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1990s Non Grunge Thread


Lucas
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REM was still relevant and making great music in the early '90s. With Monster, I thought they'd gone off the deep end a little bit. And then the drummer left, and they never replaced him, and...ehhhmm...anyway, Out of Time and Automatic for the People are both classics.

 

 

New Adventures in HiFi, although generally panned, was one I really liked. A raw and gritty response to Automatic for the People (which i also love).
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REM was still relevant and making great music in the early '90s. With Monster, I thought they'd gone off the deep end a little bit. And then the drummer left, and they never replaced him, and...ehhhmm...anyway, Out of Time and Automatic for the People are both classics.

 

 

New Adventures in HiFi, although generally panned, was one I really liked. A raw and gritty response to Automatic for the People (which i also love).

 

I'll admit, that is one that I haven't heard.

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REM was still relevant and making great music in the early '90s. With Monster, I thought they'd gone off the deep end a little bit. And then the drummer left, and they never replaced him, and...ehhhmm...anyway, Out of Time and Automatic for the People are both classics.

 

 

New Adventures in HiFi, although generally panned, was one I really liked. A raw and gritty response to Automatic for the People (which i also love).

 

I'll admit, that is one that I haven't heard.

It's a bit noisy...full of attitude, but I dig it. Most of it was written and recorded on the road, supposedly, so it has a self-indulgent edge to it. They steer far away from the Shiny Happy People sound.
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Few if any of these are probably new to you, but some of my favorites of my favorite decade (musically that is, though I like them all).

 

'91 was an especially banner year: Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, Nirvana's Nevermind, Pixie's Trompe Le Monde, REM's Out of Time, U2's Achtung Baby, and the amazing Loveless from My Bloody Valentine. All classics, what an amazing year.

 

REM would follow in 1992 with my favorite of theirs, Automatic for the People. That same year the Church would release the best (and heaviest) album of their career (even by their own admission), Priest=Aura, and follow that up with the fantastic Hologram of Baal in '98. Teenage Fanclub would release the sublime power pop of Songs from Northern Britain in '97. Upon hearing SFNB the first time, the ever humble Noel Gallagher declared that apart from Oasis, Teenage Fanclub is the best band on the planet. Not long after that, though, Radiohead's OK Computer would catch fire and Radiohead would become "the most important band on the planet", regardless of Noel's declarations. And then there's also all those great "shoegaze" bands, with their own thread here.

 

Lot of cool indie music too, like Yo La Tengo, Sebadoh, and (later to achieve commercial fame and hang out with Paul McCartney) Beck, to name a few.

 

Here's a band you might not have heard of, an Aussie band, released all their stuff in the '90s apart from a recent reunion album (which is excellent):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGUMcyDvpJc

 

Lastly, the decade kicked off with the release of THE greatest tribute album ever, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: a Tribute to Roky Erickson. What a decade (especially the first half). A sample from Pyramid:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-koDVehbsY

Edited by Rutlefan
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REM was still relevant and making great music in the early '90s. With Monster, I thought they'd gone off the deep end a little bit. And then the drummer left, and they never replaced him, and...ehhhmm...anyway, Out of Time and Automatic for the People are both classics.

 

 

New Adventures in HiFi, although generally panned, was one I really liked. A raw and gritty response to Automatic for the People (which i also love).

 

I'll admit, that is one that I haven't heard.

It's a bit noisy...full of attitude, but I dig it. Most of it was written and recorded on the road, supposedly, so it has a self-indulgent edge to it. They steer far away from the Shiny Happy People sound.

 

I should check it out. I get in the mood for noisy, abrasive stuff sometimes.

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Define Grunge.

 

Slacker punk in flannel? Just throwing it out there, don't know either. Whatever it is, I thought the label was used too widely, with Pearl Jam being alt rock, and AIC and Soundgarden being more like alt metal. Of the big "grunge" bands, I thought only Nirvana deserved some unique label like "grunge," though Kurt maintained they were just a punk band. Like many things, it seemed to become more a marketing tool than any kind of useful musical category, similar to how "alternative" stopped meaning alternative (alternative to what?) in the wake of Nirvana/Pearl Jam, etc. and became just another sub-category of commercial music.

Edited by Rutlefan
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Define Grunge.

 

Slacker punk in flannel? Just throwing it out there, don't know either. Whatever it is, I thought the label was used too widely, with Pearl Jam being alt rock, and AIC and Soundgarden being more like alt metal. Of the big "grunge" bands, I thought only Nirvana deserved some unique label like "grunge," though Kurt maintained they were just a punk band. Like many things, it seemed to become more a marketing tool than any kind of useful musical category, similar to how "alternative" stopped meaning alternative (alternative to what?) in the wake of Nirvana/Pearl Jam, etc. and became just another sub-category of commercial music.

 

Kurt Cobain:

 

All in all, I think we sound like The Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath."

 

Kurt has a sense for pop music - not as much as, say, The Ramones, but it crept into his writing ..

 

I think more simply than defining what grunge is, the music listed here is more what grunge isn't ..

 

Shonen Knife, Social Distortion, Pulp - definitely NOT grunge

 

 

I'll toss Rancid in there, as I liked them a lot back then .. They were great live

 

geeesh, it doesn't seem all that long ago - I feel like we're talking about "new" bands here, when in fact, I was only 22 when 1990 came around

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REM was still relevant and making great music in the early '90s. With Monster, I thought they'd gone off the deep end a little bit. And then the drummer left, and they never replaced him, and...ehhhmm...anyway, Out of Time and Automatic for the People are both classics.

 

 

New Adventures in HiFi, although generally panned, was one I really liked. A raw and gritty response to Automatic for the People (which i also love).

 

I liked AFTP well enough but Everybody Hurts is one of my least favorite songs by anyone. Also Sidewinder annoys the hell out of me. Ever. I'd rather listen to Shiny Happy People.

 

I Prefer my REM to be jangly and off the cuff.

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Mainstream, but I was very much into Live and Collective Soul in the 90's.

 

Collective Soul is a great pop rock band. Had a lot of big hits in the 90s and a little bit in the early 2000s as well. People always seem to forget about them and not realise how many songs they actually know from them.

 

I gonna be a total homer here and mention a band from my hometown, Goo Goo Dolls. They had some great rock albums in the 90s like Superstar Car Wash, A Boy Named Goo and Dizzy Up The Girl. Unfortunately, once they got huge with Dizzy Up The Girl, their music took an awful turn into soulless, generic pop rock with no feeling or balls. But their 90s output was great.

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Candlebox.

Stone Temple Pilots

Our Lady Peace

 

Man, OLP was so good on those first four albums. So sad that they declined as bad as they did with their song writing.

 

While we're talking Canadian rock bands, I may as well throw out The Tea Party's name again since this is a 90s thread. Great prog rock band that should have been way bigger in the US. Still baffles me that they never got proper distribution here. They could have been huge in the states serving as the band that all the rock lovers who didn't like grunge could gravitate towards.

 

Maybe I should revive the thread I created for them here a while back?

Edited by J2112YYZ
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Candlebox.

Stone Temple Pilots

Our Lady Peace

Our Lady Piece had some strong songs. The vocals might turn off some people. I put STP in the "grunge" basket.

 

Candlebox? Well, I'd turn off the radio the second Far Behind came on... ;)

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Candlebox.

Stone Temple Pilots

Our Lady Peace

Our Lady Piece had some strong songs. The vocals might turn off some people.

 

Yeah, Raine Maida's vocals sound like a mix of Billy Corgan and Alanis Morrisette. Not exactly the most appealing sound.

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For me the 90's belonged to gothic metal (Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Type O Negative, Lacuna Coil, The Gathering, Theatre Of Tragedy, Nightwish, Dominion) and...erm...American rnb/hip hop.

 

Oh, and classic emo (always better to me than those bands affiliated with the "grunge" label).

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