now, to something so entirely different! well it's still music, but grunge (as reggae) have it's own meaning - this one against the corrupted society, to really mean what you say, to really give a damn, and most important to play music for music's own sake. I play in a band called crescent, and we call ourselves a grungeband, though we don't play as Pearl Jam does. So it's not this entirely musical genre, it's more like what you stand for or indeed a movement... Let's take a history-lesson first!
Green River was formed in 84' when Mark Arm met Steve Turner through Alex. Steve, Alex and Stone Gossard, had all gone to high school together. Steve and Mark had been in Mr. Epp and The Limp Richards together for a short while. After both bands split Steve and Mark decided to form Green River. They next got Jeff Ament (Derranged Diction) on bass who Steve worked with and everyone knew from Derranged Diction who would often play shows with Mr. Epp and Spluii Numa. Jeff didnt had an unfavorable impression of Marks music from Mr. Epp who was honorably titled "the worst band in the world" but still wanted to play with Mark. Next to join was Alex Vincent of Spluii Numa on drums.
After Green River, Steve and Mark joined Matt Lukin from Melvins and Dan Peters from Bundle of Hiss and they started Mudhoney. Stone, Jeff and Bruce joined Andy Wood to form Mother Love Bone.
MLB was formed in 1988. They joined the late great Andy Wood (vocals), and Regan Hegar (drums) who were in Malfunkshun. Orginally under the name of Lords of the Wasteland. Malfunkshun split and Bruce Fairweather (guitar) joined the group. Then Regan was replaced by Greg Gilmore (of 10 Minute Warning) and the band changed their name to Mother Love Bone. They got into the studio as soon as possible and recorded 10 songs including, "Holly Roller", "Stargazer" and "Lady Godiva Blues". The demo was recieved by Kelly Curtis (later the manager of Pearl Jam). Kelly Curtis made it possible for the band to record another demo, this one was sent to Geffen records who paid for them to make another demo. They signed with Polygram and signed Kelly Curtis as their manager.
In early 1989 they started to record their debut album Shine, it was released on March 20th. The band went on tour for the album and then took a few months break, and by September were recording their next album.
By 1990 the band had played around Seattle a lot and gained a lot of respect from local bands like Soundgarden, the Melvins. They had finnished making their upcoming album Apple when Andy checked himself into a rehab program to deal with his heroin addiction.
The band was set to make their stab at the big time with 1990's Apple, when Wood died of a heroin overdose on March 16th. He was put in the hospital on life support for 3 days before his family decided it was time to let go. March 19th is usually the day observed.
Temple of the Dog was formed in Andy's memory. The band included Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Soundgarden's Matt Cameron and Chris Cornell (Andy's Roomate), and Eddie Vedder. After Temple of the Dog Stone and Jeff got together with Eddie, Mike McCready and Dave to form Pearl Jam. Bruce Fairweather joined Love Battery and Greg played with Blind Horse, Endino's Earthworm, Doghead, Radio Chongching, Son of Man and Mommy.
The wheel was rolling...
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MLB's texts had a message that music is for music (although they were commercial), and one cannot live without either that or love. One of their songs "This is Shangri-La" tells you this in the end of first verse:
"Cause love is all good people need.
And music sets the sick ones free. Without love no one grows, nothing gonna ever sing."
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I've been so lucky to find an .ra sample of Shangr-La and Stardog Champion, which you can check out to your right!these links are copied without permission, don't ask! "I look bad in shorts, most of us do - don't let that bother me..."
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"Holy Roller" |
"This is Shangri-La" |
"Stardog Champion" |
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As you might have understood, Seattle now had a living underground of music, often called seattle-rock (to learn more about seattle-rock, listen to Todd Snyder). These people didn't take part in what we can call society. In public schools musicians were often outcasts, and teachers told the pupils that music didn't have a future. So, from the public's point of view; they were loosers. But some of them made it far. Today you have good examples like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, and some (like Mother Love Bone) have split or been victims of drugs, and alcohol. Speaking of which, crescent couldn't have been made hadn't it been for Nirvana.
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To me they were the true prophets of grunge, as a unit and as individuals. When they first made it to the American hitlists, they were asked by MTV to make a promotional video, and they did it. As all MTV videos the playback was very clearly in the background, and Nirvana fucked it up.. How many bands would have the guts to (on national TV) fuck up?? They spoke the true word... But Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was really messed up at the end, a suicidal drug-addict, and in 1994 he shot himself, and that
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was the end of a global grunge-wave who'd taken the world by storm. In my opinion, this was the reason for the setback of rock music in the mid 90's. Read more about the seattle-rock here, from where my information about Mother Love Bone has been taken; The Further Exploitations of the Northwest.
Now, back to the main idea of this text; the message of grunge. (If you haven't heard about Nirvana then you've got nothing to do here.) Nirvana didn't want to be famous. They didn't care about what to wear, what songs to play and so on, it just didn't mattered. It's all a question about how you want to live. Do you want to be yourself? Give a damn about what others say, it doesn't matter. If you're a geek to others, then good! As long as a person can keep knowing who he/she is, and take a stand away from the normal sheeps dressed in fashion, and as long as you have a mind of your own and shelter your soul from garbage like Spears above, then you can consider yourself as a grunger. take a stand, but be you!
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"The most of us are ashamed of raggy clothes and simple furniture. Let us instead be ashamed of raggy stands and simple philosophies."
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Albert Einstein, grunger
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you see? I hope I've reached a point of understanding in your twisted mind, and that somewhere in your disco-destroyed mind is a sense of common sense trying to dig it's way through a ditch of filthy auto-tuned, pop-sweet vocals and overdubbed samplerbeats. I hope there's a way you can change and realize. I hope you've understood what I've written here. I hope.
Music is alot of things. But it's not just something you hear when you're having your hair cut off like a nazi, or when you're sitting at a diner almost dying of what's-the-thing-I've-ate, or shouting trying to be louder than it when you're at a bar, or some beat you jump up and down to so you can be cool (like Fonzie:).. It's neither of the above. Music is soul. Music is art. Music is fulfillment.
For instance, listen to Leonard Cohen (who's a great musician and person)'s "Chelsea Hotel no.2"; "You say; well, nevermind. We're ugly but we have the music."
Speaking of which, my friends and I have often discussed the way music becomes popular. Most of the elements fashion is made up with, is extreme, and almost tout les temps from the underground. But once the product of the underground is prepared by the fashion-creators and sold to the (should-know-better) youth, it's not accepted as an underground element anymore - it's only accepted as such by the buyers who likes to believe they follow the way of the underground. Let's say the underground is black. When the fashion-sniffers finds that out, they create a new fashion which is black. When the underground notice this, it doesn't stay black for long but turns white. Soon another fashion-sniffer smells the white smell from the underground and tells this to the manufacturers. It's an interesting psycho-sociological phenomena. Observe and agree!
"Yeah, yeah, I wanna be black." (Lou Reed)
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