Autumn of Our Discontent
Remembering the Musical and Cultural Sea Change that was the Fall of 1991
Sometimes, just when things seem absolutely hopeless, a sort of cultural or economic ‘miracle’ seems to transpire and everything looks rosy again, and we can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Such a welcome event came to pass in the fall of 1991, when the musical miasma of the 1980s finally dissipated in the wake of various album releases that unexpectedly drew the attention of North American video and radio programmers.
Of course, I’m talking primarily about the mainstream music scene here. Underground rock music had been a Gen-X staple for several years by 1991, a genuine college-radio scene having developed over the course of the ’80s. For serious music fans, the likes of Black Flag, Husker Du and NoMeansNo had been recognisable names throughout the awful decade. There was also alternative Brit-pop. Chart-climbers in the UK almost from the get-go, acts such as The Cure, The Smiths and The Jesus And Mary Chain had been bubbling just beneath the surface on this side of the Atlantic for several years — the former finally breaking into the North American mainstream with their 1989 album Disintegration. Two posthumous Peel Sessions EPs and the Substance compilation also brought Joy Division considerable North American recognition, nearly a decade after Ian Curtis had committed suicide and the remaining members had morphed into New Order. As well, there were those decidedly alternative bands that were signed to (usually) major-label subsidiaries and seemed to hover between underground and mainstream. The Replacements, REM, 54–40 and The Tragically Hip should immediately come to mind.
Things had been improving greatly in other media, it must be noted. After a decade and a half of lame, lowbrow programming seemingly aimed at below-average prepubescents and developmentally challenged adults (The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, Mama’s Family), American television was getting creative and experimental again with the likes of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. In cinema, directors David Lynch and Gus Van Sant (from the US) and David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan (from Canada) had established themselves as cutting-edge visionaries by 1991, having built their reputations on a series of dark, often surreal motion pictures that appealed to the sensibilities of the more artsy members of our Generation X. Lynch, it’s certainly worth noting, was also the co-creator and sometimes-director of the aforementioned Twin Peaks. As pointed out in an earlier essay of mine, the comic-book world was experiencing something of a mini renaissance, with alternative titles such as Hate! and Eightball tapping into the burgeoning ‘grunge’ culture of publisher Fantagraphics’ new Seattle home base, and mainstream DC and Marvel titles exploring gritty modern reality at the hands of such envelope-pushing writers and artists as Allan Moore, Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane. A little further up the rack one could find the likes of Graffiti, Spin and the relaunched Creem — magazines that often straddled the boundaries between mainstream and alternative music, movies and fashion.
Still, despite the signing of a handful of alternative acts to major labels and the chart success of REM and The Tragically Hip, the mainstream music media remained stagnantly fixated on LA hair ‘metal’ and electronic dance-pop. To make a bad situation worse, a considerably more commercial — some might say bubblegum — form of rap was quickly and definitively replacing the street-smart and often political rap of Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T and Boogie Down Productions in the public’s imagination. Thanks in no small part to the likes of L’Trimm, MC Hammer and The Fresh Prince, ‘pop hip-hop’ was becoming an inescapable reality by the turn of the decade. By the summer of 1990, ten-year-old Caucasian girls who had never even heard of Public Enemy or NWA could be spotted wearing t-shirts bearing the titular assertion U Can’t Touch This!
But then, in late July of 1991, alternative thrash band Metallica released the first single off their self-titled fifth album. One of a handful of so-called thrash metal bands signed to the majors in the mid to late ’80s, Metallica had been denied radio play up to this point — not atypical of such groups, who relied largely on constant touring, magazine coverage and teenage word of mouth. Reportedly inspired by repeated listens to Louder Than Love — Soundgarden’s 1989 major-label debut — ‘Enter Sandman’ was a proper heavy-metal number of the classic Black Sabbath or Saint Vitus variety, complete with nightmarish lyrics, a droning hypnotic riff, wah wah pedal, and a pronounced bass line. The single was not merely a subtle departure from the Metallica sound (and thrash as a whole), but also a far cry from the glammy LA bubblegum that was being fobbed off as glam metal. It was also several shades removed from the heavy funk-punk of Fishbone, Bootsauce, Faith No More and Red Hot Chili Peppers — a cross-pollinated style which found reasonable commercial success for a season in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Defying the odds, ‘Enter Sandman’ made its way onto radio programmers’ lists, peaking at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 17 on Canada’s RPM Singles Chart, and No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. The accompanying video, which featured R. G. Armstrong (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) as the titular character, also received considerable rotation on MTV and Much Music.
Along with the aforementioned major-label signings and chart success of select alternative acts, ‘Enter Sandman’ provided the lead-up to what most people remember as the principal catalyst for the sea change that occurred in 1991. I’m referring, of course, to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ going into heavy rotation on the college and modern rock stations in the weeks following its August 27th release to radio, and then becoming a full-fledged hit as it went into heavy rotation on virtually every other rock radio format by the end of November. A rollicking throwback to ’70s hard-rock tropes, with clever stream-of-conscious lyrics and moments of moody restraint, it was the first single off the band’s second album and major-label (DGC) debut, the Butch Vig-produced Nevermind. To the astonishment of virtually everyone, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 9 on Canada’s RPM Singles Chart, and No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart. The single’s video, which features the band subtly spoofing the early ’70s James Gang as they perform at a pep rally of misfits, quickly went into daily primetime rotation on MTV and Much Music. The subsequent Gold and Platinum records, Grammy awards, and critical overstatements (e.g., “spokesband for Generation X”) would follow in the months and years ahead.
In essence, the band that Bleach engineer and Skin Yard guitarist Jack Endino would later dub “the runt of the litter” had beaten down the door to mainstream acceptance. Nirvana’s overnight success sent a message to the growing Seattle scene: if we can do it, virtually any of you can too. Of course, the bands who had already created a buzz in the media and/or signed with a major label were the first in line to succeed commercially. Hence the almost immediate attention shown Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger (A&M) upon its release in October. There was also the more gradual embrace of Ten (Epic), the August debut from Pearl Jam — the band born out of the ashes of hippie glam-rockers Mother Love Bone, who had folded following the fatal drug overdose of vocalist Andrew Wood in March of 1990. The entire catalogue of Sub Pop — the Seattle indie label that had launched or perpetuated the careers of Soundgarden, Green River, Screaming Trees, Tad, and several others — was suddenly revered as exemplary of all that was grunge and cool. Mudhoney, one of the first of the grunge bands to get written up by major music magazines (Melody Maker and Spin, 1989), had released their third major effort on Sub Pop in late July (Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge), and would be signing with Reprise Records by early 1992.
The floodgates were open, and now virtually any band who could churn out a low-fi recording of a downtuned ‘chiaroscuro’ guitar riff beneath angst-ridden lyrics was eligible for major-label signing and mass appeal.
Certainly acts that had influenced and encouraged the Seattle scene benefited from the commercial success and mainstream media attention. Experimental New York ‘noise’ band Sonic Youth had toured with Green River and Mudhoney in the ’80s, released a split single with the latter and persuaded David Geffen to sign Nirvana to his DGC label shortly after they themselves had been signed; it was therefore not surprising that their DGC debut (Goo, 1990) and their Butch Vig-produced ’92 follow-up (Dirty) became buzz albums despite their lacking genuine hit singles. Purportedly, each of the band’s albums outsold the previous one twofold up through the mid 1990s. It was a similar story with longtime Phoenix alternative band Meat Puppets, who saw their 1994 album Too High to Die earn Gold-record status in the US following the 1993 episode of MTV Unplugged featuring Nirvana, in which members Chris and Kurt Kirkwood guest-appeared on performances of three of their own early numbers. The resultant MTV Unplugged in New York album, released seven months after Kurt Cobain’s April ’94 suicide, would sell nearly seven times Platinum by early 1995.
‘Outsider’ acts old and new from all over the US suddenly found themselves being conveniently lumped in with the Seattle bands. This was often perpetuated by their sharing the same stages and/or record companies. REM and Matthew Sweet from Athens, Georgia; The Pixies from Boston; Jane’s Addiction and Hole from Los Angeles; Rein Sanction from Jacksonville, Florida; Monster Magnet from Red Bank, New Jersey; Nine Inch Nails from Cleveland; Smashing Pumpkins from Chicago; Stone Temple Pilots from San Diego — all shared in the fame and attention afforded the ‘grunge movement’, with some acts selling in the millions. The case of Hole stands as a particularly stellar example of such ‘success by association’: the fact that bandleader Courtney Love was the girlfriend/wife of Kurt Cobain and mother of his child was not lost on the listening public, and the band’s two full-length albums on DGC/Geffen (1994’s Live Through This and 1998’s Celebrity Skin) both achieved Platinum status in the US within months of release.
The Pacific Northwest obviously extends beyond the US, and so alternative bands from British Columbia were undoubtedly the first Canadian acts to share in the grunge identity, owing to their proximity to ‘the Seattle scene’. Vancouver’s Sons Of Freedom were arguably the earliest BC band to fit the profile, releasing their self-titled debut on Slash in 1988 and exhibiting a sound that Graffiti likened to Live Skull or Band of Susans but with Morrissey as vocalist. Their album earned them a CASBY Award and a Juno nomination for Most Promising Group; and their second album, the Lorne Worsley-eponymmed Gump on Chrysalis, debuted at No. 1 on Canadian campus radio charts the same week that Nirvana’s Nevermind debuted at No. 2. Despite such positive feedback, the Sons would be dropped from Chrysalis shortly after, and the band subsequently parted ways in 1993. By this time, however, the Vancouver music scene had grown to include bands such as Moist, Pure and Econoline Crush. Elsewhere in the country, an alternative stir was also being created by the likes of Chixdiggit (Alberta), The Age of Electric (Saskatchewan), Glueleg and The Tea Party (Ontario), and the Doughboys and Local Rabbits (Quebec). Of course, there was also the buzzing music scene that was quickly developing on the country’s east coast.
Media attention by 1993 had definitely shifted to the Atlantic region, specifically Halifax. The scene there revolved around such hometown bands as Sloan, Jale, Thrush Hermit and The Super Friendz, and the indie labels that they operated, Cinnamon Toast and Murderecords. Noise-pop rockers Sloan had just signed with DGC for their first full-length album, Smeared, and the Nova Scotian capital was now abuzz with talent scouts and reporters. Halifax was also becoming the base of operations for bands from the three other Atlantic provinces; most notably Eric’s Trip and The Monoxides from New Brunswick, Hardship Post from Newfoundland, and Strawberry from PEI. The media were talking about ‘the Halifax Pop explosion’, and referring to the city as ‘the Seattle of the North’. It should come as no wonder, then, that Eric’s Trip, Jale and Hardship Post would sign with Seattle’s Sub Pop. By the fall of ’93, Maclean’s, Billboard and Harper’s Bazaar were publishing exposés — the American fashion monthly notoriously dubbing Halifax “the hippest little city in North America”.
Such highbrow attention not only speaks volumes, but also sells volumes. And by the mid to late 1990s, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots had all released multiple albums that had achieved Gold, Platinum or multi-Platinum status. In Canada, the first four full-length Sloan albums had all achieved Gold status, as had the Doughboys’ Crush and The Age Of Electric’s Make a Pest a Pet; three of the first five Tea Party albums had achieved multi-Platinum status, as had the first two Moist albums and I Mother Earth’s Scenery and Fish; while Our Lady Peace’s Clumsy achieved Diamond status in Canada and Platinum status in the US. Skeptics and naysayers couldn’t argue with figures like these. Obviously, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ hadn’t been just a flash in the pan.
As for the so-called ‘glam-metal’ or ‘hair-rock’ bands that had dominated mainstream airwaves for the better part of a decade, it was either change or perish. Much of this had to do with a teenage audience who had not only been introduced to a richer vein of music, but was also now approaching university age. I personally knew teenagers who, upon acquiring their first Nirvana, Soundgarden and Sonic Youth albums, boxed up their California glam-rock records and cassettes and set them out with the rubbish. Those who chose to bring their castaways to secondhand record shops and the like soon learned that such heirlooms of Gen-X adolescence were now next to worthless, if wanted at all. (With hindsight, this foreshadowed the comic-book speculator bust of the mid to late ’90s, particularly where the once-sought-after Image titles were concerned.) The popularity of Cinderella, White Lion, Winger and several others suffered a nosedive between 1991 and 1993, with some acts being dropped from their major labels and others imploding or forced to go on hiatus. Some, like Motley Crue and Ratt, were already viewed as rock dinosaurs by teenagers at the time, and their breakups and reconfigurations were therefore seen as only appropriate and not unexpected. Others, like (Jon) Bon Jovi and Guns n’ Roses, managed to survive by virtue of calculated rebranding; specifically, a subtle transition from glam/pop ‘metal’ to basic rock. Writing socially conscious lyrics and covering obscure punk bands (and Soundgarden!) didn’t hurt either. A few acts actually attempted to stay alive and relevant by replicating the alternative sounds as they came to dominate the airwaves. In 1995, Lee Aaron reverted to her real name (Karen Greening) and formed the band 2preciious with three former members of Sons Of Freedom. Skid Row, Warrant and even Def Leppard all tried their hand at making ‘grunge’ albums, with the former probably faring the best artistically. Regardless of quality, however, the dedicated followers of Seattle rock could spot opportunism and insincerity a mile away, and were having none of it.
Such appropriation was not limited to the surviving glam-’n’-hair bands. For better or worse, some of rock music’s biggest names and time-honoured veterans got in on the grunge trend, as well. Men Without Hats, the longtime Canadian synth-pop band best known for ‘The Safety Dance’ and ‘Pop Goes the World’, was arguably the first of the ‘pre-hair’ acts to co-opt the new alternative sound. Inspired by Nirvana’s Bleach and released in April of 1991, their Sideways album actually preceded Nevermind by nearly five months. R&B superstar Mariah Carey made a relatively gutsy move in the mid ’90s by writing and recording a grunge/alternative album with friend Clarissa Dane under the moniker of Chick. Executives at Epic Records, however, urged Carey not to jeopardise her pop career by unleashing such a dubious project upon the world, and so Carey’s lead vocals were replaced by those of Dane, and resultantly Someone’s Ugly Daughter slipped under the radar in the fall of 1995. Leftover ’70s shock-rockers KISS (no strangers to appropriating glam ‘metal’) belatedly released the Carnival of Souls album in 1997. Containing their ‘final’ 1995–96 sessions with guitarist Bruce Kulick, it featured a darker, grungier sound — as did some of the tracks on Psycho Circus, their controversial 1998 album credited to the band’s original lineup.
For some veteran artists, going down the grunge-rock road meant revisiting an early sound of theirs that had actually helped shape the Seattle sound. Iggy Pop’s American Caesar (1993) and Naughty Little Doggie (1996) come to mind, given their raw, loose dynamics that recall The Stooges’ records and Pop’s early solo albums. Alice Cooper’s The Last Temptation (1994) also comes to mind, for not only does it feature songwriting input from Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, but also a rough vibe that recalls the classic Detroit rock of the early Alice Cooper (Band) albums. Similarly, Lou Reed’s Set the Twilight Reeling (1996) marked a return to a rawer, less polished sound reminiscent of his Street Hassle (1978) and The Velvet Underground’s White Light / White Heat (1968), particularly on such numbers as ‘Egg Cream’, ‘Riptide’ and the title track. Of course, Neil Young is front and foremost in everybody’s mind when it comes to veteran rockers revisiting the roots of the sound they helped to shape. The ‘Grandfather of Grunge’ supposedly rediscovered his classic sound by way of Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth, and increasingly injected it into a string of albums between 1990 and 1996. Three of those albums — Ragged Glory, Sleeps with Angels and Broken Arrow — were recorded with his regular backing band Crazy Horse, while his 1995 album Mirror Ball features Pearl Jam as his accompanists at the height of their fame. The majority of such ‘throwback’ albums were well received by the Gen-X alternative audience, if not always the general public.
There was a genuine downside to such widespread appeal and influence. Many commercial performers with absolutely no background in edgy, off-centre rock music saw grunge as merely an opportunity for reviving their floundering careers. For example, early ’90s Canadian dance-pop teen-queen Alanis reemerged in 1995 as the whining, angst-ridden Alanis Morrissette, raking in the dough with a ‘debut’ album that has sold in excess of 33 million copies worldwide over the past quarter century. I don’t know about anyone else, but give me Alanis any day over Alanis Morrissette. For that matter, give me Candi And The Backbeat over Alanis Morrissette. Any serious music fan can detect an opportunist and a phony a mile away. The last I saw of Morrissette, incidentally, she was doing television spots, accusing her MP3-downloading fans of being the equivalent of housebreakers.
Equally sad was the fact that several bands of ’80s origin that influenced or foreshadowed the Grunge/Alternative onslaught never tasted firsthand the commercial success or fame that many of the newer bands experienced. Not everyone shared in the wealth and glory like the Meat Puppets did. For example, Swans, Rat At Rat R, and Band Of Susans certainly didn’t receive the attention and airplay during the ’90s that fellow New York City noise-rockers Sonic Youth received; while another legendary band from the same musical circle, Live Skull, didn’t even survive into the decade, having parted ways in the summer of ’89.
On a similar note, Jane’s Addiction achieved commercial success with their two Warner Brothers releases (1988’s Nothing’s Shocking and 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual), but it proved short-lived — the band having called it quits by the end of their world tour in 1991. Ironically, the North American wing of that tour was none other than the first Lollapalooza — an annual touring festival co-created by vocalist Perry Farrell that still exists in some form to this day, serving as a springboard of sorts to the ’90s ‘Alternative era’.
Why did the radio and video-channel programmers decide to give Nirvana, Metallica and the related acts that I’ve outlined a chance and add their singles and videos to station playlists? One of the reasons may have lain in the growing appeal of college radio stations and the ‘indie’ records on minor labels that fuelled them. As I’ve talked about elsewhere, a veritable ‘parallel universe’ of rock music and associated culture had developed in North America between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. By the time of Nirvana’s breakthrough and the ‘grunge revolution’, savvy Gen-X’ers were being offered a choice between mainstream and alternative in much the same way that Baby Boomers had been offered the choice between AM and FM two decades earlier. It was only natural that the mainstream programmers would try and ‘win back’ a portion of their target youth audience by airing those alternative singles and videos that might have wider appeal — i.e., commercial potential. We should also keep in mind that there was a definite discrepancy between the traditional radio stations and the newfangled video channels in terms of selection. One stood a far greater chance of seeing a Sonic Youth or Suicidal Tendencies video on Much Music or MTV than what one did hearing the same number on commercial radio, be it AM or FM. Considered from this angle, programmers adding Nirvana and the like to their schedules can be interpreted as mainstream radio playing ‘catch-up’. There was also the matter of programmers and listeners alike simply growing bored with the glam ‘metal’, stadium rock and Latino-flavoured dance rhythms that had come to define commercial radio and primetime video rotation in the ’80s and early ’90s. The often jingle-like, sing-songy nature of these styles certainly lent themselves to monotony. Whether listened to one time or fifty times, a number like ‘Paradise City’, for example, will strike a discerning listener as unbearably monotonous. This went hand in hand with the aforementioned maturation of Gen-X teenagers and their evolving tastes, and as good as guaranteed a ‘changing of the guard’. By this way of thinking, if it had not been ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in the autumn of ’91, then it would surely have been a similar number by a similar band in the summer of ’92 or the spring of ’93. A ‘Manifest Destiny’ of musical change, if you would.
Of course, all good things become monotonous and hackneyed if unceremoniously revisited ad nauseam, let alone mimicked and mocked a dozen times over. This applies as much to grunge or alternative rock as what it does glammy ‘hair metal’ or any style of music. If anything, it’s more offensive to witness a decidedly challenging sub-genre of music transformed into a generic model or routine. What ‘killed’ grunge was not drugs or burnout or suicide, ultimately, but rather sheer imitation for financial gain.
The persistence of such imitators can also open up a whole other line of dubious and even somewhat spooky queries. For example, did Nirvana foreshadow the coming of Nickelback, or did Nickelback desecrate the memory of Nirvana? And should we blame Pearl Jam for Creed, or Pearl Jam for Pearl Jam? There are even metaphysical and mythological considerations: Should we entertain the notion of Nickelback as the ultimate manifestation of the grunge form? How about Kurt Cobain as Gen-X prophet — the man who foresaw 9–11 and the coming of Donald Trump? They say he was revered by at least one suicidal Heaven’s Gate member. Oh, well. Whatever. Never mind.
Essential Album Releases, 1991:
Eric’s Trip, Eric’s Trip (January)
Tad, 8-Way Santa (February 15th)
REM, Out Of Time (March 12th)
Eric’s Trip, Catapillars (April)
Temple Of The Dog, Temple Of The Dog (April 16th)
The Smashing Pumpkins, Gish (May 28th)
Sons of Freedom, Gump (June 15th)
Mudhoney, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (July 26th)
Metallica, Metallica (August 12th)
Eric’s Trip, Drowning (August)
Pearl Jam, Ten (August 27th)
Band Of Susans, The Word and the Flesh (September 13th)
Hole, Pretty On The Inside (September 17th)
The Pixies, Trompe Le Monde (September 24th)
Nirvana, Nevermind (September 24th)
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (September 24th)
Public Enemy, Apocalypse ’91… The Enemy Strikes Black (September 24th)
Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger (October 8th)
Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend (October 22nd)
U2, Achtung Baby (November 18th)
Monster Magnet, Spine of God (December 8th)
Essay condensed from ‘Goo, Gish, Gump and Grunge: The Soundtrack of Our Worthless Lives’, a chapter from a proposed history of Generation X’s younger years
