Fun Stuff > CHATTER
We are in the '90s
Christophe:
Okay guys, the question to settle everything in the world once in for all-
Backstreet Boys or N*Sync?
Personally, if you think that N*Sync is rad, you also think Hitler is rad.
Ladybug:
I remember I used to write "*NSync sucks" lots of places, because the Backstreet Boys were, of course, the bestest ever.
Alex C:
--- Quote from: Ptommydski on 26 Jan 2009, 11:16 ---
--- Quote from: benji on 26 Jan 2009, 10:23 ---Yeah, but as far as Grunge was founded as an opposition to the rock mainstream
--- End quote ---
I think the more appropriate phrase would be "as an alternative to.." because 'grunge' was a marketing ploy which existed solely to sell records.
--- End quote ---
THIS. Like with any music scene, the whole thing was an organic process that became categorized after the fact. It wasn't some organized attempt to shit on earlier music like some punk artists did. I mean, hell, the guys from Pearl Jam pretty much openly jerk off to Neil Young on stage. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains is one of the few grunge artists who gets even a shred of respect from the metal community, although it's more for his respect and deference to the genre than for his contributions. That said, songs like We Die Young have as much in common with Pantera & Black Sabbath dirges as they do with anything Cobain did. Soundgarden was basically noise rock crossed with Led Zeppelin. Frankly, if there was any contempt for the rock scene, it seemed aimed at the lyrical content and lunkheaded macho idiocy espoused by groups like Motley Crue, not at rock or even metal in general.
So yeah, I'd say "grunge" lacks legs, but only because it's a narrow, artificial label that segregates grunge from the wider angry-young-men-with-guitars style of music for no good reason.
P.S.
I left out talk of Nirvana because Kurt Cobain was a miserable young man strung out on heroin and dumb enough to marry Courtney Love. While he showed contempt for his contemporaries on several occasions, I don't really think he had any real plans in mind when he first picked up a guitar. Even if he did, it's rather a stretch to apply his mindset to all the other bands that grew out of the same scene.
benji:
Yeah, but my point still stands (in fact, I think it's enhanced). Whether originally setting out to reform the mainstream of rock, or simply offer an alternative, the so called "Grunge" movement did change the mainstream. The sort of "fun" rock that was dominant on 80s rock-radio vanished, and was replaced by more angry music. If you turn on a mainstream contemporary rock station today, it's almost all angry-young-men now. So any kind of retro-movement towards "grunge," whatever you think of that title, wouldn't fly right now because that label was only relevant as a counter point to things like Motley Crew.
Alex C:
See, and I'm more or less arguing that "grunge" isn't as out of fashion as people think it is to begin with. It's just that "grunge" is such a stupidly and narrowly defined artificial term that the music isn't allowed to vary much before it gets marketed as something different. For example, apparently Tool is alt-rock. I've never really heard anyone refer to them as a grunge band, or even bother to acknowledge their grunge-like qualities despite the fact that they were grunge contemporaries who openly acknowledged having a huge debt to the Melvins on their 1992 EP, Opiate. I mean, honestly, what makes the song Opiate all that much different from the "grunge" of the day? Yet despite this any changes they made in their sound is never construed as growth within the grunge genre.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that labeling music is a stupid habit that should be killed with fire.
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