Defining Grunge

6:50a.m., Thu 13 Nov 2008

"Grunge" was the theme of episode 6 of our podcast. We played Dickless, Green River, Screaming Trees, The Buck Pets, The Monkeywrench & The Fluid.

What is grunge? Well, I have no idea quite frankly. I'm pretty sure it's not a genre of music like, say, jazz or metal. It's more specific than that.

You could argue that grunge music has to be written in, or at least have close ties to Seattle, but then we played a track in the podcast to "prove that grunge wasn't entirely limited to the pacific northwest"

You could tie it to a specific epoch of time, stretching from the release of Subpop's "Deep Six" compilation in 1986 to the death of Cobain in 1994 - but Kurt's demise is just a convenient event to hang on to. Could you put together a grunge band now? Probably not. Could you have still been writing grunge songs in 1999? I doubt it, but I have no reasoning to back that up.

It's easy to forget just how fashionable this thing we called "grunge" was - influencing fashion, films and mainstream culture generally. As a consequence, you had know-nothing journalists & social commentators, offering up barely-informed articles as fact. The term was bandied about, twisted and malformed beyond recognition.

When grunge was big, a lot of bands were tarred with that brush without conforming stylistically. If a band just happened to be stood close by with long hair and guitars were lumped into the scene.

When we chose the topic for the podcast, I did some googling and was non-plussed and horrified in equal measures by the acts and songs have been presented as examples of the genre/movement. So, to set the record straight (from out point of view) here's the corrections (I hope you're taking notes iTunes & Last FM people).

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Our choices of tracks in the podcast were very much personal choices. Half the reason of doing the pod is to entertain each other, so playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would be pointless. It might be selfish, but we think it's better as a result. If you really need an introduction to grunge, if you wanna listen to the tracks that became synonymous with the word, here's a "Quintessentially Grunge, Vol. 1":

Mudhoney - Touch Me I'm Sick
Love Battery - Between The Eyes
Tad - Jack Pepsi
Babes In Toyland - House
Hole - Teenage Whore
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
L7 - Shove
Pearl Jam - Alive
Stone Temple Pilots - Plush
Smashing Pumpkins - Siva
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun

Lyrically it goes from "fuck me I'm sick" to "sprinkle all my kisses on your head", which amuses me.

There's a vague chronology to it all: the first half covers the screaming, blues-inspired garage rock, the second half is the polished, classic-rock inspired stuff.