Grunge bands, and indeed the whole Gen-X thing, was often regarded as being primarily distinguished by one character trait, its ability to moan, whine and mope.
There is certainly some truth in this, as anyone who has read Douglas Copeland's Generation X will know - a book which did as much as Nevermind to form the identity of the grunge generation (and I'm using that term both loosely and mockingly. I don't think anyone who was into American Indie music in the early to mid 90's ever referred to themselves as 'Grungers', 'slacker' or anything even vaguely similar, that was for people like Richard and Judy, who once did a hilarious 'How to dress like a Grunger' segment on This Morning, which was more Partridge than Partridge...)
Being a teenager at the time, I'm pretty sure I did my fair share of whining too, but the person who gets the gold medal for it is probably Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. His lyrics, interviews and voice all seem dripping with misery and self pity, and later on in his career, Smashing Pumpkins turned into a sort of overblown Goth band, soaked in pretention. Still, people tended to like him, and there were some rather good videos...
Smashing Pumpkins first album though, was rather good (although they should have let D'arcy sing on more of the tracks)
No comments:
Post a Comment