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Contents:

2.1 Grunge Music

2.1.1 The Grunge Story

The grunge story, as I called it, is the story of how it all began and how it ended. When I say "it all" I mean the so called grunge phenomenon. The first band that got the grunge tag was Nirvana. In autumn 1991 their second album Nevermind was released. It went to number one in the charts and then the media fixation upon Seattle began. All the other great bands from Seattle, like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, were lumped together under the label grunge. The music business directly scented a chance to make money and started the exploitation of the Seattle scene. MTV broadcasted the music videos of the main grunge bands over and over and later even produced several specials and the music magazines printed endless articles about this new phenomenon called grunge. All the attention also drew a lot of bands from the surrounding area to Seattle. Everybody who came there seemed to become successful. The success of some bands even drove top acts like Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey out of their positions in the charts. The teenagers loved this new sound. They bought everything that sounded like it and so many bands copied the music of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. The latter was still the band which was most in the focus of the media and there was a lot of material to feed the scandal-loving press. Rumours were spread about Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love and their privacy was raked for intimate details in search for new headlines for the yellow press. But at the same time Kurt Cobain was declared the "spokesman of generation X" by some magazines and was celebrated as a great rock star and songwriter. Sadly enough this was a nail to Kurt Cobain's coffin. He couldn't stand all the hype and so this was probably one of the reasons for his suicide. His body was found dead around April 8, 1994 with a shotgun blast right through his head. The end of the grunge phenomenon came just as surprisingly as this violent death. The hype went on to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden but they tried hard to get away from the grunge image. So after Cobain's suicide the media built up a myth around him and Nirvana and this seemed to be a very good strategy. Everything that was connected to Nirvana, no matter how or why, sold extremely good. The MTV Nirvana Unplugged In New York for example is not a very good record (there are lots of mistakes on it) but it nevertheless went high up in the charts. Anyhow after a while the dust settled and grunge was said to be dead.
The fact that the two dates mentioned above are connected with Nirvana doesn't mean that Nirvana was the best grunge band. Pearl Jam have sold far more albums, Soundgarden existed longer and Mudhoney kept a much more traditional sound than Nirvana. But with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana two of the best targets of the mass media died. Eddie Vedder is much more immune to media attacks. He simply gives no interviews and his band makes no videos. Pearl Jam try to be as uncommercial as possible.
So the grunge phenomenon didn't last longer than three years. In a way it never really ended but changed its meaning. The word grunge is today nothing more than a designation for a musical style which is a mixture of punk, heavy metal and rock.

2.1.2 The Sound Of Grunge

I think when we talk about the sound of grunge we must distinguish between two things: the "original" grunge-sound, as I call it, and the modern one.

The original grunge-sound is for me the garage sound from Sub Pop's Reciprocal Recordings studio where the early records of Nirvana (Bleach), Soundgarden (Screaming Life), Mudhoney and some Green River albums were recorded. All these have a rather similar but still distinctive sound.
In the mid- and late Eighties there was a large concentration of bands like Green River, Soundgarden, the Melvins, Nirvana, TAD and so on, which formed the music scene of Seattle. There was a whole subculture and its bands had a previously unknown sound in their music. This sound was supported by Sub Pop, a local record label. Its founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman wanted this sound to be consistent and so they always recorded under the same circumstances: they always used producer Jack Endino and recorded in their Reciprocal Recordings studio. The bands certainly didn't all sound completely alike. But there was definitely a house sound to Sup Pop largely due to Endino's work at the Reciprocal Recordings studio. That's why the music has rather a garage sound than a studio sound. Reciprocal Recordings was not a very sophisticated studio and therefore the music was bound to sound crude. In fact some drugs and the cheap beer of Seattle might have helped to produce such a sludgy dirty sound.
On the cover of my Green River "Dry As A Bone/Rehab Doll" CD there is a sticker on which is written: "Seattle's legendary godheads who are now Mudhoney and Pearl Jam". And in fact Green River have a real original grungy sound. The music is dirty, smudgy and rough and so is Mark Arm's voice. Mudhoney still make music which is very similar to the one of Green River and they can really identify with the word "grunge". One of their band members once said: "We're the only grunge band left in '95. No one else will take that word 'grunge' but we will" and that's right. Bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana or Soundgarden don't want to be called grunge bands. If it's the garage sound that makes up a grunge band then I think they aren't because they have the more modern grunge sound. Although Nirvana and Soundgarden produced their first albums with Sub Pop and therefore once had the original sound.
The modern grunge sound is much cleaner and much more commercial than the original one. There has been a development which went away from the more punk-like old grunge sound to a more rock-like one. Pearl Jam for example never sounded as dirty as Green River did. Most new grunge bands like Silverchair and Bush sound like Pearl Jam or like Nirvana's Nevermind. As this modern sound was much more commercial than the original one it also got much more successful and so the modern one is the sound we all know from MTV. When someone talks about grunge music today he usually thinks of this sound and not of the original one. It's sad but true: grunge has become a vogue word and has thus been alienated from its original meaning.

2.1.3 Differences And Developments

Now after having read about this "modern grunge" sound which got so successful one might come to the conclusion that the music and its bands were all the same, that they only imitated each other and that they were not good enough to make their own music. But that's absolutely wrong! Although the bands sounded much alike (that's why they were summarised under the name grunge) there were big differences between the, let me call them, major grunge bands which developed their own distinctive styles with the time. Talking about the "major" grunge bands I'm thinking of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the Stone Temple Pilots and Alice In Chains - the bands that became most successful. Let's take a look at the bands' own styles and their personal developments.

Nirvana began as a small hardcore-punk band which is audible on their first album Bleach. In the time of their great success with Nevermind they left behind the hardcore part of their music and concentrated on a punk-grunge mixture. This made them popular so they kept this style on their third album, In Utero, but they got a little more distorted what their record company first didn't like. But as the public loved the new record it was all right for them and the rise of Nirvana went on. Sadly the story of Nirvana ends here abruptly with the death of Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana MTV Unplugged In New York is their last legacy. Courtney Love said that the new Nirvana album would have been very much like this special with lots of acoustic material but now we'll never get to know it. Later a live album called "From the Muddy Banks of Whiskah" was released but didn't get much attention anymore.

Pearl Jam had a very clean heavy metal-rock sound on their first album Ten. There were surely some dirty guitar riffs in between but the majority was clean. On Vs. they kept the rock sound but more and more left behind their heavy metal side in favour of some more punk-like songs and on Vitalogy they added some experimental material. There is for example a song called Bugs on which Eddie Vedder plays accordion. But there is also a hint to what they did on their next album which they produced together with Eddie Vedder's idol Neil Young. It was called Mirrorball and had a really old rock sound with a hammond organ in the background. A short time later they released an EP called Merkinball which was supposed to accompany Mirrorball as is written on the back of the CD cover. Before they released their next CD No Code Eddie Vedder made two songs for the Soundtrack of the film "Dead Man Walking" together with a pakistani called Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. These songs are very oriental and so are some songs or at least parts of songs on No Code. Their newest album is called "Yield" and was released in 1998.

Soundgarden have perhaps undergone the longest development. They began as a Sub Pop act with a garage sound but already with some heavy metal and hard rock elements. On their third newest album Badmotorfinger you can hear some fast speed metal and some slow dragging songs with murderous riffs. Then on their album Superunknown they made some experiments with oriental sounds and they worked further on this tendency on their current album Down On The Upside. Sadly they disbanded in 1997 with one last greatest hits album called "A-Sides" as their last legacy.

The Stone Temple Pilots are or at least have been the most disputed grunge band being from Los Angeles and so not belonging to Seattle's community of bands. Their first album Core appeared shortly after Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten and it sounded like a copy of some songs from these albums. Purple, their second CD had audible similarities with some older rock bands like Led Zeppelin. But in the meantime the new Stone Temple Pilots album "Tiny Music ..." is available and they finally have found their own style. Their new record has got a very obvious blues- or jazz-touch.

Alice In Chainsfall a bit out of the grunge society. They are of course from Seattle but they have neither produced a record with Sub Pop nor has any member of them played in a Sub Pop band. They never had a very grungy sound but rather a hard rock or heavy metal one. Their development gets obvious in two EPs they have released. The "SAP"and the "Jar Of Flies"-EP are completely different from all their other albums. Phil Alexander, an editor of the music magazine "Kerrang!" wrote about it : "It is their [Alice In Chains'] most intimate moment. This [...] is Alice In Chains at their purest. Listen without prejudice". The two EPs have some very acoustic songs on them also with some jazzy parts and even a gospel- or spiritual-like song.

All in all we can say that there is something that all the "old" grunge bands like Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden have in common. After their music got copied by so many bands they seem to have tried to get away from their grunge image and develop their own distinctive style. This way their new albums all have some experimental elements. These developments become obvious through the instruments the bands use. Pearl Jam used a hammond organ on their EP Merkinball, the Stone Temple Pilots had a muted trumpet on the song Adhesive from their new album Tiny Music... and on Soundgarden's Down On The Upside the song Ty Cobb begins with a short passage with Mandolin and Mandola.
After all I must say that when you listen to one of the albums mentioned above not all the songs are the same. On almost every one there is a ballad and a fast song and a heavy one and so on.

2.1.4 The Grunge Shows

I thought I should dedicate a short paragraph to this subject, too. Grunge music live shows are really wild. The musicians simply freak out on the stage at their concerts. Especially Nirvana liked to destroy everything on the stage at the end of each show. Kurt Cobain threw his guitar high into the air and jumped into the drums, kicked against the loudspeakers and did many other crazy things, Krist Novoselic slammed his bass on the floor. Silverchair did the same at the end of a show in Cologne in 1996 and Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder liked to climb the trestle of the lighting system on the stage and then dives down into the crowd. Stage diving is another part of most of the live shows as well as headbanging, dancing pogo and crowd surfing. All this shows how much energy there is behind the music. The musicians don't just produce sounds on their instruments but let out all their feelings, especially their hate and anger. But I must also mention that some of the musicians were often stoned or at least drunk at the shows.
stage diverEddie Vedder climbingKurt Cobain crowd surfingKurt Cobain in a drum

2.1.5 A Bit Of History

You can say that the story of grunge as related in 2.1.1 is the one of the modern grunge music. The original part belongs to its history. So here are some of the past connections between the Seattle bands. Giving a complete account of the music history of all the grunge bands that got successful would fill a whole book. So I want to concentrate on Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chainsand Mudhoney. I leave out Nirvana here because they have never played together with one of the other bands mentioned above. The thing which is special about the Seattle music scene is, that it is kind of a large family. Most of the musicians know one another and have played together in a band or a project as you will see in the following text. Some of them even lived together in flat-sharing communities. They met at the clubs where they jammed together and sometimes also performed their music. When one band was playing the members of the other band were there and watched and listened and the other way round. Like this there was a huge amount of mutual support. This made the scene strong.
It all started with Green River and Soundgarden. These two bands existed at the same time. When Green River broke up Mark Arm and Steve Turner went to found Mudhoney and Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament went into a glamour rock band named Mother Love Bone. After Andrew Wood's death Mother Love Bone broke up. Some small bands and projects in which Wood's former bandmates Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard took part followed and then they recorded Temple Of The Dog together with Soundgarden and Eddie Vedder. Chris Cornell had shared a room with Andy and was therefore affected by his death. After Temple Of The Dog Gossard, Ament and Vedder founded the band Mookie Blaylock which was later renamed Pearl Jam. Since then there have been some projects in which bands or at least members of them played together. On the SAPEP for example there is a song from Alice Mudgarden in which members from Alice In Chains played together with Mudhoney and Soundgarden. Mad Season was a project in which Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains joined to record the album Above.

In the following graphic I've tried to make clear the relationships between the bands:

group tree
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