Grunge

Grunge (originally known as the Seattle Sound) is an alternative rock genre and subculture that emerged during the in the U.S. state of Washington, particularly in Seattle and Olympia, and other

Etymology#

The term “grunge” is American slang for “someone or something that is repugnant” and also for “dirt”. In 1988, it was first recorded as being applied to Seattle musicians in a Sub Pop mail order catalog, when Bruce Pavitt described Green River’s Dry as a Bone EP as “Gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps. Ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation”. Although the phrase “grunge” has been used to describe bands since the 1960s, this was the first association of grunge with the sound of a Seattle rock band. Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain, in one of his final interviews, credited Jonathan Poneman, cofounder of Sub Pop, with coining the term “grunge” to describe the music. The term “Seattle sound” became a marketing ploy for the music industry. Seattle musician Jeff Stetson states that when he visited Seattle in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a touring musician, the local musicians did not refer to themselves as “grunge” performers or their style as “grunge” and they were not flattered that their music was being called “grunge”. Robert Loss acknowledges the challenges of defining “grunge”; he stated that, while he can recount stories about grunge, they do not serve to provide a useful definition. Roy Shuker states that the term “obscured a variety of styles.” Stetson states that prominent bands considered to be grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney and Hammerbox) all sound different.

Musical style#

In 1984, the punk rock band Black Flag toured small towns across the US to bring punk to the more remote parts of the country. By this time, their music had become slow and sludgy, less like the Sex Pistols and more like Black Sabbath. Krist Novoselic, later the bassist with Nirvana, recalled going with the Melvins to see one of these shows, after which Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne began writing “slow and heavy riffs” to form a dirge-like music that was the beginning of northwest grunge. and Mark Arm. Sub Pop producer Jack Endino described grunge as “seventies-influenced, slowed-down punk music”. Robert Loss calls grunge a melding of “violence and speed, muscularity and melody”, where there is space for all people, including women musicians. Grunge music has what has been called an “ugly” aesthetic, both in the roar of the distorted electric guitars and in the darker lyrical topics. This approach was chosen both to counter the “slick” elegant sound of the then-predominant mainstream rock and because grunge artists wanted to mirror the “ugliness” they saw around them and shine a light on unseen “depths and depravity” of the real world. Some key individuals in the development of the grunge sound, including Sub Pop producer Jack Endino and the Melvins, described grunge’s incorporation of heavy rock influences such as Kiss as “musical provocation”. Grunge artists considered these bands “cheesy” but nonetheless enjoyed them; Buzz Osborne of the Melvins described it as an attempt to see what ridiculous things bands could do and get away with. In the early-1990s, Nirvana’s signature “stop-start” song format and alternating between soft and loud sections became a genre convention. In the book Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge, Kyle Anderson wrote:

Electric guitar#

Grunge guitarists like Kurt Cobain often used “offset” guitars like the Fender Jaguar, Fender Jazzmaster, or Mustang. They used primarily offset guitars because at the time they were unpopular enough to offer a new image as opposed to more frequently seen Gibson Les Pauls or Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster used by mainstream pop & rock bands. Being unpopular when grunge started, offset guitars also offered excellent value for money. Grunge is generally characterized by a sludgy electric guitar sound with a thick middle register and rolled-off treble tone and a high level of distortion and fuzz, typically created with small 1970s-style stompbox pedals, with some guitarists chaining several fuzz pedals together and plugging them into a tube amplifier and speaker cabinet. Grunge guitarists use very loud Marshall guitar amplifiers and some used powerful Mesa-Boogie amplifiers, including Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl (the latter in early, grunge-oriented Foo Fighters songs). Grunge has been called the rock genre with the most “lugubrious sound”; the use of heavy distortion and loud amps has been compared to a massive “buildup of sonic fog”. or even dismissed as “noise” by one critic. As with metal and punk, a key part of grunge’s sound is very distorted power chords played on the electric guitar. Whereas metal guitarists’ overdriven sound generally comes from a combination of overdriven amplifiers and distortion pedals, grunge guitarists typically got all of their “dirty” sound from overdrive and fuzz pedals, with the amp just used to make the sound louder. In the song “Mudride”, the band’s guitars were said to have “growled malevolently” through its “Cro-magnon slog”. Other key pedals used by grunge bands included four brands of distortion pedals (the Big Muff, DOD, and Boss DS-2 and Boss DS-1 distortion pedals) and the Small Clone chorus effect, used by Kurt Cobain on “Come As You Are” and by the Screaming Trees on “Nearly Lost You”. The use of small pedals by grunge guitarists helped to start off the revival of interest in boutique, hand-soldered, 1970s-style analog pedals. (Rust Never Sleeps, side two), the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, and the Melvins. Grunge guitarists often downtuned their instruments for a lower, heavier sound. Soundgarden’s guitarist, Kim Thayil, did not use a regular guitar amplifier; instead, he used a bass combo amp equipped with a 15-inch speaker as he played low riffs, and the bass amp gave him a deeper tone.

Guitar solos#

Grunge guitarists “flatly rejected” the virtuoso “shredding” guitar solos that had become the centerpiece of heavy metal songs, instead opting for melodic, blues-inspired solos – focusing “on the song, not the guitar solo”. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains stated that solos should be to serve the song, rather than to show off a guitarist’s technical skill. In place of the strutting guitar heroes of metal, grunge had “guitar anti-heroes” like Cobain, who showed little interest in mastering the instrument. He also states that when Kurt Cobain played guitar solos that were a restatement of the main vocal melody, fans realized that they did not need to be a Jimi Hendrix-level virtuoso to play the instrument; he then says this approach helped to make music feel accessible by fans in a way not seen since the 1960s folk music movement. The producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Butch Vig, stated that this album and Nirvana “killed the guitar solo”. Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil stated he feels in part to be responsible for the “death of the guitar solo”; he said that his punk rocker aspects made him feel that he did not want to solo, so in the 1980s, he preferred to make noise and do feedback during the guitar solo. Baeble Music calls the grunge guitar solos of the 1990s “raw”, “sloppy”, and “basic”. Not all sources support the “grunge killed the guitar solo” argument. Sean Gonzalez states that Pearl Jam has plentiful examples of guitar solos. Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has been praised for his blues-influenced, rapid licks. The Smashing Pumpkins’ guitarist Billy Corgan has been called the “arena rock genius of the ’90s” for pioneering guitar playing techniques and showing through his playing skill that grunge guitarists do not have to be sloppy players to rebel against mainstream music. Thayil stated that when other major grunge bands, such as Nirvana, were reducing their guitar solos, Soundgarden responded by bringing back the solos.

Bass guitar#

The early Seattle grunge album Skin Yard recorded in 1987 by the band of the same name included fuzz bass (overdriven bass guitar) played by Jack Endino and Daniel House. Some grunge bassists, such as Ben Shepherd, layered power chords with distorted low-end density by adding a fifth and an octave-higher note to a bass note. An example of the powerful, loud bass amplifier systems used in grunge is Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez’s setup. He uses four powerful Ampeg SVT-2 PRO tube amplifier heads, two of them plugged into four 1×18" subwoofer cabinets for the low register, and the other two plugged into two 8×10" cabinets. Krist Novoselic and Jeff Ament are also known for using Ampeg SVT tube amplifiers. Ben Shepherd uses a 300 watt all-tube Ampeg SVT-VR amp and a 600 watt Mesa/Boogie Carbine M6 amplifier. Ament uses four 6×10" speaker cabinets.

Drums#

In contrast to the “massive drum kits” used in 1980s pop metal, grunge drummers used relatively smaller drum kits. One example is the drumkit used by Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron’s set-up. He uses a six-piece kit (this way of describing drumkits counts only the wooden drums, and does not count the cymbals), including a “12×8-inch rack tom; 13×9-inch rack tom; 16×14-inch floor tom; 18×16-inch floor tom; 24×14-inch bass drum” and a snare drum and, for cymbals, Zildjian instruments, including “…14-inch K Light Hi- hats; 17-inch K Custom Dark crash cymbal and 18-inch K Crash Ride; 19-inch Projection crash; a 20-inch Rezo crash;… and a… 22-inch A Medium ride cymbal “. A second example is Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl’s set-up during 1990 and 1991. He used a four-piece Tama drumset, with an 8” × 14” birch snare drum, a 14" × 15" rack tom, a 16" × 18" floor tom, and a 16" × 24" bass drum (this kit “was demolished at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, 10/12/91”). Like Matt Cameron, Dave Grohl used Zildjian cymbals. Grohl used the company’s A Series Medium cymbals, including an 18" and a 20" crash cymbal, a 22" ride cymbal, and a pair of 15" hi-hat cymbals.

Other instruments#

Although other instruments are generally not included in grunge, Seattle band Gorilla created controversy by breaking the “guitars only” approach and using a 1960s-style Vox organ in their group. In 2002, Pearl Jam added a keyboard player, Kenneth “Boom” Gaspar, who played piano, Hammond organ, and other keyboards; the addition of a keyboardist to the band would have been “inconceivable” in the band’s “grungy” early years, but it shows how a group’s sound can change over time.

Vocals#

The grunge singing style was similar to the “outburst” of loud, heavily distorted electric guitar in tone and delivery; Kurt Cobain used a “gruff, slurred articulation and gritty timbre” and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam made use of a “wide, powerful vibrato” to show his “depth of expression.” In general, grunge singers used a “deeper vocal style” which matched the lower-sounding, downtuned guitars and the darker-themed lyrical messages used in the style. and “plaintive groans”; this range of singing styles was used to communicate the “varied emotions” of the lyrics. Cobain’s reaction to the “bad times” and discontent of the era was that he screamed his lyrics. In general, grunge songs were sung “simply, often somewhat unintelligibly”; the virtuoso “operatics of hair-metal were shunned.”

Lyrics and themes#

Grunge lyrics are typically dark, nihilistic, Catherine Strong, in her book Grunge: Music and Memory, states that grunge songs were usually about “negative experiences or feelings”, with the main themes being alienation and depression, but with an “ironic sneer.” Grunge artists expressed “strong feelings” in their lyrics about “societal ills”, including a “desire to ‘crucify the insincere, an approach which fans appreciated for its authenticity. Grunge lyrics have been criticized as “violent and often obscene.” In 1996, conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay criticizing grunge, entitled “Our Hero, Heroin”; he called it a music that is mostly “…shorn of ideals and the impulse for political action”. A number of factors influenced the focus on such subject matter. Many grunge musicians displayed a general disenchantment with the state of society, as well as a discomfort with social prejudices. Grunge lyrics contained “explicit political messages and… questioning about… society and how it might be changed.” While grunge lyrics were less overtly political than punk songs, grunge songs still indicated a concern for social issues, particularly those affecting young people. The topics of grunge lyrics–homelessness, suicide, rape, partying, and hedonism. Grunge lyrics developed as part of “Generation X malaise”, reflecting that demographic’s feelings of “disillusionment and uselessness”. Grunge songs about love were usually about “failed, boring, doomed or destructive relationships” (e.g., “Black” by Pearl Jam). Grunge lyrics tended to be more introspective and aimed to enable the listener to see into “hidden” personal issues and examine the “depravity” of the world. This approach can be seen in Mudhoney’s song “Touch Me I’m Sick”, which includes lyrics with “deranged imagery” which depict a “broken world and a fragmented self-image”; the song includes the lines “I feel bad, and I’ve felt worse” and “I won’t live long and I’m full of rot”. Nirvana’s song “Lithium”, from their 1991 album Nevermind, is about a “man who finds faith after his girlfriend’s suicide”; it depicts “irony and ugliness” as a way of dealing with these “dark issues”.

Recording production#

Like punk, grunge’s sound came from a lo fi (low fidelity) recording and production approach. Sub Pop recorded most of their music at a “low-rent studio named Reciprocal”, where producer Jack Endino created the grunge genre’s aesthetic, a “raw and unpolished sound with distortion, but usually without any added studio effects”. Endino is known for his stripped-down recording practices and his dislike of ‘over-producing’ music with effects and remastering. His work on Soundgarden’s Screaming Life and Nirvana’s Bleach as well as for the bands Green River, Screaming Trees, L7, the Gits, Hole, 7 Year Bitch, and TAD helped to define the grunge sound. An example of the lower cost production approach is Mudhoney; even after the band signed to Warner Music, " t rue to the band’s indie roots… they are … probably one of the few bands that would have to fight their label to record for a lower budget rather than a higher one.” Albini’s recordings have been analyzed by writers such as Michael Azerrad, who stated that Albini’s “recordings were both very basic and very exacting: like Endino, Albini used few special effects; got an aggressive, often violent guitar sound; and made sure the rhythm section slammed as one.” Nirvana’s In Utero is a typical example of Albini’s recording approach. He preferred to have the entire band play live in the studio, rather than use mainstream rock’s approach of recording each instrument on a separate track at different times, and then mixing them using multi-track recording. While multitracking results in a more polished product, it does not capture the “live” sound of the band playing together. Albini used a range of different microphones for the vocals and instruments. Like most metal and punk recording engineers, he mics the guitar amp speakers and bass amp speakers to capture each performer’s unique tone.

Concerts#

Grunge concerts were known for being straightforward, high-energy performances. Grunge shows were “celebrations, parties and carnivals”, where the audience expressed its spirit by stagediving, moshing and thrashing. Simon Reynolds states that in “…some of the most masculine forms of rock—thrash metal, grunge, moshing becomes a form of surrogate combat” in which “male bodies” can contact in the “sweat-and-bloodbath” of the moshpit. As with punk shows, grunge “performances were about frontmen who screamed and jumped around on stage and musicians who thrashed wildly on their instruments.” While grunge lyrical themes focused on “angst and rage”, the audience at shows were positive and created a “life-affirming” attitude. Dave Rimmer writes that with the revival of punk ideals of stripped-down music in the early 1990s, “for Cobain, and lots of kids like him, rock & roll… threw down a dare: Can you be pure enough, day after day, year after year, to prove your authenticity, to live up to the music… And if you can’t, can you live with being a poseur, a phony, a sellout?”

1980s–1990s#

commonly worn by grunge musicians in Washington were a “mundane everyday style”, in which they would wear the same clothes on stage that they wore at home. , with… tousled hair" that was often unwashed, greasy and “…matted into a sheep-dog mop”. The lumberjack attire was a common sight in the thrift stores near Seattle for the low prices that musicians could afford. Grunge style consisted of ripped jeans, thermal underwear, and eco-friendly clothing made from recycled textiles or fair trade organic cotton. As well, since women in the grunge scene wore the “…same plaid shirt s, boots, and short cropped heads as their male counterparts”, women showed “…that they are not defined by their sex appeal.” “Grunge… became an anti-consumerist movement where the less you spent on clothes, the more ‘coolness’ you had.” The style did not evolve out of a conscious attempt to create an appealing fashion; music journalist Charles R. Cross said, " Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was just too lazy to shampoo", and Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman said, “This clothing is cheap, it’s durable, and it’s kind of timeless. It also runs against the grain of the whole flashy aesthetic that existed in the 80s.” often pushing musicians to dress in authentic ways and to not glamorize themselves. At the same time, Sub-Pop utilized the “grunge look” in their marketing of their bands. In an interview with VH1, photographer Charles Peterson commented that members from grunge band Tad “were given blue collar identities that weren’t entirely earned. Bruce (Pavitt) really got him to dress up in flannel and a real chain saw and really play up this image of a mountain man and it worked.” Dazed magazine called Courtney Love one of “ten women who defined the 1990s” from a style perspective: the “…image of Courtney Love’s too-short baby doll dress, tattered fur coat and shock of platinum hair”, a look dubbed “kinderwhore”, “…topped with a tiara, of course – is seared on the memory of anyone who lived through the decade.” The kinderwhore look consisted of torn, ripped tight or low-cut babydoll and Peter-Pan-collared dresses, slips, heavy makeup with dark eyeliner, barrettes, and leather boots or Mary–Jane shoes. Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland was the first to define it, while Courtney Love of Hole was the first to popularize it. Love has claimed that she took the style from Divinyls frontwoman Chrissy Amphlett. Vogue stated in 2014 that “Cobain pulled liberally from both ends of a woman’s and a man’s wardrobe, and his Seattle thrift-store look ran the gamut of masculine lumberjack workwear and 40s-by-way-of-70s feminine dresses. It was completely counter to the shellacked, flashy aesthetic of the 1980s in every way. In disheveled jeans and floral frocks, he softened the tough exterior of the archetypal rebel from the inside out, and set the ball in motion for a radical, millennial idea of androgyny.” Cobain’s way of dressing “was the antithesis of the macho American man”, because he “…made it cooler to look slouchy and loose, no matter if you were a boy or a girl.” Music and culture writer Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote that with Cobain’s style of dress “Not only did he make it okay to be a freak, he made it desirable.”

Adoption by mainstream#

Grunge music hit the mainstream in the early 1990s with bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana being signed to major record labels. Grunge fashion began to break into mainstream fashion in mid-1992 for both sexes and peaked in late 1993 and early 1994. As it picked up momentum, the grunge tag was being used by shops selling expensive flannelette shirts to cash in on the trend. This did, however, not sit well with the brand owners and Jacobs was dismissed. Other designers like Anna Sui, also drew inspiration from grunge during the spring/summer 1993 season. This shoot made McMenamy the face for grunge, as she had her eyebrows shaved and her hair cropped short. Designers like Christian Lacroix, Donna Karen and Karl Lagerfeld incorporated the grunge influence into their looks. The unkempt fashion sense defined the look of the “slacker generation”, who “skipped school, smoked pot… and cigarettes and listened to music” hoping to become a rock star one day.

2000s–2010s#

Even though grunge fashion had declined in popularity by the late 1990s, designers have continued to occasionally draw inspiration from the movement. Grunge appeared as a trend again in 2008, and for Fall/Winter 2013, Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent brought back grunge to the runway. With Courtney Love as his muse for the collection, she reportedly loved the collection. “No offense to MJ Marc Jacobs but he never got it right”, Courtney said. “This is what it really was. Hedi knows his shit. He got it accurate, and MJ and Anna Sui did not.” Both Cobain and Love apparently burnt the Perry Ellis collection they received from Marc Jacobs back in 1993. In 2016, grunge inspired an upscale “reinvention” of the style by A$AP Rocky, Rihanna and Kanye West. However, “dressing grunge is no longer a badge of authenticity, though: the signifiers of rebellion (Dr Martens boots, tartan shirts) are omnipotent on the high street”, says Lynette Nylander, deputy editor of i-D magazine.

Alcohol and drugs#

Many music subcultures are associated with particular drugs, such as the hippie counterculture and reggae, both of which are associated with marijuana and psychedelics. In the 1990s, the media focused on the use of heroin by musicians in the Seattle grunge scene, with a 1992 New York Times article listing the city’s “three principal drugs” as “espresso, beer and heroin” Tim Jonze from The Guardian states that “…heroin had blighted the grunge scene ever since its inception in the mid-80s” and he argues that the “…involvement of heroin mirrors the self-hating, nihilistic aspect to the music”; in addition to the heroin deaths, Jonze points out that Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland, as well as Courtney Love, Mark Lanegan, Jimmy Chamberlin and Evan Dando “…all had their run-ins with the drug, but lived to tell the tale.” A 2014 book stated that whereas in the 1980s, people used the “stimulant” cocaine to socialize and “…celebrate good times”, in the 1990s grunge scene, the “depressant” heroin was used to “retreat” into a “cocoon” and be “…sheltered from a harsh and unforgiving world which offered… few prospects for… change or hope.” Justin Henderson states that all of the “downer” opiates, including “heroin, morphine, etorphine, codeine, opium, and hydrocodone… seemed to be the habit of choice for many a grunger”. The title of Nirvana’s debut album Bleach was inspired by a harm reduction poster aimed at heroin injection users, which stated “Bleach your works e.g., syringe and needle before you get stoned”. The poster was released by the U.S. State Health Department which was trying to reduce AIDS transmission caused through sharing used needles. Alice in Chains’ song “God Smack” includes the line “stick your arm for some real fun”, a reference to injecting heroin. Mike Starr of Alice in Chains Rolling Stone magazine reported that members of Seattle’s grunge scene were “coffee-crazed” by day on espresso and “…by night, they quaff ed oceans of beer – jolted by Java and looped with liquor, no wonder the grunge music sounds like it does.” “Some Seattle scene veterans maintain that MDA”, a drug related to Ecstasy, “was a vital contributor to grunge”, because it gave users a “body high” (in contrast to marijuana’s “head high”) that made them appreciate “bass-heavy grooves”. Pat Long’s History of the NME states that scene members involved with the Sub Pop label would have multi-day MDMA parties in the woods, which shows that what Long calls Ecstasy’s “warm glow” had an impact even in the wet, grey and isolated Pacific Northwest region.

Graphic design#

Regarding graphic design and images, a common feature of grunge bands was the use of “lo-fi” (low fidelity) and deliberately unconventional album covers, for example presenting intentionally murky or miscolored photography, collage or distressed lettering. Early grunge " a lbum covers and concert flyers appeared Xeroxed not in allegiance to some DIY aesthetic" but because of “economic necessity”, as “bands had so little money”. This was already a common feature of punk rock design, but could be extended in the grunge period due to the increasing use of Macintosh computers for desktop publishing and digital image processing. The style was sometimes called “grunge typography” when used outside music. A famous example of “grunge”-style experimental design was Ray Gun magazine, art directed by David Carson. Carson developed a technique of “ripping, shredding and remaking letters” Carson’s art used “messy and chaotic design” and he did not “respect any rule of composition”, using an “experimental, personal and intuitive” approach. Another “grunge graphic designer” was Elliott Earls, who used “distorted… older typefaces” and “aggressively illegible” type which adopted the “unkempt expressiveness” of the “grunge music aesthetic”; this radical, anti-establishment approach in graphic design was influenced by the 1910s-era avant-garde Dada movement. A key figure in creating the “look” of the grunge scene for outsiders was music photographer Charles Peterson. Peterson’s black and white, uncropped, and sometimes blurry shots of the underground Pacific Northwest music scene’s members playing and jamming, wearing their characteristic everyday clothes, were used by Sub Pop to promote its Seattle bands.

Zines#

Following the tradition in the 1980s US punk subculture of amateur, fan-produced zines, members of the grunge scene also produced DIY publications which were “distributed at gigs or by mail order”. The zines were typically photocopied and contained handwritten, “hand-colored pages”, “typing errors and grammatical mistakes, misspellings and jumbled pagination”, all proof of their amateur nature. Backlash was a zine that was published from 1987 to 1991 by Dawn Anderson, covering the “dirtier, heavier, more underground and rock side of Seattle’s music scene”, including “punk, metal, underground rock, grunge before it was called grunge and even some local hip-hop.” Grunge Gerl #1 was one early 1990s grunge zine; the publication was written by and for riot grrrls in the Los Angeles area. It stated that “we’re girls, we’re angry, we’re powerful.”

Genre family: 1980s in American music, 1980s in Australian music, 1990s in American music, 1990s in Australian music, 1990s in British music, 1990s in Canadian music, 20th-century music genres, Alternative rock genres, American styles of music, Rock music genres
Region: Seattle, Washington (state), the Pacific Northwest