STILTSKIN – “Inside”
Pop’s triumph is when a private language turns out to have been public all along. When the way you express yourself – visual, lyrical, physical, vocal – becomes something hundreds of thousands understand, like a word that was somehow always waiting to be said. This was Nirvana’s triumph too, and part of Kurt Cobain’s doom. His scraping, negating, self-scouring howls and sneers turned out to be a Rosetta Stone, a way for his fans to start making sense of themselves.
But the language he’d helped discover was too powerful – it went too far for him, made him fans he hated, and then rippled out still further, beyond Nirvana and Seattle. “Grunge” mutated quickly, from music to catch-all generational tag – I bought a lumberjack shirt from a British chainstore sometime in 1992, not really understanding why. It was very comfortable. I would never have had the nerve to buy Levis, though. They were for the fashionable, not the misfits.
As grunge spread, and labels moved past their initial panicky gambles, the ideological booby-traps Cobain set in his music (for himself as much as anyone) were quickly cleared away. No more self-questioning, no more gender politics, no more playing rock like you hated rock. What emerged was a brute, very male sound: a glowering take on hard rock – more commercially burnished than grunge but just as sullen.
Utterly charmless to my ears, but here’s the thing about pop’s new-language moments: the people who come in their wake are copyists but also largely sincere. The legion of post-Elvis clones were fulfilling commercial imperatives but, I bet, their own urges too. Which makes the curious affair of Stiltskin – grunge’s great mocking cameo on Popular’s stage – all the more remarkable.
This record seems to be a case where the “manufactured” label – and all its tiresome baggage – is completely deserved. Writer Peter Lawlor put the track together specifically for the Levi’s ad “Creek” (old-timey, women, trousers, bathing hunk, twist ending – it’s a great commercial, I admit). He needed a singer and found Ray Wilson – later Phil Collins’ replacement in Genesis, closing some kind of circle of grudgeful blokiness. It’s Ray’s clench-arsed voice you hear being “broken minded” on “Inside”, but every other instrument is Lawlor.
The result is a spectacularly brazen jacking of grunge tropes, ribboned and bowed in a preposterous choral intro. Guitars thresh, drums thud, quiets loud, Ray’s butt flexes. Midway through there’s a tiny break where the bombast stops and a tres Novoselic bass lick pokes in – just a little memory trigger, a brand reminder: KIDS do you remember GRUNGE it made you buy CLOTHES. Cobain’s body was found in his garage a couple of weeks before “Inside” was released, the kind of sad coincidence that – if you were as serious as Ray Wilson, or grunge – might make you reframe song as insult.
And the lyrics – my God! Pick your favourite – “Seam in a fusion mine / Like a nursing rhyme / Fat man starts to fall” – nursing rhyme, not nursery rhyme, you’ll note, and perhaps feel unreasonably cross at. “Ring out in a bruised postcard / In a shooting yard”. Actually I think the best bit might be “strong words in a ganja sky”. It’s a cataract of nonsense – somewhere, Simon Le Bon sucks air through his teeth in awed admiration.
But look on songmeanings, YouTube, tumblr – you’ll see “Inside” quoted sincerely, cited for its “meaningful lyrics”. Act serious enough, and with enough intensity, and you become serious – no matter how debased your origins. And anyway, the advert teaches you how to appreciate “Inside” – ride the crescendo and grin – and for most of its buyers that’s all you needed.
I never liked grunge, I never even listened to Nevermind until twenty years later. What I remember was how it fitted into a world and an attitude I caught a flavour of, even in Britain. Angry, mistrustful, painstakingly suspicious of authority and commerce but reflexively against turning those feelings into a ‘movement’. “Generation X” was diagnosed with apathy – on the ground it felt more like paralysis: all stances and ideas riddled with their opposites. Nirvana’s records found a language for that. But this gross, shameless, blackly hilarious record is speaking that language too.
3
The Senna film is hugely affecting. I watched the events unfold on TV like many others, as Ayrton came to grief at Tamburello, what made it more tragic was of course, Tamburello had claimed Roland Ratzenberger that same weekend. It also brought to mind the death of Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder in 1982. Gilles’ death was perhaps the most shocking I have ever witnessed. A rear-end collision with Jochen Mass catapulted Villeneuve’s Ferrari into the air before nosediving into the ashphalt. The car disintegrated with the main body of the car including the cockpit tumbling in a sickening somersault which launched its driver into the catch-fencing at the edge of Terlamenbocht corner. The force of the impact had caused his helmet to fly off.
After all the death, finally safety became paramount in the sport and Senna still remains F1′s most recent fatality.
Who’d have thought such a thread for this. Though Nirvana are the “go to” grunge group I think this single is right up there as a “go to” track. I know “Ray” doesn’t sound particularly Scandinavian, but he looked a bit that way, and the lyric sounds like it might have been farmed from a dictionary. I can understand the confusion about their origin up thread somewhere. Good spot about Hey Joe.
Do Wah Diddy Diddy, TheTwelfth of Never, World In Motion, Inside, Bunny- connection?
I don’t mind this track too much but oddly I’d agree with the 3 mark.the length of the piece and criticism by Tom had me preparing for a Belfast child ’1′.
a decent riff but appalling lyrics. The relevance to Kurt cobains death is a little bit unfair.surely it was being put together before the day in question.
inside to me always had more of a classic rock feel to it than Seattle leanings although I’d base that on it appearing on the best rock anthems in the world ever released around that time. (sharing CD space with queen, Boston, huey Lewis et al-more in line with that than pearl jam, soundgarden and Alice in chains)
it has had more life as a sports anthem than anything.thing I remember inside for is the chorus being sung by a tartan painted child on a sky sports Scottish football highlights show in the mid to late 90s.(might leave the football references alone for now.gonna be plenty of heated discussion related to the beautiful game coming on here very soon.
this has been a very bleak run of number ones. great discussion on here though it must be said.
Well, for possibly the only time in the 1990s, chalk me stumped.
No contemporary memories – it’s not one to appeal to the five year old PJ & Duncan fan I was – and even having listened to it recently nothing sticks in the mind for me to remember. Give me any pop or dance track of the decade and I’ll go on about it forever – and indeed a fair few of the Britpop classics too – but this? The only other song I can name you classified as ‘grunge’ is Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Never in my Popular lifetime have we come across something so completely opposite to my tastes before, and rarely will we again – as of January 2013 anyway. If I could describe ‘Inside’ as anything it’s four and a half minutes of guitar feedback with someone shouting over the top.
Come back Take That, all is forgiven!
I suppose this is as good a point as any* to mention that my two favourite albums EVER were released by British rock bands in 1994, and therefore tip my hat to the Manic Street Preachers (who I’ll bang on at length about when we get to them) and Therapy?, whose The Holy Bible and Troublegum hit the shelves about four months after, and one month before, this.
The whole authenticity thing could apply to both bands – The Manics are famously ’4Real’, whereas T? are famously jovial fellas who happen to write songs about feeling screwed up, violence, and wanking.
Not sure what the point of this comment is, but I don’t really need an excuse to mention British rock bands of the 90s.
*If only ‘Tequila’ had made it to number one!
#52 Who’d've thought it indeed, Speedwell? Couple of thoughts:
I remember hearing Robin Gibb and Barry Gibb interviewed by Johnnie Walker (broadcast Dec 31 2010), and the Gibbs explained how they began writing songs by imagining how the next record of their favourite act would sound, and trying to compose it. It sounded so sweet and brotherly. They weren’t being cynical, and I don’t think the creator of this work – following a similar process but perhaps with less affection – was either. Maybe I’d feel differently if I felt someone was getting too close to one of my favourite acts. Which brings me to point 2.
Since this has become about Nirvana: Is it now impossible to just think Nirvana were ok – to sort of “get” them, to respect how others view them, but still only like and not love them? Consider them a bit of a curate’s egg, even, since someone uses the phrase above? For me, Lithium is utterly brilliant; SLTS, On A Plane, Heart Shaped Box not far behind. But not because those songs say Something To Me About My Life – they don’t – they just connect. And after those 4 songs – that’s enough. I could see how in 1991 Nirvana truly represented an alternative to what else was about at the time, and I bought Nevermind at a time I could barely afford albums. I was simply a bit disappointed. All that noisy noise annoys. But, still, 3 great tracks.
PLUS! #52 – I know that one – must have takena while to identify? -I wonder if others care / know etc.
@23 On the pleasures of the “thick rough sound” of amplified guitars; it was explicit at the time that that was really the whole point of Nirvana: detoxifying traditional hard rock so that a generation that grew up with the ethics – and especially the sexual politics – of the 1980s could enjoy it. Cobain’s guitar-playing is great for that, actually: because he was never particulalrly innovative or flashy – no fiddly solos – most of the pleasure in his playing lies in the texture and weight of it. (Plus there’s Grohl, who really is one of the last great rock drummmers.)
I remember the NME making the point to its readers in 1991, with what was probably Nirvana’s first cover. The headline: “The Guns’n'Roses it’s OK to like”.
And – God bless the interwebs – here is that NME story: http://obitbday.tripod.com/articles/nme911.html
It turns out to be a great piece, written by Mary Ann Hobbs. Whatever happened to her?
All the thoughts about Nirvana that other people have been trotting out for the past two decades, right there six weeks after Nevermind came out.
Is it now impossible to just think Nirvana were ok – to sort of “get” them, to respect how others view them, but still only like and not love them? …..For me, Lithium is utterly brilliant; SLTS, On A Plane, Heart Shaped Box not far behind. But not because those songs say Something To Me About My Life – they don’t – they just connect. And after those 4 songs – that’s enough.
I think that’s a perfectly respectable position to have, and not just about Nirvana but about a lot of other consensus, all-time-great groups. There are plenty of people who dig the four best-known Kraftwerk songs, or the best four Guns and Roses songs or the best four Joy Division songs, but then say ‘that’s enough’ (‘all those bleeps and bloops/yelps/moans and groans just annoy’) to all the rest. There’ll always be people who’ll threaten to excommunicate you from, what?, the church of pop-culture-commentary for not having or pretending to have completely catholic tastes, but most people will be more reasonable than that.
Anyhow, I’m really enjoying everyone’s comments (esp. #34). I hate the Stiltskin for more or less the reasons Marcello essays, but I did enjoy the ad.. It’s so very funny to see something like grungy style, as it were, pasted on to a very hunky, uber-healthy male body, when the wasted-away, smacked-up male body was quite vividly associated with the music at the time (and later in 1998-2000 I’d occasionally see Alice In Chains’ Layne Staley around the U-district in Seattle, frighteningly thin and haggard and apparently – one didn’t want to stare – missing fingers and God knows what else).
I had a couple of tracks from Smashing Pumpkins’ latest album on my 2012 top 20 ballot. Since they’re rather unlikely to make the FT hive-mind top 10, check ‘em out (they sound a lot like SP in 1994, slightly influenced by Weezer would have sounded!).
sukrat @ 32: For me, it’s often the opposite of what you say: a new texture will grab my attention, but once that texture becomes familiar, it’s only the tracks with great hooks/interesting singing/something more subtle that stand out.
If a raw punk/garage track comes up on random play, there’s always a real buzz to hearing the crunch of the guitars leap out, especially if it comes straight after something much more polished but listen to a Ramones album all the way through and by about track 6 or 7, it’s only the catchiest/funniest songs that stand out.
Similarly I enjoy Skrillex for his bag of silly noises but I’m not sure I’ll still be listening to him in 20 years like I (occaisionally) still listen to old-school jungle now because I’m not sure there’s much more to Skrillex than silly noises (though I haven’t really listened to him enough to say fo sho)
#58 thanks Swanstep, that’s illuminating and helpful. The Kraftwerk reference delivers some home truths to me. I suppose really the “excommunication” fear is the specific fear of being frozen out from this particular forum whilst NOT being excommunicated. I could go on and on because I like your church analogy so much – but that’s what it boils down to.
#56 your description of “getting” but not loving Nirvana is pretty much how I feel – I absolutely see why they were good and why people adore them, but I’m not even into their best songs that much. I wrote a Guardian column in 2011 on listening to Nevermind for the first time, 20 years late, and a bunch of people thought it must be a put-on, but I’d honestly never been bothered.
Since we’re talking about Nirvana, am I really the first person to post This? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8DP_MyPddo
I have most of Nirvana’s recorded output but I find the only songs I really listen to these days are the covers on the MTV Unplugged album, most of which I prefer to their original versions (in particular the Meat Puppets’ tracks). Which makes me ponder an alternative universe in which Kurt lived and is now releasing albums of cover versions (would I like to imagine in the style and substance of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings rather than Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook series).
#63. Based on the emotional impact Rod makes on his latest album, I’m anticipating he’ll release “The Great American Phonebook” in 2013.
#63 My favourite Nirvana album these days is Muddy Banks..up there with The Rmaones’ It’s Alive as an unnoficial greatest hits!
Another question whilst we’re discussing Nirvana. I heard a (possibly made up) tale that Pete Tong reckoned you could play Teen Spirit in the middle of any DJ set of any type of music and, it would not clear people off the dance floor and potentially add people to it. Did he actually do this in his DJ sets? And if so, and we have people who were there when he did it, was he right?
The intro would get people on alright (tho I never played it in a superclub) – who stayed rather depended on whether it was SLTS or “Call It What You Want”.
Cumbrian: Depending on when Tong’s tale dates from he may have been referring to this interview of Chicagoan record store owner Kevin Starke who confirms that House luminary Armando was at least one DJ known to drop SLTS in the middle of a set and get a hugely positive reaction.
http://www.5chicago.com/armando/transcript-kevin-starke.html
Cool – thanks for that. That story was always one that I thought might be a bit of a push but turns out it might actually be true.
I saw James Lavelle do similar with Song2 at Fabric about 10 years ago to generally positive effect.
#63: Unplugged is my 3rd fave Nirvana album after Muddy Banks and Reading ’92. Although it has the worst acoustic guitar sound I’ve every heard on record: like a student gig with a couple of cheap electroacoustics plugged into a little PA, but then I don’t like many of Kurt’s electric guitar sounds either except the gorgeous underwater chorus effect on Come As You Are.
Tom: maybe it says more about my musical taste that when I hear the opening riff of SLTS, I don’t think of either Nirvana or Credit to the Nation but am waiting expectantly for Destiny’s Child to start cranking Bootylicious out. I have been known to hit the dance floor for that.
I’ve been known to roll my eyes and demand Tinman’s ’18 Strings’ instead.
I listened to this for the first time in (10? 15?) years today and to my embarassment I bloody loved it, silly lyrics, cheesy nods to Nirvana, streamlined driving-compilation rock sound and all. Others have said they thought the band were Norwegian, I remember enjoying how Scottish Ray Wilson sounds on the first verse!
I’ve never been as viscerally repelled by any music as the first time I heard Nirvana (a copied tape of Nevermind from a cooler schoolmate appalled that I like Meatloaf…) I was a proper wuss back then and I can honestly say it genuinely made me feel physically sick: the raw anguish in Kurt’s voice, the queasy churn of his guitar FX pedals and the thunder of the walls of guitar and drums: it was probably the first time I’d heard properly loud rock music, I was scared and repelled and I turned it off and didn’t play the tape for a couple of years.
This would have been autumn/winter ’92 and I still disliked most rock music for a couple of years after that: the kids I hated most at school were those who worked hard at being teenagery: dealing in affected posturing nihilism, smoking, drinking coffee to be more grown-up(!), Kurt Cobainish-ness for the middle class ones, don’t-give-a-fuck would-be hooligan shit for the council eastate kids. I found it pathetic and, well, teenage and I guess I associated grunge and alternative with that: going out of your way to have a bad time coz it’s cool.
I can’t remember when or why I softened to Nirvana’s music. I’ve always remembered it that I had just started getting into them and then Kurt died, but it was probably more likely that all the hoo-ha around him dying convinced me that maybe I was wrong and Nirvana were worth another listen. Either way, I’m sure this silly and cynical record helped break down my suspicion of noisy guitars and shouty angst-blokes. Like I said, I wasn’t a cool kid…
#55 Of course around this time the music press were looking for a band to slap the label of the British Nirvana on (even though theoretically in terms of namesake such thing existed back in the 60s-70s). For all the many bassist/drummer want ads down the local guitar shop spouting the usual Sixth Former band listing of ‘must like Pearl Jam/Nirvana/Mudhoney etc’ Stiltskin aside, a British grunge act never broke through. Therapy? were probably the closest but probably count the same Glasgow indie scene of the late 80s (Vaselines,BMX Bandits,Pastels etc) that Cobain coveted, as near neighbour contemporaries.
@73, steve mannion. Or maybe some atari teenage riot?
#75 Bush surely count as the British grunge band that broke through, don’t they? They only had a hit or two in the UK, but they were absolutely enormous in the US. Their second album (Razorblade Suitcase – an album title that Stiltskin would’ve appreciated, I’m sure) got to no. 4 here, according to wiki.
#76 ha ha, that just makes me want to listen to Senser…
#77 Sound wise you are right Bush probably were. Though Bush for me appeared too late on the scene in 1995 and the title was no longer up for grabs. By 1995 the scene was very much on the wane thanks in part to Nirvana being no more and Pearl Jam having a few internal issues and working with Neil Young. Bush along with other bands such as Live and Stone Temple Pilots were only huge in the States as they provided them with their grunge fix whilst we in the UK had moved on to our own scene.
Two bits of trivia, and I’m not sure how pertinent either of them is.
1. There was a whole Stiltskin album released in the wake of this, which – rather than crashing and burning as might be expected for a group with literally no following, history, or anything else to grab hold of – went top five. I’ve long had a pet theory re Stiltskin and the commoditisation of grunge, much in line with what Tom and others have said: this is not only an access point, a way in for the uninitiated or more accurately the sort-of-initiated-but-daunted, not just because of its accessibility but because there’s no baggage, nobody knew anything about the “band” and so they could be a blank canvas in the way Nirvana never could: perfect for teh n00bs. I wanted to say something about Julian Cope’s Scott Walker compilation there too.
2. In a neat tie in with the next entry, about 3 years later, Sky Sports chose this as the soundtrack for their Scottish football coverage, with a bunch of kids running over the Forth Bridge lip synching to “Inside”. This years after Stiltskin were declared unhip again due to the manufacturing thing; once they were uncool, they were finished. But it retained its power as an advertising jingle, even with its baggage.
#80. That’s a great point about “no baggage … blank canvas”. I’ve often thought that about new album releases by new artists, and most especially in January’s soft market when the market and the marketers are in equilibrium. Neither has much to lose in investing in someone who had no public profile at Christmas but who could, after all, have made The Album Of The Year So Far. Stiltskin’s album only got to 17 though, not top 5. (Bait? I bit!)
I think it was one of those situations, like the “New wave of new wave”, in that people generally wanted it to succeed/happen. And gave it more chances than it/they deserved, maybe.
But also, perhaps they took that album and enjoyed it enough to seek out the ‘real’ stuff, and never needed to go back.
#80: Scottish football coverage … makes some kind of sense, on some level. It fits in my mind with the rock’n'roll produced by a certain kind of Scottishness – the dour kind. Characterised by fire and heart, and above all passion, it takes the corporeal form of gravel-voiced pub rock. Made by and for the kind of guy whose secret aim in life is still to own a Harley.
The humorous, fey, shambling kind of Scottishness, or the double-breasted militant strain, don’t feature anywhere in this image. Nor in fairness does the place get marketed in general terms on its new towns or its winebars. So it’s not too surprising that Sky should’ve opted for the safe option of ‘Inside’, rather than say ‘Star Sign’ or ‘Sweet Dreams’, when deciding where to pitch their product.
Coming from Carlisle, the local leisure centre that doubled as a gig venue would sometimes put on “big in Scotland” acts for the border population – so when I think of the type of rock ‘n’ roll Izzy is talking about, I invariably think (perhaps unfairly) of Runrig. Did they get used on Scottish football as well?
Other thing Izzy is talking about – the different expressions of Scottishness – the one I think about is the “Local Hero” sort of Scottishness. A bit knowing and eccentric but ultimately good hearted, that you tend to see in the rural areas of the country (more experience myself of the Borders than the Isles or Highlands though). Might be the influence of my Scottish Granny that, mind.
The Scottish act from this period who really remain in my mind (as unavoidable, almost, north of the border, and invisible, almost, south of it) were of an entirely differnet genre, being for kids all pepped up on Irn Bru and too much tablet: TTF aka The Time Frequency. Cumbernauld’s finest. Still better than Stiltskin, actually, perhaps.
Stiltskin begat Biffy Clyro
I found a Time Frequency megamix on youtube and good lord, it’s nigh-physically painful. The overall arrangement, even genre, isn’t even that far from a much-loved 1995 rave no.1, minus a breakbeat and adding some blocky synths, but the feel of the TTF music is horrible – there’s no space in it at all, no shade; everything’s turned up to eleven at all times. I don’t think it’s been overcompressed, other than the bass drum perhaps, but it’s the same sore head I get from Oasis or Keane.
I was sure I recalled hearing some indigenous Scottish hardcore from that era, and it did have the same sense of bludgeoning, but in my memory the arrangements were much less lush, even vocalless – this stuff was something akin to flute-band marching songs over an unyielding 130bpm 4/4. It may have been UKwide for all I know, or even never have existed, but somehow it seemed indigenous, traditional even, a beloved old genre given hideous extended life through technology.
Don’t recall this at the time but I randomly caught Peter recounting (v proudly I might add) the story of how he made it and then had to assemble the his Monkees at short notice for their appearance on top of the pops. As they looked like bikers and not ‘clean cut’ grungey types it never took off. Might have been a Malcolm Mclaren dream if they did. There was a pop-grunge factory beginning, right there.
Its this riff that sounds like it has been dis-assembled from the thing that made it — MMM is spot on, other things like Rallizes too except here its highly compressed, indutralized hammering motion almost — with added tone of scream (and this is where the relation to grunge really comes in not so much the guitar as the harshness of ‘Nevermind’ was blunted, much to Kurt’s displeasure blah blah)* and what you have is the beginnings of Limp Bizkit, which sounds to me where this all ended up. For me it works, my ears pick up on it whenever it comes up. I can see the complaints that if you want a song and actual people that say something to you behind it all it might fall short, but surely we can separate that from sound and the pleasure it might give.
*…and yet after all this time and years later you still see kids with Nirvana t-shirts in the way you never see Oasis or Blur.
what you have is the beginnings of Limp Bizkit
Pretty harsh! The pompous intro to the Stiltskin reminded me of (the beginning of guilty pleasure) Vast’s Here from, I think, 1997.
#85 Some great house and techno coming out of Glasgow at this time tho – mostly from the Soma label (Slam, Otaku, Funk D’Void etc.), who also somehow put out the first Daft Punk tracks in ’94.
swanstep – sure, its all part of the erm continuum. Wouldn’t say I was being harsh, as I said its a sound I like.
How great to see a flurry of entries on Popular again. Soon I might even be able to comment on a song I’ve heard before, or even one I genuinely love.
This is neither, thanks to my being in Stiltskin-oblivious Australia in 1994. But as this is the grunge thread, I’ll add my two cents (the one with the frilled-neck lizard, which was withdrawn from circulation right after Nirvana broke). Not that there were many grunge number ones in Australia; in fact, there was only one, the home-grown “Tomorrow” by Silverchair in late 1994, a band of Aussie teenagers (aged 14 when the song won a TV competition) who absorbed the work of Kurt and Eddie et al. and fashioned their own faithful imitation. I wasn’t much of a fan of that either, but if you’re going to have a single grunge number one that isn’t “Teen Spirit” I’d take “Tomorrow” over “Inside”. In fact I’d take pretty much anything over “Inside” – I’ve tried to get through the video twice but bailed halfway through each time.
It seems anomalous now, but I was a grunge fan, at least in part – those parts being Nevermind, a couple of Soundgarden tracks, and a lot of Pearl Jam (despite Rolling Stone‘s supposedly scandalous exposé of Eddie Vedder’s foray into funk rock in the late 1980s, Pearl Jam were my favourite). I had the whole Nirvana catalogue, but on checking iTunes find that only two albums have made it into my digital life, Nevermind and In Utero. The rest are mouldering away on cassette, unheard for years. But those two go pretty much unheard now, as well: I never took to In Utero, and know Nevermind so well from my initial year of listening that I never feel the need to return to it… I see the title, hear the tracks on fast-forward in my head, and lose any desire to press play.
The same is true of a lot of other albums I own from the time. I listen to Pearl Jam more often than Nirvana (though nowadays rarely), but mostly their post-grunge stuff, like No Code. If I counted the Smashing Pumpkins as grunge, which I don’t really, Siamese Dream would be another stayer. And Adore, but that’s even further from grunge.
Grunge just never really stuck with me. It could have: I wore flannelette shirts in the 1980s (like a lot of Tasmanian teenagers; they were warm), had long hair when it was definitely out but was about to come back in with grunge, was almost the same age as Cobain and got his Gen X vibe, liked hard rock but hadn’t found what I was looking for in hair metal or Guns ‘n’ Roses… it all could have worked.
But it didn’t, and I think it was because I’d been inoculated by spending 1991-92 in Britain and listening to shoegaze. Not much of that has stuck with me long-term either (Ride’s Going Blank Again and Chapterhouse’s Blood Music being the main exceptions), but as I’d already found some noisy indie rock there was less room in my heart-shaped box for grunge, despite fervent efforts circa 1992-94 to cram it in there. And before long, some different indie rock came along, again from Britain… but that’s a comment for the song I’ve heard before, and the one I genuinely love.
@Rory. I just checked and Silverchair were the most successful ‘grunge’ act on the singles chart in NZ too. Smells Like Teen Spirit did get to #1, but just for a single week, whereas Tomorrow spent 3 weeks at the top (and another 4 at #2) and Pure Massacre got achingly close, spending 3 weeks at #2. Nirv, AiC, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins all had #1 albums tho’, and Pearl Jam, the big winner, has had 6 albums reach the top so far.
I resonate with your description of how Nirvana has largely fallen out of your personal rotation. Reflecting recently on why that might be so in my case, I’ve hit on the idea that it’s a combination of the band’s songs feeling very tightly wound around Kurt’s vocal and personality (the music very rarely stretches out beyond that to have an identity in its own right) and then that Kurt’s personality is somehow suffocating. It could just be that the self-laceration that exhausts, but for me, if I’m honest, his prickliness and wiseass-ness while clever did irritate me at the time and hasn’t worn well for me. I listened to the All Apologies B-sides for the first time in ages recently, and exactly *how* deliberately irritating Kurt could be came flooding back. There’s a genius involved in rarking people up like that, but it’s hard to willingly, regularly endure such provocations.
@xyzzzz__. My apologies; it’s been ages since I’ve heard ‘Limp Bizkit’ used as anything other than a term of abuse!
@swanstep, your take on Kurt definitely strikes a chord for me. I just wasn’t as prickly and disaffected in 1992-94; maybe if I’d heard him at 16 he would have hit closer to home.
This thread prompted me to listen to Nevermind last night for the first time in ages. A mix of fantastic moments (Teen Spirit, Come as You Are, On a Plain) and wearisome shouting…