Mid-twenties crisis revisited
Apr. 29th, 2001 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
p0tat0esEnded up not going out tonight. Yep, stayed in. Probably for the best. If I'm at home, it means that I'm not out blowing money left and right.
I broke out my copy of Nirvana's Live! Tonight! Sold Out! video. It's weird watching this shit now. I realized that Kurt Cobain was about the same age as I am now when Nevermind came out. I figure that it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing to watch a little pop-punk band from Aberdeen-via-Olympia turn the music industry on it's ear. (And yeah, you can blame Kathleen Hanna for that whole "Teen Spirit" deal.) On one hand, Nirvana thumbed their noses at the rock star lifestyle, but on the other, they embraced it. They didn't have to do the TV appearances and the magazine covers and the videos. No one held a gun to their head to force them to sign with a major label. Granted, no one at DGC had any idea that Nevermind would be as big as it was. Their success shouldn't have been altogether too surprising though - the biggest thing on the charts at the time was Michael Jackson and a whole string of glam metal bands, it was high time that something came along and blew the old guard out of the water. But now has anything really changed? Look at what's on the top of the charts now - Britney Spears and a whole string of rap metal bands.
There was no such thing as "grunge". Ever. Alice In Chains was a metal band (my brother-in-law has them on videotape in spandex.) Soundgarden was sort-of a metal band. Mother Love Bone - GLAM rock all the way. Pearl Jam - blooze rock. Nirvana was basically a noisy pop band. If any band should be considered "grungy" sounding, it's have to be Mudhoney. Their guitars were actually really dirty sounding and they played rough hewn quasi-garage rock. The thing is, all of the above bands got lumped into one genre, even though none of them sounded at all alike. But hey - the media machine is built to pre-package and spoonfeed the youth of America (and the rest of the world) easily digestable chunklets of entertainment.
Well, I think I still want to be famous. Sort of.
Bah. I'm tired. Goodnight.
I broke out my copy of Nirvana's Live! Tonight! Sold Out! video. It's weird watching this shit now. I realized that Kurt Cobain was about the same age as I am now when Nevermind came out. I figure that it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing to watch a little pop-punk band from Aberdeen-via-Olympia turn the music industry on it's ear. (And yeah, you can blame Kathleen Hanna for that whole "Teen Spirit" deal.) On one hand, Nirvana thumbed their noses at the rock star lifestyle, but on the other, they embraced it. They didn't have to do the TV appearances and the magazine covers and the videos. No one held a gun to their head to force them to sign with a major label. Granted, no one at DGC had any idea that Nevermind would be as big as it was. Their success shouldn't have been altogether too surprising though - the biggest thing on the charts at the time was Michael Jackson and a whole string of glam metal bands, it was high time that something came along and blew the old guard out of the water. But now has anything really changed? Look at what's on the top of the charts now - Britney Spears and a whole string of rap metal bands.
There was no such thing as "grunge". Ever. Alice In Chains was a metal band (my brother-in-law has them on videotape in spandex.) Soundgarden was sort-of a metal band. Mother Love Bone - GLAM rock all the way. Pearl Jam - blooze rock. Nirvana was basically a noisy pop band. If any band should be considered "grungy" sounding, it's have to be Mudhoney. Their guitars were actually really dirty sounding and they played rough hewn quasi-garage rock. The thing is, all of the above bands got lumped into one genre, even though none of them sounded at all alike. But hey - the media machine is built to pre-package and spoonfeed the youth of America (and the rest of the world) easily digestable chunklets of entertainment.
Well, I think I still want to be famous. Sort of.
Bah. I'm tired. Goodnight.
