All right, so it turns out that pioneering indie label Sub Pop has celebrated its 20th anniversary by re-releasing Mudhoney’s seminal “Superfuzz Bigmuff”, so this seems like the perfect opportunity to take a look at that most unfairly derided of genres, grunge. And while it’s hard to defend any musical movement that included Eddie Vedder, I still think that grunge was always a lot more interesting than its detractors ever made it out to be… It’s fashionable now to sneer at the supposed humourlessness and self-pity of the scene, to mock it as just empty corporate-hype bullshit, to look at stuff like Alice In Chains and wonder what all the fuss was about. Which is stupid, because grunge produced some truly great, interesting bands… It’s just that the good bands never got as much press as the bland, radio-friendly ones, so weird, fucked up groups like Green River or Dickless were often overlooked in favor of the boring arena-rock-in flannel stylings of Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins or whatever.
So, anyway, this is a look at some of the better grunge bands, as well as some key early influences and some indie/noise/whatever bands who I think fit in with the overall sound. I’m using a verrrry loose definition of ‘grunge’ here that’s basically “noisy, sludgey, heavy punk rock”, so there’s inevitably going to be some genre-overlapping here and there. And finally, if you know a band I didn’t put here that you think fits that description, post it!

Mudhoney:
The definitive grunge band… Loud, crude, fuzz pedals in perpetual overdrive, Mudhoney were a brilliantly fucked-up mixture of 60s garage riffs, Black Flag heaviness and Sonic Youth-style noise. They never really got the recognition they deserved, possibly due to their smartass lyrical stance and deliberately raw sound, but they still stand as one of the single greatest bands to come out of the entire American indie scene, and one of the few to manage that rare achievement of being weird and groundbreaking while still being immensely fun to listen to. Anyway, obligatory ‘Touch Me, I’m Sick’ link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSCyMAnPi_o&feature=related . Also, their killer scuzz-sludge anthem‘Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF6iQNZdAQE&feature=related .

TAD:
Remember all that stuff about ‘redneck rock’ in the Hardcore topic? Well, that pretty much sums up TAD to a casual observer… All lumberjack shirts, noisy thrashing and big, dirty riffs, topped off with an iconic front man in the shape of mountainous ex-butcher Tad Doyle. A closer listen, though, shows that they were closer to noise-punk bands like Big Black and the Jesus Lizard than just heavy metal, with rumbling bass and a healthy dose of weird nastiness that makes them still relevant today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX0WiCJEnUA# , and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0l-Oqabipk&feature=related .

The Cows:
All right, maybe not grunge, but definitely grungey… And sounding like the missing link between Mudhoney and the Butthole Surfers, the Cows perfectly enscapulate the ‘fucked-up punk’ sound that was the original definition of the genre.  Besides, I only just heard ‘Sorry In Pig Minor’ for the first time a few days ago and I can’t gush about these guys nearly enough. Mixing down-and-dirty noise-punk with actual tunes and a massive amount of ideas shoved into each song, the Cows are a must-hear for anyone into, well, anything. Check out this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr0fcudBWJ0&feature=related , which amply demonstrates the brilliant lunacy of their live shows, and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiHWOWBOBZ0 .

Love Battery:
Love Battery’s psychedelic-tinged rock always stood in contrast to the ‘heavier’ side of grunge, but their knack for writing killer tunes means their records have aged a lot better than some of their more popular contemporaries. Soundwise, think… A harder-rocking Screaming Trees crossed with Dead Moon, or something. Anyway, they’re pretty good, if a bit too poppy for me personally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPq_HDTo6Q

Dinosaur Jr:
Sweet pop harmonies buried under roaring, distorted guitars… Lyrics that could be both nonsensical and vaguely heartbreaking at the same time… 70s rock as seen through a filter of the Jesus & Mary Chain and Sonic Youth… It’s Dinosaur Jr, the guitar rock band for people who disdain guitar rock! A key influence on grunge, and a fantastic band to boot… Pick up ‘You’re Living All Over Me’, as it’s not only their best record but also one of the best records. Ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXfR-64YtQ0 , and most definitely http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxLpEX2bt8w .

Dead Moon:
Another not-quite-grunge band, garage legends Dead Moon have nevertheless been name checked as a strong influence on the Seattle sound for their punky take on 60s garage and 70s rock. Besides, they ruled, equally adept at producing hard-rocking proto-grunge monsters like ‘Dead Moon Night’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXATbYsf3zc&feature=related ) and playing slower-paced but still great songs like ‘D.O.A’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUfu-lEflbQ&feature=user ). The ‘garage-revival’-revival starts here!

Green River:
A proto-grunge supergroup whose members included future members of Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, Love Battery and Pearl Jam… Although destined to be remembered as nothing more than a ‘before-they-became-famous’ footnote, Green River’s records were actually really good: Noisy, distorted, raucous takes on 70s hard rock and 60s garage, sounding a bit like Blue Cheer for the Butthole Surfers generation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81qxQli4X04&feature=related

Flipper:
It’s probably stretching it a bit to count them as grunge since they formed in 1979, but San Francisco’s Flipper played a bizarre variant of slowed-down, sludgy, noisy punk that would eventually form part of the basic sonic template for the whole movement. But it’s important to remember that Flipper weren’t just influential, they were fucking awesome too. Just listen to the inimitable ‘Sex Bomb’, eight minutes of sleazy Stooges-funk topped off by clanging, metallic guitars, unhinged sax, and Will Shatter’s demented howling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE5OuGYQP00# .

Soundgarden:
I know I said I’d stick to the more ‘punk’ side of grunge, but Soundgarden are worth looking at for two reasons:
1. Their story perfectly issustrates the tension between the punk and metal sides of the
equation in grunge: while bands like Mudhoney were happy to remain in self-imposed exile from the mainstream, Soundgarden appeared on MTV and saw no problem in supporting bands like Guns ‘N’ Roses… This ideological split would polarise the underground between the bands who saw independent labels as a short-term means to an end and the ones who saw them as the only real way to maintain artistic freedom, an argument which reached its natural conclusion when the ‘metal’ grunge bands lurched blinking into the media spotlight and the ‘punk’ grunge bands disassociated themselves from the movement as much as possible.
2. Their ‘Ultramega OK’ album was a wonderfully whacked-out mixture of punk, blues, rock, and backwards-talking noisy weirdness. And while the vocals were bland metal, Kim Thayil plays some great, disjointed guitar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1uxRySN9Nw&feature=related .

Nirvana:
What I’m about to say here goes against everything I stand for as a snobby, elitist rock-geek, but… Nirvana ruled. Seriously, they did. But their actual worth as a band has been overshadowed by media oversaturation, the cultish hysteria over Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the legions of blandly derivative ‘post-grunge’ bands that emerged in their wake (Everclear, Silverchair, Bush, etc.) and, of course, all the obnoxious 14-year-old metalheads sporting unironic ‘I hate myself and want to die’ t-shirts. But zeroing in on all that is to ignore what’s really important, which is their music: a record like ‘Nevermind’ remains a massively exhilarating blast of punk rock energy mixed with excellent tunes… It’s like the entire musical underground compressed, combining Husker Du and the Stooges with the Cure and Dinosaur Jr to astonishing effect. And that’s not even mentioning ‘In Utero’, which I still think remains the most brilliantly fucked-up and raw album ever to make it to No. 1 in the charts... Filthy and sarcastic, it managed the neat trick of containing great songs while still being a massive ‘fuck you’ to their record company. Anyway, on the off-chance you don’t know them already, check out ‘Drain You’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7lmsqUpVg&feature=related , and ‘Scentless Apprentice’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgcUyGTq0so .

Hole:
It’s tempting to see Hole as just a poor caricature of grunge, to say that they only became famous due to Courtney Love’s marriage to Kurt Cobain and to sneer at their records as blandly derivative trash… But that would be dismissing what was actually one of the best bands to come out of the entire movement. Hole mixed poppy hooks with a bracingly abrasive snarl that sounds now like a pissed-off Lucinda Williams fronting a cross between Mudhoney and Martha & The Muffins, which is a pretty damn potent mix. Check out their album ‘Live Through This’, especially the songs ‘Violet’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG9ly05Nucc ) and ‘Plump’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-V14JPPqs ).

The Fluid:
Verrrrry early grunge band from Denver, the Fluid played hard rock with a punky edge… Imagine early Black Flag crossed with the New York Dolls and you’re pretty much there. To be honest, they were hardly what you’d call shit-your-pants phenomenal, but they played good, solid, fun rock & roll, so… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTGFvs5NjBA .

Screaming Trees:
What Mark Lanegan did before turning into a Lee Hazelwood clone. Screaming Trees, like Love Battery, stood out from their peers due to their lighter, psychedelic sound and poppy tunes… And like the Walkabouts, they also had an interesting spagetthi-western/alt-country feel to them that quickly endeared them to the emerging ‘college-rock’ audience. Still, at their best, they played a powerful brand of frayed garage-pop that still stands up today. Just check out ‘Butterfly’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT8Zd1d2ACY&feature=related .

Babes In Toyland:
Kind of Hole’s sister band, Babes In Toyland played a similar brand of amped-up Riot Grrl-esque rock but with less of a ‘poppy’ edge. So while that means some of their songs were just sub-L7 thrashing, sometimes they wrote killer tracks like ‘He’s My Thing’ that can stand amongst the best of their peers work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU1ANLb4QPY .

The Melvins:
‘Weird and fucked-up sounding’ is pretty much the only way to describe sludge-metal legends the Melvins… Slow, dark, nasty, and, well, grungey, the Melvins never got the recognition they deserved, but by releasing a slew of consistently excellent albums they maintained a strong cult following and remain one of the (very) few metal bands that don’t suck. Actually, they might in fact be the only metal band that doesn’t suck. Anyway, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBW9tTpuXSA&feature=related# .

Anyway, that’s about it. After ‘Nevermind’ became huge, a score of lesser, derivative bands sprang up all over the country and started playing the angst-heavy hard rock that became known to the world at large as ‘grunge’, despite having little to no resemblance musically with the original bands that started the movement. Suddenly grunge was everywhere, and was swiftly co-opted by the mainstream as the ‘next big thing’. And inevitably, there was a backlash: the US underground began to move farther away from it’s punk roots in an effort to disown the genre, morphing into twee indie-pop and bland college-rock; the US mainstream neutered grunge’s weird nastiness and remarketed it as ’alternative’; while across the Atlantic gormless Beatles-copyists like Oasis started the ‘Britpop’ movement in direct rebuttal of grunge’s heaviness and distinctly American sound.
Still, for all the hype and bullshit that surrounded it, grunge was a fun, bizarre, irreverent offshoot of punk that produced some genuinely excellent music and gave a short-lived shot of life into the rock mainstream (which finally killed off hair-metal in the process, might I add)… And because of this, I firmly believe that the genre has been massively misrepresented, and that a critical reappraisal is long overdue.
Anyway, that’s it. Direct all “Nirvana sucks” and “Why no Pearl Jam??” posts below, please. 

Man, I really don't like grunge except for Soundgarden. I've only gotten a chance to check out the first couple of bands so I can't really tell you much except that they pretty much confirmed I still don't like grunge. I mean, it really is something I thought I would like, the whole Idea of noisy dirty punk rock at first sounded pretty cool. I'll try and check out some more of those bands but I dunno man. The only time I like grunge was back in highschool when everyone was a kurt cobain fanatic, and that lasted for like, 2 days when I realized it was a stupid reason to like grunge.

Yeah, I'll admit it's not for everyone... Especially not if you're into hardcore or metalcore or whatever, since grunge is like the polar opposite to that kind of stuff.

digression
In fact, grunge could almost be seen as a direct rebuttal to hardcore's style and sound: It was punk rock slowed down instead of sped up, more Black Sabbath than Black Flag. Many grunge bands actually started out in hardcore outfits before they became bored and disillusioned with the musical constraints of the movement, and started playing slower stuff (and, not at all coincidentally, smoking pot). It was also a kind of generation gap thing, since most of younger punks stuck to the straight-edge, fast'n'loud hardcore scene that they'd grown up on, while the older crowd who grew up in the seventies embraced the chance to reclaim the music they listened to as kids. As a result, the hardcore crew saw grunge as decadent dinosaur music, while the grunge crowd saw hardcore as restrictive and boring.
/digression

EDIT: Jesus, I've got to get out more often.

ahahahhaaha, I love fucking Flipper!

I absolutely love the album Sixteen Stone by Bush - a must for the grunge enthusiast in the early 21st century.

Dino Jr man, You're livng all over me is one of the dopest records ever

I love the Screaming Trees, but I love Lanegan's solo stuff a little better.

And the Melvins, of course, are awesome.

mark lanegan has a severely underrated voice I've always felt.

because you ask people for their favorite vocalists and they either say stereotypical shit or TOM WAITS HEH and ignore lanegan.

I usually say TOM WAITS HEH and Lanegan

But yeah, I totally agree.

i didn't read all of the topic yet and i'm sure it'll be good but i mostly just wanted to say that yeah you're living all over me is like one of the best albums ever and little fury things is easily one of the best songs on it so yeah that is great. also nirvana is overrated because jesus christ they're like the second biggest rock band ever and who wouldn't be overrated at that point, but they're still pretty amazing and had a huge impact so i don't understand why on occasion i'll encounter people who say that not only were they overrated but also that they were terrible and a worthless band altogether.

Yeah, it's still kinda bizarre to stumble across stuff like the 'Official Nirvana Hate Page' (http://www.angelfire.com/fl/singsing/official.html)... I mean, some sample quotes:

On this, The Official Nirvana Hate page, you will explore and discover in full detail WHY Nirvana was and is the worst band there EVER was. If after reading The Official Nirvana Hate page, and you still like and or enjoy Nirvana for any reason(s) other than entertainment value, then, simply put, you do not respect music in the slightest. And that is possibly the biggest insult to the field of music.
It is very clear that Nirvana is without any doubt whatsoever the worst band of all time. It is not at all hard to see why. On this homepage it will be shown precisely why they were so awful, and why they should not not not not not not not (get the point?) remain in the minds of those whom enjoy that little maggotty, worthless band.

There are not too many bands I despise, hate, loathe or just want to punt them right through a goal post with a smelly foot of a jock strap that has been clinging to a dead brontosaurus, and obviously, Nirvana is one of them. They deserve and need to be put in their place at rock bottom, rather than constantly be worshiped by people whom know nothing about music and obviously have severely limited musical knowledge and or musical experience

The very dictionary definition of grunge is self defeating itself... "noise" and "slop"... and that not only reflects in the genre itself but in production values and musicianship as well. Notice how in Nirvana's heyday, production values and musicianship went on an incredible decline? Nirvana single-handedly allowed bands with little or no talent to get contracts with record companies. Nirvana allowed bands and artists to have virtually no production values. You can hear mistakes galore. And now that Nirvana is no more, notice how production values and musicianship have increased?

My name is Michael. I am 42 years old, and I live in Orlando, Fl.

I have been listening, playing and composing music for almost 30 years now.

do know what boredom is. I do know what lonliess is. I do know what death is. I do know what love lost is. I do know what isolationism is. I have been through all of these things, and I go through these things in my mind every day, yes, suicide included.

And no. I am not going to give you the personal stats. They are very personal and very depressing.

And from the comments to a Peter Gabriel video on Youtube, under the username 'nirvanaispus':

There isn't a single second of my life where I do not think of suicide and or pray (but never pray to the devil that is God as the bible represents) for a quick painless death... Yeah, I cry whenever I hear this song - easily the best song thus far of this decade... Only hope for love keeps me going

I find little honor in death... Oh yes, I do pray for death constantly and I have attempted suicide twice... Who wouldn't in world of violence based on ignorance and religious hatred... And that has nothing to do with what I've been through

I actually feel bad about mocking him now.
The weird thing is, he talks about liking stuff like Big Black and Throbbing Gristle while still complaining about production values and noise, so...

I just don't like Grunge music. :\ It's just got an awful 'tone'.

hey I just saw you referred to L7 in this thread too, fuuuuck!

I just don't like Grunge music. :\ It's just got an awful 'tone'.

BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A HEART