Grunge Revisited

Alice In Chains’ debut album Facelift came out in 1990; Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and Nirvana’s Nevermind all came out in 1991.  So it’s been over 20 years since grunge hit the US.  How are things today?

 Well, first off, I should backtrack and talk about two other bands.  The first is Mother Love Bone, the second is Temple of the Dog.

 My knowledge and understanding of grunge music was immensely improved by watching “Twenty”, which is Pearl Jam’s recent documentary (now that they’ve been around for 20 years).  If grunge music has a Syd Barrett, a whimsical, charismatic, inspired singer whose life was cut short by drugs, it’s Andrew Wood, the singer for Mother Love Bone.  Their only album, Apple, was released shortly after his death from a heroin overdose in 1990.  Chris Cornell talked about his death, saying that grunge’s “loss of innocence” wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, it was Andrew Wood’s death in 1990.  After Woods died, the band broke up, but Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament recruited a surfer from California (Eddie Vedder) to form a new band….Pearl Jam.   Now that I’ve listened to Apple, I can say that it’s (A) decent music worth listening to in its own right, and (B) not similar enough to Pearl Jam that anyone should listen to it expecting to hear an early version of that band.  

 Shortly after Wood died, Chris Cornell put together a band to make a tribute album to Wood called Temple of the Dog.  They released one album.  I recall “Hunger Strike” playing nonstop on the radio, the video – featuring Eddie Vedder (the only song he’s on) – also playing incessantly.  The rest of the album is sung by Cornell and has a slight funk-soul groove to it (very Glenn Hughes), similar to Mother Love Bone and aside from Cornell’s distinctive vocals, not very similar to Soundgarden.

 Pearl Jam.  Of the big 4, only this band has remained together continuously.  Singer Eddie Vedder neither overdosed on heroin (Layne Staley), shot himself (Kurt Cobain), nor did he disband the group (Chris Cornell). 

For some reason, PJ never really did it for me.  I have Ten, which I purchased long ago (probably a free CD from Columbia House) and Live on Ten Legs, their most recent live album.  Classic Rock magazine reviewed a recent show and proclaimed Pearl Jam the successor to the Grateful Dead as America’s premier jam band.  ???  No way, no how, nowhere close.  Phish are clearly that band.  About the only similarity between Pearl Jam and the Dead is that PJ share the Dead’s policy of playing a different set each night.  But Pearl Jam do not actually JAM (!!!).  The live versions of songs are only slightly longer than the studio versions, and they do not go off into 10-15 minute improvisations.  They are NOT a jam band.  I like a few songs (“Alive”, “Evenflow” and “Black”, all from Ten) but this band is just too boring for my liking.   Hardly surprisingly, I have never seen them live, and Live on Ten Legs has not convinced me to see them now.

 Nirvana.  Only recently did I finally get, and listen to, Nevermind.  I was never a Nirvana fan and never saw them in concert.  Now having listened to all of Nevermind – the Deluxe edition with b-sides and unreleased material – I can say I’m still not a Nirvana fan.  Whereas Soundgarden and Alice in Chains – the two grunge bands I really do like – seem to take Black Sabbath as a foundation, Nirvana are more punk oriented and appear to take the Ramones as their basis.  The “deep cuts” from Nevermind, the non-single tracks, might as well be Green Day songs.  As far as I’m concerned, “Smells Like the Teen Spirit” has to remain Nirvana’s defining song, just as “Smoke on the Water” is for Deep Purple and “Stairway to Heaven” is for Led Zeppelin.  Whoever picked the singles from that album had a good ear, as they are all much better than the “deep cuts”.  My favorite is “In Bloom”, and among the non-singles, “Curmudgeon” has a nice Hawkwind (!) feel to it, and “Something in the Way” buried itself in my head and wouldn’t leave. 

            With Kurt Cobain’s suicide in April 1994, Nirvana went out of business.  Dave Grohl has kept the Foo Fighters going since then.  Heresy it may be, but I prefer to Foo Fighters to Nirvana – but not enough to see them in concert either.

 Soundgarden have reunited, and have a new album coming out in November, King Animal.  I missed the reunion tour, but did see them back in 1994 on the Superunknown tour.   Oddly, this band formed way back in 1984, and released their first album, Ultramega OK, in 1988 – two years before Apple.   I prefer the second album, Louder Than Love, to Badmotorfinger (album #3) which was the “breakout” album when grunge came to national attention. Arguably, Superunknown is their best album, which I won’t dispute.  The fifth album, Down on the Upside, was inevitably going to disappoint after its predecessor, and they broke up soon thereafter.  Only now have they reunited (not at Cinnabon).   I did not pay any attention to Audioslave, Chris Cornell’s band with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, nor to any of Cornell’s solo material. 

 Alice In Chains are also back together, with a new singer, William DuVall, who looks nothing at all like Layne Staley, but sounds exactly like him.  I recently saw them on their Black Gives Way to Blue tour (with the Deftones and Mastodon opening) – I got up way up front near the stage, at the Patriot Center.  On stage, DuVall has a kind of James Brown thing going, but less of a blatant homage or ripoff than Bruno Mars.  Prior to that, the last times I had seen AIC was back in 1991 – both times as an opening act:  Clash of the Titans (Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer), and Van Halen’s F.U.C.K. tour.  At both of those shows I was way up in the bleachers and could barely see the band.  I mentioned earlier, and I’ll mention again: as far as I’m concerned ALL of AIC’s albums are excellent, as was Staley’s side project band Mad Season.

 Crossover.  The bands have shared some members, e.g. Jason Everman & Matt Cameron.  Both were in Soundgarden AND Pearl Jam.  Everman was also in Mind Funk, on their fantastic (!!!) album Dropped.  Mike McCready is in Pearl Jam, and was in both Temple of the Dog and Mad Season.