what is and isn't grunge?

 (comment meant for Facebook, but it got way too long)

as for grunge, there's a lot of discussion regarding what belongs and what doesn't belong to the genre. more often than not, it overlaps with alternative rock thanks to bands like Nirvana, but that's where grunge purists will come in and say, "no, nirvana are not real grunge."

they'll often cite bands that effectively started the whole movement in roughly 1984-86 - i.e. soundgarden, green river (which would splinter off into mudhoney and mother love bone), malfunkshun, melvins, the u-men - which were largely considered to be part of the massive indie music scene in seattle. a lot of these bands varied wildly in specific style - soundgarden was more indebted to psychedelic rock, melvins were big into the super-slow hardcore punk of black flag's my war, and green river were a slightly heavier garage rock/blues rock band - but they seemed to share a few commonalities:

1. their casual dress (partially to eschew the entire idea of wearing stage clothes a la pop stars, glam metal bands, and MTV acts, but mostly because they were broke bands who could only afford to shop at the salvation army and thrift stores of that sort, where they had a massive surplus in flannel and blue jeans thanks to the loggers in the washington stage area);

2. their undoubtedly heavier approach to music, inspired in part by a bunch of these broke musicians crate-digging at local record stores and finding albums like "My War" by Black Flag, "Master of Reality" by Black Sabbath, Sir Lord Baltimore's first album, etc. anything that was cheap and not in demand, but had really strange sounds; but mostly inspired by these bands making use of really unfavorable guitar effects pedals (like the Big Muff and the Univox Super-Fuzz, which had a very rough guitar sound and weren't favored by big-name hard rock acts) and weird guitars they bought for VERY VERY VERY cheap at pawn shops (including the Fender Jaguar, a guitar that was still considered so unfashionable that it wasn't even valuable);

3. and the fact that they were championed by people like Chris Hanzsek and Bruce Pavitt.

Hanzsek often recorded a bunch of these bands and compiled them for a compilation meant to kickstart his label C/Z Records. Pavitt was a college radio DJ who often played these bands - they had demo tapes circulating around - and got the idea to create his own fanzine, Subterranean Pop (you can guess what he shortened that to), which focused on American indie labels and the bands signed to them, along with a few unsigned acts in the Seattle scene. One of his friends was Mark Arm, the man who coined grunge in a joke review for one of his bands - making fun of people who might not like his brand of raucous garage-blues rock, he wrote in character, calling his music "grunge" (as in sludgy, dirty, noisy, really unpleasant). he didn't get around to actually naming the scene in Seattle until he was tasked with writing the press release for the first Green River EP, again using the term in a derogatory manner (this music is evil, a corrupting influence, shoddy, shabby, filthy)

so basically grunge is a joke term that Mark Arm used to describe the bands he was in. if we were to limit grunge to Mark Arm's descriptor, the term would only be applied to Mark Arm's bands - which, yeah, Green River and Mudhoney fit perfectly in the genre, but that ignores the rest of the scene.

grunge has pretty much no set sound outside of "dirty guitar tone," "shabby guys playing cheap pawn shop guitars on stage," and "somewhat nihilistic lyrics." the nihilism often varied - soundgarden often tried to be more uplifting and even a bit humorous ("665" from Ultramega OK, in reverse, is Chris Cornell talking about cool of a dude Santa Claus is; the phrase "lookin' California and feelin' Minnesota" from Badmotorfinger track "Outshined" is Chris describing that despite looking as hot as all the MTV rock acts, he's way more of a badass than they are); melvins had no substance to their lyrics largely because Buzz Osborne regarded his vocals as a mere instrument; Mudhoney often stuck to themes of teenage rebellion and your usual punk rock stuff.

however, despite grunge purists trying to limit grunge to just a few bands in the Seattle scene (often describing Nirvana and bands that came after them as "grunge pop" or "Seattle scene" if they were from Seattle), Nirvana were a very crucial part of the scene. Kurt Cobain's second or third band - his first notable one was Fecal Matter, an otherwise straightforward punk band - Nirvana (formed in 1987) were very much grunge in their early days. they blended in really well with the acts signed onto C/Z and Sub Pop - their debut "Bleach," for example, is one of the most confrontational works of art out there. and it's mostly just Kurt playing songs about how the entire town of Mayberry decided to kill him while he's getting his hair cut or how silly his friends are or how homophobic the mainstream rock scene was (even spreading to the Seattle scene). some grunge purists will consider Bleach to be part of the grunge canon, but they stop right there.

grunge gets way more complicated when Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone and Malfunkshun get added to the mix. Those bands were undoubtedly pure metal acts - Alice in Chains were glam metal with a decidedly dark edge from Jerry Cantrell's songwriting and guitar playing (contrary to popular belief, vocalist Layne Staley rarely wrote songs for the band - and he didn't join until 1988 or '89); Malfunkshun was a funk metal band; and Mother Love Bone were Malfunkshun but way more glam metal. However, Mother Love Bone (along with Soundgarden and Alice in Chains) were considered the hometown heroes since they were the first acts in the Seattle scene to get signed to a major label (Mother Love Bone to Mercury; Soundgarden to A&M; Alice in Chains to Columbia). Plus, a lot of people attended their shows - even the other grunge acts would come in and hang out with Andrew Wood, Chris Cornell, Jerry Cantrell, Layne Staley, etc. after the show. another popular band in that scene was Screaming Trees, but they were considered to be a neo-psychedelic rock group. same goes for the Posies (another early major label signing - Posies signed to DGC/Geffen/Warner Bros. around the same time Nirvana did, so about a few months about DGC/Geffen got bought out by Universal/MCA), who were a power pop group inspired in large part by the Beatles, Raspberries, Badfinger, and Big Star.

well, Mother Love Bone finishes their first album and it's a few weeks away from being released when Andrew Wood, lead singer, dies of a heroin overdose. this devastates EVERYBODY not just in Mother Love Bone, but the entire scene. the members of Mother Love Bone regroup and team up with Chris Cornell to do a tribute album to be released on A&M (so Chris could count it as a Soundgarden album in case if he needs to fulfill the contract if A&M decides to drop them - at the time, Soundgarden's Louder Than Love wasn't doing so hot outside of the UK college rock scene). at the same time, the band formerly known as Mother Love Bone decides to form a new band - Mookie Blaylock (yes, after the basketball dude) - and send out a demo tape to one of their friends, Jack Irons (former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer). Jack sends it to his friend in Los Angeles who works at a 7-Eleven, Eddie Vedder, and Eddie is utterly blown away by the tape (after listening to it after work) that he starts brainstorming lyrics while he's going surfing. These songs would become the Momma-Son trilogy - "Alive," "Once," and "Footsteps," in the exact order they were played on the demo tape. Eddie heads over to Seattle to meet up with the Mookie Blaylock band and is invited to join the Andrew Wood tribute album recording sessions, now called Temple of the Dog. He ends up singing harmonies on a few songs and even gets a lead part on "Hunger Strike." This cements his position in Mookie Blaylock and they start playing a few shows before getting signed to Epic/Columbia - by that time, the label, wary of a band named after a still-active NBA player, forced the band to change their name (Pearl Jam was a joke name - a reference to, uh. *that stuff* - but was chosen just so the band could continue recording their first album).

Alice in Chains take on a more heavier sound for their major-label debut, in large part inspired by Cantrell and Staley picking up really nasty heroin habits but also because they just loved the heavier bands they got to see in the Seattle scene. Even though Facelift is still by and large a metal album (some might call it alternative metal) at its core, the breakout single "Man in the Box" was so sludgy and so dark that people just naturally lumped it in with the Seattle scene.

but grunge would get way more complicated with the release of Nirvana's Nevermind in September of 1991. considered to be a very low-priority album for DGC (their main focus was on already-established act Sonic Youth, possibly trying to get XTC onto the label for their upcoming album Nonsuch, and pushing the Posies really hard onto radio and MTV since there seemed to be a big power pop revival with bands like Jellyfish, Human Radio, Tom Petty getting a fluke college rock hit with "I Won't Back Down," etc.) to the point where they were extremely taken aback by how much of a minor radio hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was. they quickly approve a video (shot in like two days at an abandoned high school in LA), which airs on MTV really late at night but soon gets requested a lot by those who caught it, and eventually escalates to the top of the charts, crossing over from college rock radio to top 40 radio (all while Kurt Cobain was sleeping in his car). By December 1991, Nevermind had gone gold - this was mindblowing especially for an album that David Geffen predicted would only sell 100,000 total.

suddenly, every major label wanted a piece of the action. for the bands already on their roster, Columbia and Epic began to push Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam really hard (especially Pearl Jam) and even began to urge Screaming Trees (who released a flop album on Epic, Uncle Anesthesia) to make something more grungy (resulting in the Sweet Oblivion album), A&M began to take Soundgarden a lot more seriously than just the unmarketable Seattle act that was somehow big in the UK (finding that some college radio stations and mainstream rock stations were picking up failed singles "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" to add to their playlists), etc. for other labels, they had to find bands - Atlantic Records picked up Los Angeles alt-prog-metal band Stone Temple Pilots; Virgin Records upgraded Smashing Pumpkins from being on their indie label Caroline to being on the main label and began pushing "Rhinoceros" on radio and MTV really hard; Island picked up Austin, TX neo-psych band Tripping Daisy and remixed their debut album Bill to sound more grungy (and even signed Local H, a two-piece duo from Chicago known primarily for guitarist Scott Lucas adding bass pick-ups to his guitar so he wouldn't have to hire a bassist and who had just started writing Nirvana-inspired songs).

this also coincides with the big major label flurry of signing college rock bands thanks to R.E.M. making big bucks for Warner Bros. - for example, Flaming Lips gets signed to Warner Bros.; Daniel Johnston starts to be courted by major labels shortly after he's committed to a mental institution; local California hometown heroes Primus (Bay Area) and No Doubt (LA), alongside abrasive and experimental alt-metal bands Helmet and the Jesus Lizard, get signed to record producer Jimmy Iovine and movie producer Ted Fields' label they made in conjunction with EastWest and Atlantic, Interscope; Matador Records, thanks to some UK bands covering Pavement's "Box Elder" for an album released on RCA, started to become the big talk of the town - but grunge amplified that tenfold. suddenly, you got a bunch of acts that were now classified as grunge because of somewhat similar aesthetics (notably the '70s nostalgia, the cheap retro guitars, and the really rough distorted/overdriven guitar tones). that's why a lot of these rock acts between 1991-1994 tend to be labeled as grunge despite having very different approaches (Pearl Jam were more a '70s hard rock revival act with a slightly psychedelic edge; Stone Temple Pilots often learned towards prog; Collective Soul's first album is AN ACTUAL SONGWRITING DEMO TAPE THAT ATLANTIC RELEASED; Nirvana tend to be more power pop with elements of noise rock and experimental music thrown in; Helmet were experimental metal with a lot of jazz influences). this even culminates in bands getting signed because Kurt Cobain mentioned that they were his friends (Melvins to Atlantic) or that he loved their music when he was in high school (Meat Puppets got a massive push for their label London - while signed because they were part of that initial wave of signing bands that R.E.M. got played right next to on college rock radio, their first album for London, Forbidden Places, was a minor hit on college rock radio at best - because they guested on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged set). hell, major labels start signing anybody that's even remotely catchy (Ween gets signed to Elektra because they sold out some shows in Pennsylvania despite being a very very very very lo-fi experimental rock band that sang about drugs and eating Taylor Ham sandwiches, but hey, "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese" was a catchy song...)

however, grunge kinda stops on April 8, 1994 with the announcement of Kurt Cobain's death. however, there were still a lot of Nirvana-inspired bands popping up and getting noticed by a major labels - a lot of them, like the ones that came before, weren't really grunge but rather had similar aesthetics to bands in the Seattle scene (namely the guitar tone), but a lot of rock journalists, upset that Cobain had died (despite their idolization of him placing massive stress on his mental health, plus them constantly demonizing his wife Courtney Love over the smallest indiscretion and helping spread rumors about her murdering him or hiring somebody to murder him), absolutely hated them. these bands often tended to be more radio-friendly - since Ween was becoming way more unmarketable (no shit), Daniel Johnston's album with Atlantic (Fun) failed despite them trying to push lead single "Life in Vain" on MTV, the Butthole Surfers were still a cult act at best despite having the support of Capitol Records, Boredoms were constantly fighting with Reprise Records over dragging their feet releasing the Super Roots EP series in America (despite them being a big concert draw at American rock festivals), and acts like Cardiacs and Porcupine Tree were considered too much like "dinosaur rock" to even be considered for major-label distribution over here. easier music to market, easier to release in mass quantities. yeah, weird and foreign acts still got signed and considered - Fishmans were being considered for American distribution by Matador and Interscope due to the success of Long Season in Japan; Brainiac were at the center of an intense major-label bidding war - but the focus was on grunge bands with a decidedly more pop edge.

the rock journalists often wrote about this new crop of bands in extremely negative terms - at times lumping in bands divorced from the grunge scene (Garbage were a trip-hop-meets-noise-rock band; Hum and Failure are space rock and alt-metal; Sponge were largely a power pop group; Collective Soul, when given control of their proper debut album, were effective a '70s rock band with prog tendencies; Hootie and the Blowfish were pop rock; Dave Matthews Band were a prog rock band with strong jazz, bluegrass, and jam-rock tendencies inspired by acts on John Popper's H.O.R.D.E. Tour; Better Than Ezra bounced back and forth between power pop and alt-country; Weezer are straight-up power pop), but occasionally recognized actual grunge acts (Silverchair, Foo Fighters, Bush) despite not realizing that they existed pre-Cobain's death (Silverchair were formed in 1992 by middle schoolers; Bush was formed in 1991 by a film production assistant and some of his friends and courted by Hollywood Records in 1992-93, even recording Sixteen Stone for the label before getting dropped, before Interscope artist-development sublabel Trauma picked them up at the same time; Foo Fighters was created as a means for Dave Grohl to grieve his friend suddenly being gone forever (it wasn't intended to be released or sent to major labels - just a tiny thing for Dave to let out his feelings and maybe use it as a calling card to get more drum gigs since he was high in demand). the journalists, notably the ones at Spin Magazine, often called this "corporate alternative" or "scrunge," describing it kinda like the Taco Bell of grunge.

but this style of grunge got REALLY popular. soon you got acts like Dishwalla getting signed. you got Candlebox being labeled scrunge despite being on the radio before Nirvana ended. you even have Brainiac's former label Grass, now a subsidiary of BMG, signing this band from Florida with a guy that sounds almost like Eddie Vedder but sings a lot of vaguely Christian stuff (this is a few months before the label changed their name to Wind-Up and re-released Creed's debut album). after a while, more considerate journalists began to give this style of grunge a new name: post-grunge.

but the damage was done. most acts labeled scrunge in the early years often found themselves not being taken serious - this especially hurt Hum, Tripping Daisy, and Silverchair. Silverchair in particular had vague prog-rock elements on their very-grunge-inspired debut album Frogstomp, but found themselves diving deeper into the genre with each successive album until Neon Ballroom, their first full prog-rock (or art rock) album, and Diorama (definitely prog-rock). but American rock critics just wrote them off as the juveniles who sang the melodramatic song about a rich dude talking to a poor dude, began scrutinizing the looks of lead singer/guitarist Daniel Johns (who was 16-17 when this all started - he was just a fucking kid) to the point where he went anorexic AND ALMOST DIED, and turned the band from "promising new band" to "grunge boy band" over the course of a few years. Hum broke up after they got little to no radio support for their second album for RCA, Downward is Heavenward (great album). Tripping Daisy's guitarist Wes Berggren found himself getting addicted to heroin and eventually OD'd during the tour for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb (which had tanked so hard thanks to a lack of radio support that Island dropped them - again, like Downward is Heavenward, a great album).

so in summary:

grunge is a jokey-joke term that began to be used to describe bands from the Seattle scene and those that sounded like it that released albums between 1985 and 1994. post-grunge is anything after that that takes the elements of grunge, but adds more pronounced prog rock and pop influences. and even then, purists will use grunge to only describe non-Nirvana acts from the Seattle scene and acts that came out before the release of Nevermind and Ten.