Grunge out!

Kurt Cobain’s suicide definitely stuck the fork in grunge 15 years ago but after a decade and a half, the time is now ripe for the flood of retrospective documentaries and biographies. The newest grunge book, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music by Greg Prato, hit bookshelves a couple of weeks ago. Prato, being a New Yorker, steps aside and lets the true players of the Seattle scene, like members of Nirvana, Mudhoney and Melvins, finally tell the real story. Prato really earns his stripes when he gets his hands dirty tracing the roots of this sound to the mid-’60s Northwest, with the Sonics and the Wailers, and up to the punk rock and post-punk years of the U Men, the Fartz and undeniable outside influences like Black Flag, DOA, Flipper, Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth and Redd Kross. Over these first four chapters, Grunge Is Dead proves to be quite the page-turner, but unfortunately Prato then goes right for the wallet and pays too much attention to mediocre big-money bands like Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog and Alice in Chains. Sure, Nirvana is a big part of the story here, but do they really deserve a quarter of the book? In my not so humble opinion, even at grunge’s zenith in ’91, there were really only about five bands worth reading about and Nirvana were definitely one of them, but there were far better records coming out of the Pacific Northwest that just got buried under the heavyweights.

Grunge’s bad rap is fairly well deserved as it was oversaturated, helped usher in weekend suburban MTV punk, and when the dust settled, was finally exposed as just revamped classic rock with a new marketing plan. Having said that, there were gems buried underneath the heap of banality that still sound as good today as they did in the late ’80s. Here’s a few:

Mudhoney, Superfuzz Big Muff (1989, Sub Pop): A blazing combination of reheated Stooges and Blue Cheer riffs but even more amped up and dumbed down. The greatest grunge record of all time. Take that, Nevermind.

Stephen Jesse Bernstein, Prison (1992, Sub Pop): With Steve Fisk providing the incidental music, this posthumous spoken-word record is just electrifying. Bernstein’s growl will burrow deep into your marrow while lines from his heavily Burroughs-influenced poems will echo through you for years to come.

Tad, 8 Way Santa (1991, Sub Pop): Equal parts Sabbath and Scratch Acid, this record is as much of a behemoth as Tad himself.

Melvins, Gluey Porch Treatments (1987, Alchemy): Featuring future Mudhoney bassist Matt Lukin, this is where it all begins. If you think grunge is all about “Jeremy” and “Hunger Strike,” check this out.

Dwarves, Blood Guts & Pussy (1990, Sub Pop): Although not your typical grunge sound, this sizzler got it done in 13 minutes and seven seconds, which was three minutes longer than their live set at the time. Things quickly fizzled as the band put too much pop in their punk later on, but this is definitely the tits.

TOUCH ME, I’M SICK…JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM