It makes me feel numb.....but in a good way.

FarrahMoan said:

I dont understand what they are saying

it reminds me of a time when I was younger and guitars were really popular again, it felt like the late 60's without the hope, are we talking about grunge the genre?
[Edited 11/11/07 12:32pm]

Aw, man, great genre (although it was really always more of a convenient media tag than an actual genre); screw the haters.

Several great albums emerged from this scene/time period:

* Soundgarden, Superunknown (my favorite)
* Alice In Chains, Jar Of Flies
* Nirvana, MTV Unplugged, and for a good part, In Utero
* Pearl Jam, Ten (Hell, yes! )
* Stone Temple Pilots, Purple

And then there were great songs like Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick", Mother Love Bone's "Crown Of Thorns", and Temple Of The Dog's "Call Me A Dog."

Grunge sucks balls.

i disliked most of it, though i'm still a big fan of nirvana and hole and i think the music of both bands had a quality that put them above an easily categorized genre, aside from maybe hard rock, alternative, power pop...? all three? i'm not getting into the inevitable kurt cobain debate that always pops up on these threads, but if he had lived past "in utero" i would not have been surprised if his songwriting and skill would have taken him somewhere way beyond the "grunge" fad into something very original and unique. but the rest of it? blind melon, pearl jam, soundgarden, etc.? yawn-a-roonie. bring a book.

Anxiety said:

I feel your sentiment. Well as you know, I don't get caught in this label bullshit. As far as I am concerned, Grunge was just a phase of Rock N Roll. Music is Music.
[Edited 11/11/07 14:32pm]

FarrahMoan said:

Vernon Reid had an interesting thing to say about Kurt Cobain, that he wrote really great 'feeling' songs about having no feelings.

For the most part, it's great American rock, it has certainly cast a long shadow over guitar oriented music since.

Grunge =

Loved it at the time. Still enjoy Nirvana and Hole from time to time (peace to Anxiety) but the rest I don't return to.

I still love it...

Alice in Chains, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam (although I don't really consider them "grunge" per se), all still get regular rotation in my music collection. Nirvana, although I liked them at the time, doesn't really do much of anything for me nowadays.

And whoever mentioned "Jar of Flies" is right on the money; I'd probably put it in my top 20 albums of all time. From back to front (except "Swing on This"), it's an amazing record.

"Them Bones" is a great song. The solo is very awe-inspiring. Beautiful, to say the least.....

FuNkeNsteiN said:

So, does everything else, besides Phonk. The great thing about Phonk is that a lot of people that are strictly fanatics for that genre can't seem to smell the stank in their dank-dank. Isn't it ironic? Love Phonk, by the way.....

FarrahMoan said:

Nah... but Grunge doees

FuNkeNsteiN said:

Well, that's your opinion. I love Funk, though. No matter what.....

Grunge did to rock what shit hop did to R&B. It made it dull as hell.

vainandy said:

Strong words.....

FarrahMoan said:

Funk, soul, old R&B, fusion jazz, jazz funk & some disco
Those are the bomb

I don't listen to some stuff, like classical rock, but then again, I don't really feel that strongly about that genre anyways. Grunge on the otherhand is a shitty genre with shitty artists like Nirvana.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

I love all of those things you mentioned. But, I'm guessing that, within this period of my life, artists like Nirvana are accesible. Really trippy for me.....

vainandy said:

i don't know about all of grunge, but to my memory, at least nirvana made rock literate and somewhat intelligent, while still retaining the rebellion and schlock of old skool hard rock. what was the alternative just before nirvana hit it big - skid row? cinderella? please. we really needed another music video where some dude with crimped hair and lip gloss salivates over some playboy model's boobage (not talking about u prince, no offense).

if nothing else, i will always have the deepest respect and admiration for kurt cobain for wearing a prom gown on "headbangers ball" on MTV. that was a beautiful thing.

I don't think it was the grunge artists that made rock "dull as hell"; it was the scrunge bands that came later. The Bushes, Collective Souls, Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, et al, all were the ones that took grunge and ran it into the ground.

By 1994, most of the forerunners of the grunge movement had begun to move on: Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins had begun to move into more of a 70's inspired hard rock field, Alice in Chains was doing more and more acoustic work, and had Kurt lived, I'd imagine Nirvana would've done the same thing.

Do you really want to know what I feel about Grunge?

It became like anything else in the music industry, for every Nirvana they made sure they signed ten other bands that sounded just like them until the genre was completely burned out, I think that’s why I gravitated towards the Smashing Pumpkins, they made an effort at the time to set themselves apart from Nirvana sound alike bands of the era, there were also some great underground, punk and indie releases at that time, all in all, the whole error seemed to be more about the music itself then what we are hearing today for the most part.

I think it would have been cool if Prince had got his Undertaker CD in guitar magazine at the time.

I was a hardcore punk & noise fan in 1989 so, grunge was pretty tame to me. Even before Seattle was the huge scene, Jane's Addiction seemed like a commercialized pop music version of the bands I liked. In hindsight they were one of the better & more original bands of that whole era.

I still listen to Nirvana and Soundgarden now & then but the ones I really remember from that period are the underground bands that never really had big hits - Melvins, Mudhoney, Jesus Lizard, the Cows, the Dwarves etc.

novabrkr said:

Well, at least, they played instruments.

Axchi696 said:

I agree, it was all those bands that jumped on the bandwagon that killed it. It feels like it's still happening. I think I lost a lot of my enthusiasm when I found out 'Plush' was not a Pearl Jam song...

But whatever shook things up, something had to happen. The images put forth in rock music were pretty canned, and you couldn't tell a Kix from a Skid Row or whatever. It was a fun time, seeing these bands I loved that didn't want to compromise succeed in spite of themselves.

I'm kinda surprised people would think it 'sucked'. There's a lot about grunge that's challenging to the ear, but all of the aforementioned bands were pretty adept at writing conventional (pop?) music. Kurt in particular.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

I second that emotion! grunge is the worst thing to happen to rock music. it killed off hair metal and glam and things have not been the same since.

dancerella said:

oh, but that is a good thing by most counts!

PFunkjazz said:

Indeed!

It was a litte strange to see bands having hits with these depressing emotional torrents after a decade of fluffernutter sandwiches. I think that stuff generally works better as underground, outsider art, made for the small group of people who care enough to seek it out. Anybody who wasn't already into that kind of music, who just heard it on the radio with all those other bands, I can see why it wouldn't appeal.