Ahh, Grunge. Checked shirts (I refuse to say plaid...), dock martens,
torn jeans, loud and miserable music. This was MY musical movement. I
had just missed out on The Summer of Love - and I always found The Stone
Roses to be massively over-rated (hence the fact that they won't be
appearing on this list at all) - and Britpop was 5 years away (and
mostly rubbish too - copy and paste my feelings for The Stone Roses and
apply them to Oasis...) but what I did have was loads of scruffy
American bands with effects pedals playing vaguely down-beat music. And
I loved it.
Soundgarden were one of those bands who sat comforatbly on the line between metal and grunge (In fact it's pretty difficult to define exactly what grunge was, apart from vaguely poppy, vaguely noisy, vaguely American. Yeah, we were all about the vague. Our hair wasn't too long, but it want too short either. We just didn't care...) and in another life had been a pretty awful Led Zepplin sound-alike band (as I found out when I bought Louder Than Love after getting into them, listening to it once and then putting it in the record box along with all my old metal vinyl and never touching it again...)
Because they had that cross-over thing going on, Soundgarden were acceptable to play in our 6th Form Common Room stereo (well, the one in the un-cool part, well away from the kids who got bought cars for their 17th birthday, went skiing and had good skin...) so I seem to remember listening to them quite a lot. It was about this time that I had my first act of rebellion, as I was threatened with being kicked out of school if I didn't get my hair cut, having grown it over the last few years as part of my metal phase. There were a few days of stand-off as I refused, even getting my Dad to come into school and stick up for me (Yeah, that's how rebellious I was...) and facing off against the odious little man who was head of the 6th form (who was also bald, and I suspect slightly jelous of my magnificent lion-like mane)
In the end, sadly, I caved to the pressure and got my hair cut into the signature mushroom cut which was everywhere circa 1993 and the teacher confimed his staus as a petty jobsworth so the moral victory was mine. But for a brief second, I knew how Jesus felt, which is what this song is about*
* I didn't really, and it isn't really
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