest band on earth. But later on, when I was at the dickhead age of 14 I bought In Utero, and agree that it is underappreciated to the same degree that Nevermind is overrated.
I think I actually liked Weird Al's knock of "Smells like teen spirit" more than the real song. Again, I was 11.
But the imagery of a jackass kid in the dorms that has terrible taste in music, constantly plaing the same song over and over is great. We all knew them. And when they like a band you like, it's trouble. I would love to bounce around 1991 suburban America and witness the countless moments of teens stopping their Def Lepard and Motley Crew and Bon Jovi mid song to get a taste of this new Nirvana.
The thing with Pearl Jam that I've realized is that they are a classic rock band. They may have looked grunge, and sounded different than what was popular a year before them, but they were just the same as Jethro Tull or The Who or The Guess Who. They played big songs that could carry over to big venues. And to their credit, they never sold out. Of course, they've never been afraid to remind us all how they haven't sold out.
This was a long post. Jeez, I should just start my own blog too. Maybe too much responsibility though.
I had my Genesis stage too, as well as Phil Collins. "Hello, I Must Be Going", "No Jacket Required", "Abacab", "Invisible Touch". I'm no stranger to those records.
I saw Weird Al on that tour. Won tickets, and his whole catalog. I even got to meet him.
I don't hate Pearl Jam. I just don't get the hype.
You should start your own blog.
I think I'm too lazy for blogging.
Does Pearl Jam even have that much hype? As I said before, to me, the big thing with Pearl Jam is that they are a classic rock band. You have to see them as that. They didn't revolutionize anything, and didn't do anything new, just played good rock n roll music like their heroes before them.
I don't know. I guess it just makes me feel old to have a band that started when I was in college be considered classic rock. It also sort of seems like a marketing idea. "Hmmm...let's market Pearl Jam as classic rock. Then we can get all of those people who buy one record a year to pick up the new Pearl Jam instead of the latest Steve Miller Band CD."
Nothing seems too accidental with that band. But they do blend in well on that format, I agree.
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