Albums That Changed My Life 9: Other Alternative Bands

After Kurt Cobain's suicide "Grunge" became "Alternative."  It wasn't that all those bands broke up at once, just that Nirvana and the other Seattle bands were always at the center of that scene.  After Cobain's death, a lot of bands not from Seattle began making their presence known.

The Alternative bands that appeared in the mid-90s were more varied than the Grunge acts.  Rap was fused with metal.  Ska made a brief but forgettable comeback.  Many other bands were so weird that they defied easy categorization, and placing them in the Alternative category was the easiest option at the time.

When I look back at this period two bands stand out: Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine.  Faith No More predated Grunge of course, but as the Grunge bands faded from the scene Faith No More got a whole lot more interesting.  At around the same time Rage Against the Machine was offering something a lot harsher, a lot less introspective than Grunge.  "Killing in the Name," man.  That song was huge.

I saw Rage open for Primus (another Alternative band) and Alice in Chains on the Lollapalooza tour.  You could tell Grunge was on its way out even then.  Tool was on the second stage, and more electronic bands like White Zombie and Nine Inch Nails were mentioned heavily in our conversations.

Tool, flailing away in a corner of that huge festival, was a band I came to love.  It was impossible to hear them over Front 242's irritating performance, but upon hearing them later on I was an immediate fan.  Maynard James Keenan remains one of the great rock vocalists, and I enjoyed the first Perfect Circle album a lot too.

Radiohead was also getting noticed then.  Their first album appeared alongside the Grunge stuff, but by the Lollapalooza show The Bends had appeared and I was a rabid fan.  In the wake of Grunge that band spoke to a lot of people in Seattle, and their fanbase there endures to this day.  Don't even get me started on OK Computer.  I listened to that album continuously for weeks.

Korn appeared around that time too.  "ArE yOu ReAdY?"  Man, that song was big.  Tom Morello likes to disown bands like Korn, but I think they were doing a lot more than ripping off Rage.  Is some of their output ridiculous in retrospect?  Of course it is, but I'd take Korn over bands like Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and Creed any day of the week.

Shudder to Think was more out of left field.  Their album 50,000 B.C. is still one of my favorites.  As Grunge began to implode, record companies signed up any band they considered "grungy," and bands like Shudder to Think were thus given their shot on MTV.  The Toadies were another example of this trend.

Another plus to the demand for anything "alternative" was that bands like Bad Brains gained a bigger following.  Bad Brains started as a punk band, and became something much stranger later on.  I saw them open for Living Colour not long after attending Lollapalooza, and that show is still one of the best concerts I've ever been to.

Fishbone?  I always hated Fishbone.  Sorry.  Ozomatli?  Anyone remember them?  I liked their first album a lot.

Other bands I remember from back then: 4 Non Blondes, Stone Temple Pilots, Frank Black, Modest Mouse, Queens of the Stone Age, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Smashing Pumpkins and Urge Overkill.  Of these bands Frank Black was my unquestioned favorite.

Looking back at it now, the 4 Non Blondes album is somewhat embarrassing.  Their vocalist is/was excellent, but man some of those lyrics are super cringey.  Stone Temple Pilots, hated by many Grunge fans at the time, is pretty much universally embraced now.  And without irony.  I didn't like Modest Mouse and Queens of the Stone Age until much later, but I often listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Urge Overkill in my car.

Related Entries:

Albums That Changed My Life 8: Grunge and the Seattle Sound
Albums That Changed My Life 7: "Rust in Peace" and Other Thrash Albums
Albums That Changed My Life 6: Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast"
Albums That Changed My Life 5: Rush's First Album and "Power Windows"

Albums That Changed My Life 8: Grunge and the Seattle Sound

I attended high school in Seattle from 1989 to 1993.  It was the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect age from which to observe the rise and fall of Grunge.

Not that I liked it right away.  I spent most of the late 80s listening to thrash metal.  I was obsessed with Megadeth early on, and by 1989 I was well into second, third or fourth-tier bands like Sacred Reich, Death, and Seattle's own Metal Church.

At that point in my life "easy listening" amounted to Hard Rock bands like Van Halen or AC/DC.  I wasn't a huge fan of what we then called "Van Hagar" (Van Halen + Sammy Hagar), but Alex and Eddie's talent was beyond question.  OU812?  Not awesome, but if you ignored the stupidity of Hagar's lyrics there were enough hooks to make it good.

About the same time, when I was 16 years old, I clued into the fact that a local band, Alice in Chains, was accompanying Van Hagar on the Monsters of Rock tour.  Soon after that I saw the video for "Man in the Box" on MTV, and I liked it well enough to buy the album.

Of course back then I thought of Alice in Chains as a metal band.  The term "Grunge" hadn't been coined yet, and to my ears Alice in Chains wasn't all that different from other, local metal bands I'd been hearing around Seattle.  At the time I probably thought they'd learn how to "polish" their sound, and more closely resemble local favorites Queensryche.  Local music history will show this attitude to be wrong, but it's what many of us thought at the time.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Puget Sound's* pre-Grunge music scene followed a rough trajectory from Bing Crosby (really!), to The Sonics (remembered for "The Witch"), to Jimi Hendrix, to Heart, to Queensryche, and then to the loose association of musicians who eventually formed bands like Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden.  Most people associate Seattle with Grunge (or vice versa), but there's also a whole hazy backstory of bands that paved the way.

With the result that when bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and (especially) Nirvana finally made it big, there was a whole reservoir of talent built up behind them.  This only helped grow the scene later, once record producers got wise to what was happening.  Suddenly these local musicians - most of them having kicked around for years - had a shot at the big time.  Even now it's hard to explain the sense of excitement this turn of events generated in a place as overlooked as the city where I grew up.  Bands sprung into existence overnight, friends decided they were going to be rock stars, and some of us - years later - even succeeded in doing so.

But back in 1990, around the time I bought my copy of Facelift, most of that was still on the horizon.  In 1990 we were still a backwater known for making airplanes (hence Queensryche's "Jet City Woman"), and Alice in Chains was more a curiosity than anything else.

Until, as you might expect, the massive success of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and their album Nevermind.  This was followed closely by Pearl Jam's Ten and then Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger.  Almost before anyone knew what was happening, we had FOUR Seattle bands in the charts, and the term Grunge - whatever that means - was born.

My first concert?  Alice in Chains, the Dirt Tour, Seattle Arena.  The Supersuckers (another local band) and Eugenius (from Ireland) were the opening acts.  I missed Nirvana at the height of their popularity, I missed Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but yeah, I can claim that one badge of honor.  After I saw dozens of other local bands that have come and gone, and I have many good memories of attending concerts during that time.  As friends and I followed the scene Grunge mutated into Post Grunge, which may or may not have been the same as Alternative.  Who knew what it really was?  Who cared?  What mattered was that it all sounded good, or at least interestingly adventurous, and we were always eager to hear more.

Looking back at that time and those bands, it's funny to think of how my opinion has changed over time.  I was and I remain a lifelong fan of Alice in Chains up until Layne Staley's suicide.  However these days I can't stand Pearl Jam, who I worshiped around the time Ten was released.  Nirvana I liked from the beginning, but it took me a while to appreciate the simplicity of their music.  Soundgarden?  In the beginning I thought I hated them, but I was really equating them with earlier, more amateurish efforts.  When I finally sat down and listened to Badmortorfinger - probably around the time Superunkown came out - I was in awe of it.  Soundgarden is now, I have to say, is my favorite of the Grunge bands.

The early 90s.  Not a bad time to be alive.  Or at least that was the case for me.  And when it wasn't a good time at least I had great tunes to rock out to, and great concerts in my future.

Related Entries:

Albums That Changed My Life 7: "Rust in Peace" and Other Thrash Albums
Albums That Changed My Life 6: Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast"
Albums That Changed My Life 5: Rush's First Album and "Power Windows"
Albums That Changed My Life 4: The Top Gun Soundtrack

*For those not from the area, the Puget Sound is a huge inlet west of Seattle.  Seattle and the other cities around the Puget Sound are often referred to as the Puget Sound region or the greater Puget Sound.

Post Grunge

I grew up in Seattle.  I graduated from Ballard High School in 1993, right as grunge was on its way out of fashion.  It was a good time to live in the Emerald City, and I have many fond memories of that chapter in my life.

Not that I miss high school all that much.  But there were good times to be had in other places.  Aside from holding my breath through the average school day, there were lots of all-ages shows back then, and even for a high-school kid like myself there was always something to do after school.

Like a lot of kids my age, I came to grunge from metal.  I was listening to Rush in elementary school.  I was listening to Zeppelin in middle school.  I was listening to Iron Maiden and Metallica by the time I was 16.  Most of the grunge bands were fairly close to metal, they were local, and they managed to alienate our parents.  These were all marks in their favor.

It was 1991 when I first saw Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MTV.  All of my classmates saw the same video.  From Nirvana it was only a step to Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, and from such humble beginnings the music of Seattle somehow conquered the world.  Suddenly grunge was everywhere, and when people were talking about grunge they were also talking about Seattle - about places I haunted every day.

Of the four bands mentioned above, Alice in Chains was probably the band I took to most readily.  At that time they were touring with Van Halen, and Van Halen (the Roth incarnation, anyway) was one of my favorite bands.  I can remember listening to "Facelift" over, and over, and over, and over again.  I couldn't get enough of Layne Staley's voice and Jerry Cantrell's guitar.

Back then, when the Seattle Scene was in full flower, Nirvana would have been my second favorite.  I thought "Nevermind" was OK, but it wasn't until "In Utero" that I really got into that band.  Pearl Jam was lost on me.  I also failed to understand Soundgarden, though they emerged as my favorite in later years.

There were a host of other bands, of course, many of which few remember.  Gruntruck was another favorite, as was a (very) local band by the name of Engine Kid.  A lot of my friends were into Mudhoney and the Supersuckers, but I found those bands tolerable at best.  There was also Queensryche, which in some ways preceded Nirvana, but no one seems to think much about Queensryche anymore.

It was a good time to be into music.  I can remember seeing Alice in Chains at the Seattle Arena - one of my first concerts ever.  I can remember seeing Gruntruck.  I can remember seeing Tad.  I saw countless other bands, but Alice in Chains was the only band within grunge's "big four" that I had the chance to see.  Whatever kind of music you were into back then, there was always a show to be found.

Yet no sooner had the Seattle Scene found an audience than many of these bands began to self-destruct.  Alice in Chains stalled after "Dirt," though they did release other albums.  Kurt Cobain's suicide pretty much signified the beginning of the end, only three years after "Nevermind" broke records.  Pearl Jam continued on for some time, but their changes in musical direction estranged many fans.  Soundgarden disbanded after the "Down on the Upside" tour, though they reunited in 2009.

Not that any of this bothered me much at the time.  College beckoned, and my listening tastes changed.  Nirvana gave way to Radiohead, and Alice in Chains gave way to Shudder to Think.  I went through a Miles Davis phase.  I went through a progressive rock phase.  I went through a glam phase, with David Bowie on the turntable almost every day.  Occasionally I would pull out my copies of "Badmotorfinger" or "Facelift," and remember what had been.  Grunge quickly disappeared, but it was hard to care at the time.

But I still feel thankful for that time, and that music.  It was a good time to be a teenager, and it was a good time to live in Seattle.  I can remember seeing Kim Thayil in the audience at that Alice in Chains concert, and my brother serving Layne Staley burgers at the Dick's on Queen Anne.  Many of those guys were MTV superstars, but they acted as if no one had bothered to tell them.  By the end of the 90s many of them were just regular guys again, MTV having left them far, far behind.

It's a funny thing when that kind of attention comes to your hometown.  The world is turned upside down, and things that seemed boring before somehow seem important.  Then, all at once, the moment passes, and the place you grew up in is just as it was - no better, and no worse.  So it was with grunge.  It was everything, and nothing, and we always knew that it was going to end too soon.