Artists generally dislike being labeled in the end. Musical mavericks would prefer that their music be met on its terms rather than lumped in with any passing trend and be free to roam wherever their muse might take them. Yet among musicians and fans alike, no label might be more often refuted than grunge.
The genre emerged between a rock and a hard place, fusing punk and metal, and broke alternative rock into the pop mainstream, but ultimately faced being shot by all sides. Many metal fans resented the upstart attitude that several grunge bands had borrowed from the indie underground, even as many indie scenesters regarded them as sellouts; both fandoms were suspicious that the label was nothing more than manufactured hype, contrived by the media and the music industry.
That is a conundrum that Cherry Red Records grapples with on its forthcoming box set, You’re No Big Deal: Grunge, The US Underground, and Beyond 1984-1994. For a record company to compile four discs of various grunge-era artists, it would make sense for the accompanying booklet to provide a spirited defense or at least a coherent definition of the label. Still, it categorically doesn’t, continuing to place “grunge” in quotation marks each time it gets mentioned. Mark Arm, the Green River vocalist who is interviewed for the booklet, is often cited as the source of the grunge descriptor, but here passes the blame onto Sub Pop label founder Bruce Pavitt.
As a huge fan, I’ve never felt the discomfort that grunge often seems to provoke. In the mid-1980s, the twin turbos of hardcore punk and thrash metal were speeding out of control, their unrelenting assault either obscuring a dearth of technical proficiency or reveling in it for its own sake. A new wave of underground rock musicians slowed things down, opened them up, and retained the raw power. Gravelly, grimy, grungy, this was the sound of big guitars recorded on a small budget.
The music on You’re No Big Deal more than speaks for itself. Disc One fizzes with ideas from many of the precursors in the 1980s American underground whose music was often distinctively grungy. In “Crystal”, Hüsker Dü‘s characteristically roaring chords contrast with the distinctly droning arpeggios of “Swimming Ground” by Meat Puppets. A weary Paul Westerberg wrings every drop of emotion from his raw confessional “The Ledge”. Meanwhile, in “Little Fury Things”, J Mascis subdues his plangent whine beneath tumultuous guitar interludes, which get all mixed up with the chaotic vocal contortions of “Caribou” by the Pixies.
A favourite of mine from Disc One is “One Step Closer” by Texas psychobillies Poison 13, which sounds like the 13th Floor Elevators fronted by an angry Mick Jagger. Another is Malfunkshun’s “My Only Fan”, which flaunts the cocksure croon of Andrew Wood and highlights what an asset he was as grunge marched into the mainstream.
While Disc One covers as much ground as Sub Pop 100, Disc Two has the focus of Sub Pop 200. It is (almost) devoted to the Seattle scene circa 1988-1989, with a handful of bands who plugged in to its energy, such as the Sub Pop-signed Denver retro rockers the Fluid, or the Minneapolis riot grrrls Babes in Toyland.
The disc opens with snarling “Touch Me I’m Sick”, perhaps the most well-known song by carefree garage punks Mudhoney, and revs relentlessly onwards until closing with the strutting “Thru Fade Away”, a relative obscurity from the melodramatic glam rockers Mother Love Bone. A personal highlight is “Rabies” by Bundle of Hiss, an early project featuring bassist Kurt Danielson of TAD, and a song that shows how Black Sabbath could have sounded if Tim Buckley had fronted them.
The 19 songs on Disc Three are selected from a two-year period, 1990 and 1991. A couple of these tracks were clearly smoothing down the grunge edges, straightening up its posture, and streamlining the bodywork. There’s an aural sensation that the breadth of activity showcased on Disc Two brought a lot of music industry attention to the Pacific Northwest, including Idaho, home of Tree People; Oregon, home of Calamity Jane; and British Columbia, home of Nomeansno.
My picks of the bunch are the fuzz-toned punk of “Shove”, on which L7‘s singer Suzi Gardner sounds like a demonically possessed Janis Joplin, and the muscular “Macaroni” by Nubbin, with riffs pitched somewhere between “Boris the Spider” by the Who and “Draw the Line” by Aerosmith.
Disc Four opens with Temple of the Dog. This Seattle supergroup was the third incarnation of the Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament partnership, after Green River and Mother Love Bone, and before Pearl Jam, augmented by the powerful pipes of Chris Cornell, and the aptly titled “Pushin’ Forward Back” sets the tone for grunge as it became famous in the post-Nevermind era. The sound of hissing distortion of cheap amps and recording consoles is replaced with ostentatiously overdriven guitars and expensive effects pedals.
Any fan could quibble with selections and omissions from You’re No Big Deal. There are no selections from Alice in Chains, Nirvana, or Pearl Jam. As a big fan of the other “Big Four” group, Soundgarden, I had hoped that they would be represented by album tracks that showcased their early quirks, rather than two of their independently released singles that propelled their popularity with Led Zeppelin-esque riffs. While Soundgarden and Mudhoney are sequenced at the beginning of the story, Melvins and the Screaming Trees, who recorded some of the earliest independently released grunge albums, do not enter this picture until the major label era.
Listening to four discs worth of aggressive, noisy guitar rock will tire many ears, but the lightest moments on the set seem out of place. Ultra Vivid Scene, a New York dream pop band, are, so far as I can tell, the only band to feature on Disc Two that had no geographical ties to the Seattle sound. The bouncy, hip-hop-influenced funk rock of New Yorkers Luscious Jackson sucks the momentum from the adrenaline rush of Disc Four.
Despite these shortcomings, You’re No Big Deal successfully tells its story of the rise of indie rock in and around the Pacific Northwest. The most impressive thing for me is how fresh it is. A Seattle scene enthusiast could own Deep Six, Sub Pop 200, You’re No Big Deal, No Seattle: Forgotten Sounds of the North-West Grunge Era 1986-97 (a two-disc compilation from the UK record label Soul Jazz), and any number of classic albums from any of the “Big Four”, and only twice have to hear a song repeated! Those songs, in case you’re wondering, are “Bleed” by Portland, Oregon indie rockers Thrillhammer, and “Flower” from Soundgarden’s Ultramega OK.
<!–
–>