The Grunge Era

I am happy with my decision to do this era, mainly because it's the music I like now and the way they dressed back then influenced how I used to dress and still do dress on somedays.

There was a few big bands back around this era from the likes of Nivarna, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam just to name a few!!

The grunge era(Seattle Sound) didn't come about till mid 80's young musicians and artists where inspired by heavier genres of metal such as Whitesnake, Motley Crue, Poison and Bon jovi. They began to form their own unique form of music that combined loud guitars with emotionally introspective lyrics far removed from the polish and sequins of popular metal.

Music in the Grunge Era

A large number of the bands representing this sound congregated in the seattle area. At first bands like Mudhoney, the Melvins and Green River had a huge local following but couldn't break out of the region to attract more fans. 

Soundgarden had already previously released successful records by this time. In 1989 Nivarna released 'Bleach' however, it would take Nivarna's 1991 album 'Nevermind' to breakthrough to the mainstream, which catapulted Kurt Cobain into international stardom focusing an enormously bright media spotlight on seattle itself.

The intense scrutiny from the musical press regarding what was termed the 'seattle sound' or 'grunge' music caused several bands to be swept up in the genre despite the significant differences in their music styles. However, to mainstream radio and MTV it didn't matter, and if it could packaged as grunge it could be sold to millions of musically starved teens who suddenly found an outlet for the angst that had been building up inside them for years.

The grunge movement's legs weren't quite as long as most record executives would have liked. Nivarna released a stark, noisy and abrasive record names 'In Utero' as their follow-up to the more radio-friendly 'Nevermind,' and while it was a critical success other bands such as Stone Temple Pilots and Blind Melon began to move in a poppier direction.

Kurt Cobains suicide in 1994 a few months after nivarna's seminal appearance on 'MTV: Unplugged' would signal the beginning of the end of grunge's popularity. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden would go on to release two of the most popular albums of the 1990's, 'Grind' and 'Superunknown,' but each band would dissolve a few short years later, leaving Seattle bereft of its orginal musical leadership.

Nivarna's 'Nevermind' Album

Appearances

From what I can see appearances stood for a lot back during the Grunge era it allowed people to recognise who you was, it seemed a lot of people had long hair, torn jeans, combat boots and a plaid Flannel, generally looking quite scruffy. It also seems that wool caps was worn over the stringy greasy long hair was a very popular thing to do back then.

Its funny looking at the times now, not much has changed for what people like to were for example my friends will often go out in a checkered shirt, combat boots and possibly a wool hat. However the wool hat wouldn't be covering long greasy hair. Torn jeans aren't really that fashionable nowadays, skinny jeans are the choice of jeans now days.

Alice in Chains in the 80's

Grunge Culture

Grunge musicians didn't like expensive, highly staged performance. Most grunge bands wouldn't use pyrotechnics or other complicated lighting and visual effects during their shows. Grunge music bacame so popular it started to influence the way people would dress. The musicians where known for their unkempt looks. Wearing thrift store clothing, the most notable thing was the flannel shirts, grunge followers would copy this look. As grunge became more mainstream it provided the concept for the Seattle-based movie Singles. This movie featured guest apperances from Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and members of Pearl Jam as bandmates of star Matt Dillon's group Citizen Dick. Due to the film having the guest appearances it has, the soundtrack for the movie was performed by the musicians involved.

Although many of the bands had massive success, they was uncomfortable with their mainstream popularity. They was used to recording for small, independent record labels and playing to relativly small crowds. They wasn't used the national recording industry or performing in stadium like atmospheres.

Kurt Cobain provides a notable example of the diffculties grunge musicians had with their success. Cobain suffered from serious drug addiction which ended in suicide.

Post Kurt Cobain's Death

Cobain's death is often reffered to as the end of the grunge era, although his death did somewhat kill the genre, there was many musicians such as; Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in chains didn't want it to die so they carried on producing the music and managed to bring it through the rest of the decade and into the next.

After Cobains death, Nivarna didn't continue as Kurt Cobain was there lead singer. However the band may have died but David Grohl the bands former drummer wanted to keep the genre of grunge going and formed the Foo Fighters. although they sounded different to Nivarna, they was very much influenced in the same way.

Grunge in a Nutshell

Whilst browsing for research on this topic I found this picture which pretty much sums grunge up rather nicely, and covers everything that I have within the blog entry.

How am I going to incorporate grunge?

The way I am going to do this is;

Create a short After Effects clip, portraying my understanding of the grunge era.

I will also provide this blog, which will have all the research I have done for this project on it.