Must read: "Grunge is Dead" by Gary Prato

Hugo Reyes

Get the book; it's really worth it. Specific to PJ (although there is a TON of material beyond them), there are many interviews with Ed and Jeff about the band. Especially the Ed stuff - I've never heard/read any of this material before. It's a big book (500 pages) but even if you get it just for the PJ stuff, it's worth it.

bigeye21

Yeah, I got this a couple of weeks ago and devoured it over a weekend. Awesome read!

Jeremys Spoken

I gotta buy it! Looks like it's a great read. I can't believe I was born in 1990 :(

Back_Pedal

Jeremys Spoken wrote:

I gotta buy it! Looks like it's a great read. I can't believe I was born in 1990 :(

I can't believe I was born in '92...would've been nice going to high school during the grunge era. In 2009 there's no one in my age group that shares the same passion...

I heard about this book once before, too. I'll have to check it out someday. (Didn't know it was 500 pages...that's going to be one hell of an informative read)

PearlJamPatriot

I keep meaning to buy this. Thanks for reminding me.

Mrs.Vedder78

bigeye21 wrote:

Yeah, I got this a couple of weeks ago and devoured it over a weekend. Awesome read!

+ 1

PJ Fan est. 1990

born in 90 myself...*coughdisplaynamecough* and yeah i totally wish i was a teenager in the early 90's...as well as i wish i was a teen/early 20's during the 60's...both great times to be teens...now it just sucks...need to pick up the book myself

OffHeGoes29

It wasn't all that great, we just had good music and could get away with dressing like a slob. Most of the kids however in my HS didn't fall into that crowd, I'm glad I did....if you want to call it that. Sorry for you kids going to HS today, no good music to grow up too.

Jeremys Spoken

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

It wasn't all that great, we just had good music and could get away with dressing like a slob. Most of the kids however in my HS didn't fall into that crowd, I'm glad I did....if you want to call it that. Sorry for you kids going to HS today, no good music to grow up too.

Untrue...


PEARL JAM.

PJ Fan est. 1990

Jeremys Spoken wrote:

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

It wasn't all that great, we just had good music and could get away with dressing like a slob. Most of the kids however in my HS didn't fall into that crowd, I'm glad I did....if you want to call it that. Sorry for you kids going to HS today, no good music to grow up too.

Untrue...


PEARL JAM.

i'm assuming offhegoes29 meant mainstream

Jeremys Spoken

PJ Fan est. 1990 wrote:

Jeremys Spoken wrote:

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

It wasn't all that great, we just had good music and could get away with dressing like a slob. Most of the kids however in my HS didn't fall into that crowd, I'm glad I did....if you want to call it that. Sorry for you kids going to HS today, no good music to grow up too.

Untrue...


PEARL JAM.

i'm assuming offhegoes29 meant mainstream

Of course I know that lol.

HeavyHands

Back_Pedal wrote:

I can't believe I was born in '92...would've been nice going to high school during the grunge era. In 2009 there's no one in my age group that shares the same passion...

PJ Fan est. 1990 wrote:

born in 90 myself...*coughdisplaynamecough* and yeah i totally wish i was a teenager in the early 90's...as well as i wish i was a teen/early 20's during the 60's...both great times to be teens...now it just sucks...

Really, guys? The time-to-be-alive was better because a few albums that came out then?

Not trying to mock you or anything of the like, but from my perspective that's a really odd thing to be saying. I understand that you wish you were there at the "beginning" of PJ as a band but don't think that it was any easier for teenagers to get along with or relate to others of the same age (schoolmates) back then. Kids then had the same problems kids today have. Drug abuse, social pressure, split homes, a depressed economy, etc... Name it and I'm willing to bet that little has changed. If you don't know it now you will years from now: At some point growing up sucks for everyone because of XXXXXX (something or another. insert problem here, it doesn't really matter what). I bet you could sit your parents down and hear from them how they dealt with many of the same things which you are now. Heck, they'd probably get a kick out of you showing personal interest in their lives as teenagers. If you're feeling ostracized, reach out to someone. I guarantee you're not alone.

Aside from hearing some really great music back then (which I also hear these days btw... I just finally picked Kings of Leon's newest) my take is that the world wasn't really any better or worse back then, than it is now. Remember Darfur (Sudan) from the news lately? To draw a parallel I'm sure you can go back and find news reports or old video footage of the genocide in Rwanda (1994) if you'd like. I remember watching news footage of a river so choked with bodies that I recall observing that I probably could've walked across it without getting wet. And then six months later Vitalogy came out... Awesome! (sorry for the sarcasm, but I think you understand the point )

You know what? Actually you guys do have it better than teenagers did back then. You can go to the store and buy eight original PJ albums, a two disc B-sides compilation, umpteen live albums, a greatest hits package, and live concert dvd's to listen to and watch and on an iPod no less. And whatever you can't find in person you can find online (which didn't exist then). You have an entire career to catch up on and digest. Teenagers in 1991 had one album. And they only had it in the latter half of the year. And for most, it was on tape. Which was promptly eaten by the tape deck.

Thats. About. It.

Be grateful for what you've got because someone else always has it worse.

Thoughts_Arrive

Born in '84, too young and missed the boat.

Back_Pedal

I didn't say I had it worse. I'm just saying I wish others shared my passion for passionate rock music like they did during the grunge era.

PJ Fan est. 1990

HeavyHands wrote:

Back_Pedal wrote:

I can't believe I was born in '92...would've been nice going to high school during the grunge era. In 2009 there's no one in my age group that shares the same passion...

PJ Fan est. 1990 wrote:

born in 90 myself...*coughdisplaynamecough* and yeah i totally wish i was a teenager in the early 90's...as well as i wish i was a teen/early 20's during the 60's...both great times to be teens...now it just sucks...

Really, guys? The time-to-be-alive was better because a few albums that came out then?

Not trying to mock you or anything of the like, but from my perspective that's a really odd thing to be saying. I understand that you wish you were there at the "beginning" of PJ as a band but don't think that it was any easier for teenagers to get along with or relate to others of the same age (schoolmates) back then. Kids then had the same problems kids today have. Drug abuse, social pressure, split homes, a depressed economy, etc... Name it and I'm willing to bet that little has changed. If you don't know it now you will years from now: At some point growing up sucks for everyone because of XXXXXX (something or another. insert problem here, it doesn't really matter what). I bet you could sit your parents down and hear from them how they dealt with many of the same things which you are now. Heck, they'd probably get a kick out of you showing personal interest in their lives as teenagers. If you're feeling ostracized, reach out to someone. I guarantee you're not alone.

Aside from hearing some really great music back then (which I also hear these days btw... I just finally picked Kings of Leon's newest) my take is that the world wasn't really any better or worse back then, than it is now. Remember Darfur (Sudan) from the news lately? To draw a parallel I'm sure you can go back and find news reports or old video footage of the genocide in Rwanda (1994) if you'd like. I remember watching news footage of a river so choked with bodies that I recall observing that I probably could've walked across it without getting wet. And then six months later Vitalogy came out... Awesome! (sorry for the sarcasm, but I think you understand the point )

You know what? Actually you guys do have it better than teenagers did back then. You can go to the store and buy eight original PJ albums, a two disc B-sides compilation, umpteen live albums, a greatest hits package, and live concert dvd's to listen to and watch and on an iPod no less. And whatever you can't find in person you can find online (which didn't exist then). You have an entire career to catch up on and digest. Teenagers in 1991 had one album. And they only had it in the latter half of the year. And for most, it was on tape. Which was promptly eaten by the tape deck.

Thats. About. It.

Be grateful for what you've got because someone else always has it worse.

i'm not talking about the social issues...i'm just saying that the LIFE STYLE is one i envy...not social issues or anything of that sort...just the clothes, the music...we have it so easy with technology today, i envy the days when we would "rough it"...i mean look at what convenience has done to us. the invention of the internet has done nothing but DECREASE reading comprehension levels because kids these days only skim-read what's on the internet...kids are downloading their music and not fully understanding what it truly means to hold the physical CD/record/cassette in your hands...so in regards to your second paragraph, i envy those who had to rough it as teens. and just the aura of the times...how...gritty and well, grungy, it was...it's much more appealing to me than aura of today...i mean even from a toddler's POV, what i can remember from that time, i miss dearly

Thoughts_Arrive

Rock has lost its balls.
We need another era like punk, grunge.
Please let the early 2010's be that era.
I am suffocating here.

Fifthelement

Has anyone read "Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge" by Kyle Anderson?

HeavyHands

Back_Pedal wrote:

I didn't say I had it worse. I'm just saying I wish others shared my passion for passionate rock music like they did during the grunge era.

Ok. This I understand completely. Sorry for mis-reading you.

It's pretty much my experience that people who are truly passionate listeners of music are almost as far and few between as naturally gifted athletes. And just as with athletes, in the long-run, listeners don't always stick with it either.

Many of the people who went out and bought Ten or Nevermind or Facelift or Badmotorfinger didn't actually stick around for the long haul because they were casual listeners. They liked what they heard but not enough to invest themselves in the process of understanding or relating to the given artists' vision to bother following up on the next album. They just needed something to consume that was catchy for the moment. Then they moved on.

It's true. Some sales numbers did go up over the short run. I think focusing on sales numbers can be a false lead though. Sales numbers can give the false impression that a bands' level of popularity is much much larger than would actually sustain in the long-run. But those trends don't last because the tastes of the masses always change. Sales trends are short-term because they tend to be biased toward whatever is "fashionable" at the time. In the long-run only a core group of listeners stick around and album sales level off. Fair weather listeners always come and go.

Again, though, I would offer that people today are no different than they were then. There are passionate listeners somewhere in your group of contemporaries. But I honestly believe that it's no more and no less than there were back then in "the grunge era." The worst part is that they might be passionate about some really crappy band. But to each his/her own, right?

HeavyHands

PJ Fan est. 1990 wrote:

i'm not talking about the social issues...i'm just saying that the LIFE STYLE is one i envy...not social issues or anything of that sort...just the clothes, the music...we have it so easy with technology today, i envy the days when we would "rough it"...i mean look at what convenience has done to us. the invention of the internet has done nothing but DECREASE reading comprehension levels because kids these days only skim-read what's on the internet...kids are downloading their music and not fully understanding what it truly means to hold the physical CD/record/cassette in your hands...so in regards to your second paragraph, i envy those who had to rough it as teens. and just the aura of the times...how...gritty and well, grungy, it was...it's much more appealing to me than aura of today...i mean even from a toddler's POV, what i can remember from that time, i miss dearly

Respectfully, I agree and disagree with you.

I can't honestly think how the lifestyle is different now from what it was then. The lifestyles that people hold generally do not remain constant. It's the lifestyle which different people inhabit over time which remains the same. Poor college students existed back then just as much as they do now. Teenagers who would rather dress down than up exist now as much as they did back then. The specific people who fulfill those roles have changed.

I will give you that your stance about societal pressure on teens being greater now may hold some water but I have no way to prove it. I am aware of how much more advertising media saturates homes now, in part because of the internet. That's part of the learning curve though.

To me, what's notable about the mass acceptance of "grunge" is that it represented a sea change from 1980's media concepts in almost every way. In the span of a few months fashion changed (skinny ties and suspenders out, plaid shirts and flannel jackets in), music changed (Skid Row out, Alice In Chains in), who music magazines covered changed (Motley Crue out, Pearl Jam in)... The opportunity for young people to latch on to that change as an effective way to express themselves came at just the right time, but only for the people who needed that change to express themselves. For everyone else... they just observed. They didn't really need or utilize the opportunity to express themselves. There's no telling why. That's just how it goes.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "rough it" though. If you're referring to dealing with the time between PJ albums... Well we still have that today. In fact it's longer today. If you're referring to not having the internet... I may side with you on this one. But it's hard for me to really say how it affects kids coming up through school because I have no visibility on that. I'll tell you what though. It's a hell of a lot easier finding directions to places you want to go now than it was 18 years ago. Next time you go to a concert out of town to a place you've never been I challenge you to find all of your directions using only a yellow pages and a paper map. That sucks.

As far as the "aura" of the time... I have to (with a good-nature) seriously question the memories of a toddler. People of a particular time and place don't take pride in the "hardships" of their living because, relative to the future, they have no concept of how hard their life is relative to how convenient life will become in the future. I'd suggest putting yourself in the position of someone 20 years older than you and imagining what it would be like for a teenager to come up and tell you how admirable it was to live in the early 2000's because life was so inconvenient and "grungy." Seems pretty darn convenient and clean to me just as it did back then.

indifferentman

"Speaking as a child of the 90's"

I was officially FORMALLY introduced to Pearl Jam in about 1993. I was 13 then, when PJ really started to find its way to the mainstream and MTV, even though we all know that Ten came out earlier. Unfortunately, I grew up in a cultural BLACK HOLE. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan, neighbor of Canada. Anything that is happening currently, I can guarantee that The Upper Peninsula is about 3 years behind anything that’s happening right now. Ten and Vs. shaped my adolescence in a greater sense though.

What I can say about Grunge, at least from my experience, was that it was a somewhat unique time in popular culture, at least from what I’ve experienced. In my opinion, it was the “last hurrah” before materialism really took a foothold as a part of popular culture. Grunge was a smack against the aesthetic of cool. It beckoned you to dig through your Dad’s closet and find your outfit for tomorrow. Fortunately I grew up in a “lumberjack like culture”, so the flannels of Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain weren’t all that different from what was hanging in my Dad’s closet. My favorite outfit was a tan and dark blue checkered flannel, a no longer “functional” bright green Hypercolor t-shirt (Yes, the ones that changed color when you applied heat to them), ripped jeans, and black Airwalk 9 Oz shoes.

It was working man’s clothes. It was what was comfortable. It wasn’t Tommy Hilfiger, and Abercrombie, and American Eagle, and Gap, and Guess, and all this other fucking bullshit. It wasn’t about how much you spent on your God Damn clothes. In a sense, it was purity. Money didn’t really define cool. That whole concept really spoke to me. After that, it was all about what fucking label you wore. It was bullshit.

I read the biography about Nirvana, Come As You Are by Michael Azerrad many years after Grunge died, and one particular part of that made a very telling point. Someone interviewed Kurt back in the hayday and asked “How did you come up with this great new fashion sense?” Kurt shrugged and said “This isn’t something I created, this is the way I’ve always dressed.” That’s what it really was, wear whatever the fuck you want to. I held onto that principle for quite a long time. Be who you are, not what someone else expects you to be. I think that was a key point of Grunge, at least compared to the “movements” afterward.

In a strange way that they will never admit, Hipsters are the decedents of Grunge. Uncool is cool. Kitsch should be worshipped. Looking like shit = cool. It honestly pisses me off that Hipsters HATE Grunge, but they won’t fucking acknowledge that Grunge is really the ancestor of what they are about. Then again, now even worse douchebags have taken the reigns, Scenesters. Fuck’em though. I gave up on all of that “being cool shit” when I realized one important lesson: It’s better to be yourself then to try and be what someone else wants you to be.

I enrolled in an art college and I figured that this would be some idealistic place where everyone respected each other’s points of view and were open minded, and it wasn’t. The difference was the comic book nerd clique was larger then the jocks in a sense, but everything else remained the same. People judged you by image, and didn’t take the time to really appreciate who you really were. My pursuit of Individualism died when I realized that almost nobody was a true Individual. We’re all just copying somebody else in an effort to fight for acceptance. I decided that I was better of being a chameleon. Meeting the status quote image when I needed to, no matter what it was. It’s better to THINK differently then everyone else, then to try so hard to look differently then everyone else. Ultimately, EVERYONE copies someone else’s style. It’s already been done. Having 1 foot tall liberty spikes on your head, wearing a leather jacket with 300 spikes, and being covered in tattoos is still seeking the same kind of acceptance that everyone else does. You’re buying your image at Hot Topic, not the Gap. Not a big difference.

Getting back to the point, when Cobain died, (as much as I fucking hate to anoint him as some kind of “patron saint” because he wasn’t. Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, et all did just as much to define Grunge), it changed everything. 2 years later we were all wondering what the fuck happened to Rock and Roll period. It was all about Rap. And back then, I said “God damn it, why can’t we get some kind of alternative music or hard rock or anything?” By about 98-99 my response was fucking Creed, Nickleback, Puddle of Mudd, etc. I wanted to take back my wish. Instead, we got some lame ass bullshit, and that was in addition to “Nu Metal” popularized by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, etc.

In summary, I would say to you “children” that missed Grunge, it was something special and it wasn’t. It was short lived, it was a flash in the pan. It was important to those of us who lived through it, but it will be regarded as hardly a foot note in the grand scheme of history. What it really did, was kill 80’s music, hair metal, and all that bullshit. If for nothing else then that, it served it’s purpose. I’m proud of Pearl Jam for being the “sole survivor” of Grunge, but I don’t know that I’d morn it’s death otherwise.

Thoughts_Arrive

Down with materialism!