The Birth and Death of Grunge Music |
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| The Birth and Death of Grunge Music |
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Step back to the mid 90's. Daniel Schmoot, owner and manager of
Java'Tude, the tiny Seattle coffee house credited with the birth of the
Grunge music scene, announced the death of the very musical art form
which he helped sensationalize less than ten years earlier. In commemoration
of this sad occasion, Schmoot offered half-priced mochas during the
press conference for anyone currently fighting the establishment. The Grunge scene began in this historical cafe in 1986 when two friends who would later start Mother Love Bone, the father figure of the Grunge scene, remarked how their life just totally sucked. Legend has it that the youngsters proceeded to scream uncontrollably until the proprietor of the establishment removed "Hip To Be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News from the juke box. They claimed they had no way to identify with such happy music in their soggy little town. What followed was a renaissance of musical form as so-called "grunge" bands began to pack houses throughout the city. Grunge music did not become a national sensation until the release of two albums, "Nevermind" from Nirvana and Pearl Jam's ill-titled "Ten." The latter was named by lead singer Eddie Vedder simply to inform the buyer of the number of songs on the record. Sadly, the album contains eleven tracks, and the state of the American Student's mathematical skills have been going downhill ever since. With the success of these albums came the success of other Seattle Grunge bands, such as Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, former metal-rocker Soundgarden and Temple of the Dog. However, the frailty of the phenomenon could already be seen in the fact that Temple of the Dog was really just half of Pearl Jam plus half of Soundgarden. And Pearl Jam itself included members of Mother Love Bone. Grunge was already stretching itself thin. As Professor Laquisha Lupe of The Institute for Musical Parity said,
"The thing about grunge was its attack against the mainstream. It was
Generation X's way of rebelling, but Generation X is no longer
angst-ridden. They're happy. They got jobs. It's hard to mosh when you
make over 80K a year." |
