How do you rate the Grunge bands of 90's

steve79

I've always been a hugh nirvana fan since bleach came out,i loved the whole raw playing of the band live,
im a big pearl jam fan aswell as alice in chains,soundgarden,smashing pumpkins,mother love bone,sonic youth,and any other band that came along like screaming trees,dinosour jr,and even going back to one of dave grohl's old time bands ''scream'',

To me all these bands live showed there own sence of rawness when they played which made them stand out individually,you either took to the band or ya did'nt and back then there was a great change in music coming from the late 80's to the early 90's when in 91 was classed as ''the year punk broke'' and a documentary was released on this in 92 which i would recommened to everyone to watch if these are the bands you are in to

To me this was a great era to be in if you were really in to music as it opened the flood gates for people to pick up an instrament and start there own bands,
The bands of that era like nirvana were playing songs that had heavy guitar riffs,pumping loud drums,really sweet bass lines and good vocail melodeys showed us that these songs were very simple to play and were kept simple which was the beauty of it

You can put these bands in to whatever catagories you personally think they should be in weather its grunge ''which was just a made up name that stuck at that perticular time'',rock,punk,punk rock or what ever
The main thing here is that all these bands were brilliant at what they did and still do

This is just my 2 cents worth

PeterIanStaker

Read this today,(appropriately while listening to AiC) laughed my hole off
Great prank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak

Motley Crue

PeterIanStaker wrote: »

Read this today,(appropriately while listening to AiC) laughed my hole off
Great prank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak

Heard about this, believe it was on the Behind The Music with Alice In Chains

Sephiroth_dude

Alice in chains
soundgarden
nirvana
stone temple pilots
pearl jam

Wooden Jesus

Theres something about these bands that when you dig deep into each bands discography your gonna find song that appeal to you more than mainstream songs.
Like oldscoil mentioned social parasite, thats one of my favourite aic songs and it was never officially released, but smashing pumpkins have gish which is full of unnoticed gems,
nirvana have incesticide the bsides album with sliver, aneuryism, downer,
as well as bands like stone temple pilots, screaming trees, soundgarden and pearl jam all these bands keep me coming back because of a collection of great songs still waiting to be discovered

HBK

I will have to go with:

1)Peal Jam
2)Stone Temple Pilots
3)AIC
4)Nirvane
5)Soundgarden

Tough to actually put them in a list tbh. I think seeing STP last June in the Olympia might have swayed them nearer the top as it was one awesome gig!

What about some other bands, not from seattle but once upon a time could be considered 'Grunge' or influenced at least by the Seatle scene?

Silverchair(Frogstomp & Freak specifically) - both gems of albums
Bush - Sixteen Stone & Razorblade Suitcase? - I know they never got much recognition this side of the pond(even being english) but were pretty massive in america....even with Nirvana ripp off comparisons

Those 2 bands are still on my 'to see live list' also.

Funsterdelux

Dammit I'm not going to rate them, I've been listening to grunge since I was 8/9.

And I finally got to see Pearl Jam last year, was unbelievable!

1) AIC, SG, PJ, STP, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Green River, Screaming Trees!

Oh and Soundgarden's Fopp got me into Funk!

Metallergy

"grunge" was a damn lazy attempt to not even coin a new genre. a bit like grebo, sounded like general late '80s alt rock groups to me. lets categorize some general rock groups with not much in common as, wait for it, grunge. did you have to come from seattle to be grunge, maybe?!
i pity some of em groups that got tarred with the grunge.. best thing to come out of it may well have been neil young!

opengoal

120_Minutes wrote: »

I wasnt at all disagreeing with his post, but in my drunken stupor the other night it looked as if the OP may have been too young for grunge and his opinion was shaped by that. I could be wrong though.

I was 16 in '91. Had only gotten into the heavy stuff with metallicas black album. My household was one of the few in my area with a dish, so one of the only with MTV. It was a golden age (ahhhhh) so i was in a great position, I could like both metal and grunge.

Now, i'm not the biggest Nirvana fan, and they wouldnt be topping my list of 90's bands. but like it or not they defined the decade of grunge. they may not have been the first, but they busted the scene wide open. For that alone they must top the list.

PJ and AIC as already mentioned were heavy rock/rock bands that were in the right place when grunge broke. ditto soundgarden who iMO would be more in the grunge area of the rock barometer. STP, who i love, were also lucky.

Spare a thought for the less commercial bands, who were probably more grunge than the household names, your Tads, Mudhoneys etc.

so, based on my tastes, but not really genre my list would be

1 Pearl Jam
2. STP
3. AIC
4. Soundgarden
5. Nirvana

rating by grunginess alone, nirvana would be at the top......

Wow man I could have posted this myself word for word, although I was only 15 in '91.

Saw rock legends GNR in Slane 92 (as well as faith no more) but once i saw PJ in the flesh (also at slane) in '93 I was hooked on "grunge" for life.

Metallergy

jenizzle wrote: »

Honorary mention: Meat Puppets - while not exactly grunge themselves, they did lend a few songs to the Nirvana Unplugged album and I had the privilege of hearing them play acoustically themselves (again, in Seattle ) and they are a great live band!

Meat Puppets were great

may as well throw Cosmic Psychos in the round as apparently aussie yob-rocks finest inspired grunge

The Cosmic Psychos had a huge influence on the Seattle Sound during the 1990s, and were seen as some of the pioneers of grunge. They include fans such as Buzz Osbourne from the Melvins, Lindsay McDougall from Frenzal Rhomb and Kurt Cobain from Seattle band Nirvana and Stanners

whatever grunge was it can be heard here i think.. but it's a parody in the wake of kurts suicide, the psychos were an 80s pub rock punk group predominantly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wE5i4chtos

Metallergy

were Soul Asylum grunge? or pre-grunge.. or post-grunge.. lol.

damonjewel

For me grunge arrived when I saw this on the TV, Metal and hard rock had become Hair rock or Thrash Metal. I think for most people Nirvana blew it away with this seminal moment on Johnathon Ross. They may not have been the best grunge band but hey the Sex Pistols were never the best punk band. They just made live touch earth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC3YDuds5Ac

bnt

I always thought Canadian band Our Lady Peace were Grunge, but apparently they're "post-Grunge", possibly because they peaked in the mid-90s. I had their first album Naveed, while this song 4am is from their 2nd album Clumsy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYEMskcDRKY

Apart from Pearl Jam's first few albums, I think post-Grunge is where I'm looking. The Smashing Pumpkins were most interesting to me once they got more ambitious on e.g. Mellon Collie or Machina.

Dan_Solo

Like some of it. Soundgarden probably top my list of "grunge", and though I love them I always saw Alice In Chains as a metal band.
Pearl Jam I always and still can't stand. Too poppy for me.
Overall I wouldn't say "grunge" was more than a small time cultural phenomenon, nothing like metal or punk which have real lasting power.

seachto7

hmmm, post grunge. interesting...

Lifehouse - post gringe ala Our Lady Peace

Check out Big Wreck if you liked Soundgarden. Very similar vocals. Ian Thornley of Big Wreck went on to record a few solo albums too.

Early Wintersleep could be post grunge to me.

If you're looking for some foreign language post grunge ala Sonic Youth, check out Marlene Kuntz. pretty good riffs..

Here is a great Big Wreck song:

Sephiroth_dude

steve79 wrote: »

''the year punk broke''

Cant seem to this anywhere,been looking for it for yrs.

Wooden Jesus

Seether are a great post-grunge band. They do a load of covers from alice in chains and nirvana and put a pretty decent touch on them

S.M.B.

What the hell is post-grunge?

:eek:

Metallergy

S.M.B. wrote: »

What the hell is post-grunge?

:eek:

after the goldrush?

Silverchair.. Bush.. if grunge was a 'movement' which was only permitted represent a certain time or place these continued the grunge sound from further afield maybe? but if it were a genre then they're grunge regardless i suppose.. did the death of the kurteous one dictate post-grunge? like i give a hoot

however on Wiki it quotes Creed, Staind, Nickelback etc as 2nd wave post-grunge. just demonstrates how lost these groups were.. and still are. you're a ****ing rock group, so lump it. ok then.. christian rock.

Tabnabs

I've always had a problem with the whole 'grunge' title. To me and to many of my friends during the early 90s, grunge was a fashion and media tag for what they were doing and not a recognisable label for the music we listened to.

To my mind this was the glory years of music. You had Nevermind, Ten, Dirt, Badmotorfinger (and 'Jesus Christ Pose' at full tilt on a car radio is something to behold :pac:), all classic "grunge" albums. But on top of that you had Blood Suger Sex Magik, Angel Dust, Gish, Siamese Dream, Core, Copper Blue, Where You Been, Dirty, Ritual de lo Habitual, Live Through This, Slanted and Enchanted, Pork Soda and on and on and on, bands banging out absolute gems of music during those years.

I'd also give a nod towards Husker Du, Babes in Toyland, L7, Fugazi.

You had MTV playing '120 minutes' their weekly Alternative show, Alice's Restaurant pirate station in Dublin playing all this music non-stop as well as the classic Molla Wobbly show on Radio Active (another pirate station obviously).

Glory days indeed!

bnt

S.M.B. wrote: »

What the hell is post-grunge?

Whenever I read "post-whatever", I take that to mean "a reaction to whatever" - a counter-revolution, if you like. If Grunge was deliberately stripped down and angsty, then post-grunge means bringing back the musical complication while toning down the angst, which is why I used The Smashing Pumpkins' post-1995 work as an example. Pearl Jam - not some much, there have been times when I thought they were turning in to Phish.

Metallergy

yeah i like to think so - the only post- i take seriously is early '80s underground, so much of which fell into the post-punk category n that certainly relied on the wrecking ball of punk to reveal for it a fresh canvas. not that they didn't take on any influences from previous either.. but 'grunge' didn't shake anything up as such, most groups just kept doing what they were doing before and after n when the term took hold if they got tagged it for either locale or style that was entirely coincidental - also in the wake of the most shockingly extreme musical decade or so, 'grunge' just appeared whimsical - tbh 'grunge' was just a media ploy to sell a few baha's n chequered shirts :pac: n oh yeah.. records

david75

it's really simple(and quite sad)

-Seattle spawned a few bands that got signed and exploded (Nirvana/pearl jam)

-it became a weird music/fashion hybrid pumped by a marketing machine to sell music (at one point, pearl jam sold more Stickman alive tshirts than they did copies of Ten. true story)

-those bands became really powerful really quickly and kind of resented the **** they were being 'told' to do by the record companies so realising they were as powerful as they were, started to say No (pj stopped making videos&doing videos/kurt stopped doing justabout anything he was asked to do)

-record companies realised..hang on..screw those guys..lets go sign any one of the millions of bands that are now trying to SOUND like these guys and make the deals so that they HAVE TO do what we tell them..

-next thing you know...Nickelback..Creed..Lifehouse..etc all this awfulness floats up. Lowest common denominator meatheaded soulless sh!te by numbers. And it was huge. Perfect for the crowd that didnt like/understand Vitalogy/In Utero ('where's the f****n choruses maaan!') so in essence the chimp got his banana and PJ/Nirvana managed to get their fan bases to a managable number of people who actually do want to listen to them and not cos it's trendy. Worked well for everyone, fans and bands..definitely for Pj, not so much for Nirvana cos Kurt blew his dome off.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

david75

Tabnabs wrote: »

Alice's Restaurant pirate station in Dublin playing all this music non-stop as well as the classic Molla Wobbly show on Radio Active (another pirate station obviously).

Glory days indeed!

ALice's Restaurant!! The wonder of just bein 15/16 and finding this station buried at the end of the dial which played loadsa weird stuff but the odd song you knew by the Pixies or someone!! it was a brilliant station! thanks for the memory man, i'd forgotten all about that!

oldscoil

seachto7 wrote: »

I'm a big Seattle band fan, but nobody has yet mentioned a band called Truly.

Robert Roth and the first Soundgarden bass player are/were in them.

Here's a cool song from their album Fast Stroies....From Kid Coma

It's a great album...

Thanks for the headsup Seachto. This is indeed a great album, I managed to download it last week. Real nice mix of melodic and heavy tunes.
1960's meets grunge.

Here's what The Doors would sound like if they formed in '89

Just out of curiousity does anyone have (or know of) any Mad Season with Lanegan singing.

I have the Above album...ITS AMAZING

1) Pearl Jam
2) Soundgarden
3) Nirvana
4) Smashing Pumpkins
5) Alice in Chains.


Love 'em or loath 'em, Nirvana were the biggest grunge band of the 90's.
But not the best, not by a long shot.

Beruthiel

Nirvana - Never Mind
AIC - Dirt
Pearl Jam - Ten
Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Saw them all live except for AIC (so wish I had seen them!)

Papa Smut wrote: »

Still listening to Kurts voice, brings shivers to my spine.

The album was just out, we were in my parents kitchen when my sister tells me to listen to this new band. Mad how I still remember that after all these years! That was the start of my obsession.

I saw them play in 1995 in the RDS, but their asses were handed to them by White Zombie who were incredible that day.

I was at that gig. You got the feeling that Chris would have preferred to be at the dentist getting his teeth drilled. Without anesthetic.
White Zombie did indeed steal the show.

Pearl Jam are in my top three gigs of all time. (Metallica - early 90's and Rammstein being the other two) Saw them in the Point when they came back in the early 90's. Blew me away.

When the house needs a once over cleaning, Dirt is still the album of choice.

oldscoil

oldscoil wrote: »

Thanks for the headsup Seachto. This is indeed a great album, I managed to download it last week. Real nice mix of melodic and heavy tunes.
1960's meets grunge.

Here's what The Doors would sound like if they formed in '89

Just out of curiousity does anyone have (or know of) any Mad Season with Lanegan singing.

I have the Above album...ITS AMAZING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NgtlDab2Yw

Just brilliant.

Bubs101

Bush - Sixteen Stone is pretty god damn underated just because Rossdale is a little too pretty for grunge

Blackguard

1. A.I.C. (love Jerry Cantrell, R.I.P. Layne)
2. Mother Love Bone (R.I.P. Andrew Wood)
3. Pearl Jam
4. Candlebox (Peter Klet is amazing)
5. S.T.P. (Core rocked!)