Post-Grunge

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a hardcore grunge fan. I was born just before the hype-storm touched down in late 1991, so I was 4 when Cobain called it "quits", which is what some people (Nirvana-tards) say is the official end of the grunge movement, and I was 7 when Soundgarden broke up in 1997, what others (reasonable people) say is when the scene died. But, there is a third way (my way) to mark the death of this short little Seattle storm: When did people really start trying to make a dollar off of it? Before you point out that pretty much every Seattle band was signed to a decent label by the end of '92, let me reemphasize the "really" in my previous sentence. When a major label really tries to make a buck off of a scene, they start from the ground up. They don't pick a band that happens to be from the same city and plays a vaguely similar style of music, oh no. They take bands from the other side of country, or even the other side of the world and build them up into radio friendly unit shifters (if I may borrow a line from Kurt himself). The original idea behind grunge, the rebellion against the glitzy manufactured hair bands of the 80's, is ignored, the general sound is re-engineered to be as pleasing as possible to the masses, and the message of any of the songs is dropped down to meaningless hallmark card material. What you get is post-grunge, the inevitable result of the scene gaining too much popularity and money.

At first, existing b-list bands from all over were picked because they already sounded like, or were willing to sound like, existing grunge bands within the big four. Days of the New from Kentucky sounded like Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots from San Diego (hometown of Eddie Vedder no less, coincidence?) sounded like Pearl Jam, and Bush from the UK undeniably sounded like Nirvana. Several other bands from all over picked big four bands to imitate too. Oddly enough though, no one (that I can think of) decided to imitate Soundgarden. Probably because Chris Cornell's vocals were too hard to nail down (he was all over the place) and Kim Thyall's guitar work was just bit over everyone's collective heads. The first wave of post-grunge bands, that I mentioned above, all picked a band to copy for their first albums. All of these albums dropped at roughly the same time, between 1994-95, but I don't consider that the end of real grunge. After these first albums though, bands shifted more and more towards the bland basic mid 90's alt rock sound that we all remember taking up the airwaves when we were kids. By 1997 all of these bands could no longer be called copycats, because they all sounded like each other. But I don't consider that the end either.

Enter Silverchair (which incidentally found out while doing research broke up earlier this year). The launch of Silverchair's first album Frogstomp in 1995 is what I view as the end of the Seattle scene. Why? Well, Silverchair hail all the way from New South Wales, Australia. Their main claim to fame was winning a national competition called “Pick Me” with what would become their most popular song "Tomorrow" at the average band age of 15. So basically, the band was one of those American Idol/America's got Talent "bands". You know those groups, the ones who are just a little too peppy, a little too comfortable in front of a camera, and just too professional looking to have made it to where they are by themselves. It's like earlier this week when I took a rare glance at primetime television and watched an episode of America's got Talent and saw a trio of TV-friendly 8 year old girls who had formed a pop group and were now performing on national fucking television. Your bullshit-o-meter goes off at that point. These kids formed a perfectly functioning and shovel-ready band with a radio-made single already in pocket by themselves!? Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Silverchair were the epitome of post-grunge. They were made to cash-in. Not to stand for something. Not to rebel against something. Just to cash in. Notice I said they were "made" for this, not formed. The band may have been formed by the kids by their own accord, but they made it not by virtue of hard work, but by a label's greed. They were snatched up before the band could make a vision and given lots o' label money to manufacture a vision that the masses might like.

This may all sound like a scathing hate-filled rant against a genre I don't like (and it is for the most part), but I actually like quite a lot of post-grunge songs, mostly for nostalgia reasons, because there's not a whole lot else to find good in it. I think Bush's Sixteen Stone was the best album to come out of this mess, but that's like being the best looking guy at a Dick Cheney look-alike convention. But, that album had a lot of really catchy tunes that hold my interest even to this day. However, you could say all those albums had catchy tunes, because that's what they were made to do. I would retort by making you listen to Stone Temple Pilot's Purple, an album made of mostly filler in which the singles are the only good thing to come out of it. And, as much as it sounded like I despise Silverchair, I find myself re-listening to Tomorrow and Madman from time to time. Yeah, it's all manufactured bullshit, but it's at least fun bullshit. Even if it makes me queasy thinking about it too much.