Grunge Is Dead by Greg Prato

Author:Greg Prato
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MUS035000
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2009-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Middle-aged/bespeckled businessmen really dug the Melvins and Nirvana

JACK ENDINO: “Grunge” is just another term for a certain kind of classic hard rock. I don’t really see a discontinuity; I see a continuation of styles that began in the ’70s, continuing as a thread really, that was interrupted by new wave in the early ’80s. But to younger people who didn’t live through the ’70s, they would see this thing happening in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and think, “This is a whole new phase of rock ’n’ roll, we’ll call it something new … we’ll call it ‘grunge.’” And it really wasn’t. It was a resurgence of classic rock — with classic rock song structures, chord sequences, melodies. All the ingredients of classic ’70s rock, with maybe a little bit of ’80s punk rock attitude thrown into the recipe. Nobody dressed funny, and nobody had funny haircuts … nobody had any haircuts [laughs].

But I feel a little strange about the “grunge” thing, because nobody’s quite sure who was the first person in Seattle to be using the term. I’ve discovered belatedly, years later, there’s some circumstantial evidence that it might have been me. I’ve also seen evidence that it may have been some other people. Lester Bangs used the term as early as 1972. I could show you an article he wrote about the Groundhogs in 1972 where he used the term grunge. And the Groundhogs fucking sounded like Mudhoney — just by coincidence. I don’t know where it came from, I just think it was a term — my mom would use it to describe the stuff in the drain in the kitchen. What’s that stuff in your bellybutton, y’know? It was not an unknown word, it’s not like someone made up the word, it was just a descriptive word for something really dirty and nasty. “Get the grunge out of that pan, scrub the grunge out of the bathtub.” You think of the first couple of Stooges records in a lot of ways as being protogrunge.

LIBBY KNUDSON: To this day, I still go, “Huh? Those stinky boys … what?” I don’t know if I’m the only person — I still shake my head in shock. Who would have thought?

EMILY RIEMAN: I moved back in ’91, and it actually really sucked. I came home, didn’t even recognize the skyline, traffic had doubled — I think the whole Microsoft thing was happening. Everybody was moving here for all kinds of reasons. I had this notion that I would go back and hang out with my old friends. It just wasn’t like that anymore. You couldn’t even get on the guest list. You couldn’t even get a fucking ticket to a Mudhoney show, unless you were “in the know” or brownnosing somebody.

I’ve got this distinct memory — my roommate when I lived in Seattle was Jim Tillman, and he was in Love Battery. Love Battery was playing at the Off Ramp. He said, “I’ll put you on the guest list.” I go down to the show, and he forgot to put me on the list.

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