Reading over my previous entries I do believe I have yet to FULLY explore one useful idea. So for this entry I will look at what made this Grunge music movement in Seattle in the late 80’s a SCENE.
What makes a scene? –
o Collective range of practitioners – venues, record stores, press
o Perpetrated by Musicians/The Media/Tourism and Music Industry
o Helps fans and consumers align themselves
o Three types of scenes: local, translocal, virtual
o Local scenes interesting as – can ‘localise’ global music
o ‘Scene accepts that a few at the core of the scene may live that life entirely while most participants shift between different identities and engagments’
o Music industry is seen as part of the music-making
o Seems to be a very handy term
How Seattle in the late 80’s/early 90’s fits this description:
o Collective community of independent bands and venues
o Accepted by the musicians/coined by the media/loved by the tourism/music industries
o Has singular geographic locality
o Both fans and musicians aligned themselves with Seattle as the ‘home’
o Few are indeed at the core of it all – others merely buying into it for a short time
o Music industry (in this case DIY/sub pop records) is part of the whole thing
o Based on this (and more I’m sure) I’m making the call that Grunge was a local scene subculture rather than a neo-tribe/classic subculture. But this is not entirely fixed in my mind as of yet.
I am going to have to pay some more attention to the Geoff Stahl reading in the course reader. I do believe that gives an example of the deconstruction of a scene (Montreal in this case).
Okay that was a little more coherent.
More terms of use: bricolage, homogeny, cultural capital, neo-tribes maybe
In other news:
In my research (which is proving more difficult than expected) I came across an article, “Grunge in the Springtime” by Rhonda Lieberman. It really is mostly fashion based but could be useful. It is difficult to read, however, I will have to go back over it to see if it really is of any use.
And as for Grunge’s “death”, I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned a group of friends his was going to hang out with and he called this group, the ‘grunges’. I questioned him about these friends of his and found that they did indeed listen to some of the bands that have been classified as grunge and that their style of clothing could, with maybe a little stretch of the imagination, resemble the fashion craze resulting from this Grunge mania.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
In The Process
Writing a question….writing a question….how to write a question? The subculture I have chosen is Grunge and the topic…The Local and the Global. Both the Hype documentary and the VH1 news special on Grunge portray this Grunge movement in a very similar way, in fact I was disappointed when I didn’t get anything much new out of the latter.
It appears that Grunge music arose in Seattle for particular reasons. The VH1 documentary listed geographic isolation, economic despair and the bad weather as reasons why the disgruntled youth produced this new music. Like many new subcultures Grunge arose out of boredom. Also what probably contributed a lot was that bands never toured as far down as Seattle. If the kids wanted music, they had to play it themselves. There were very few venues, it was all do-it-yourself, and nobody was worried about success. Or at least that’s the impression that I’m getting.
What makes Grunge so interesting to me is how quickly the “mainstream” (how on earth am I going to go about defining what that is?) appropriated the elements of the Grunge subculture, particularly in popular fashion. When Nirvana’s Nevermind shot to number one on the music charts and Grunge became ‘popular’, how did that affect the Seattle scene, especially with the aversion to success/no selling out, independent aesthetic of the music? Dick Hebdige’s article on subculture and style looks at style/fashion and its importance within a subculture. Which is interesting in Grunge as it seems the style was more important to those listening to the music rather than the ones playing it. This is particularly relevant when looking at the signifying aspects of Grunge, flannel shirts for example.
‘Sub Pop records’ is a highly integral part of the Grunge movement. As an independent label co-founded by Jonathon Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, Sub pop records was right in the thick of it, even helping create this ‘hype’. There seems to have been mixed feelings over this record label. Some say that it helped small bands record their music and get it out there for the world to hear. Others see it as a money-hungry enterprise that slapped a label on Seattle bands in order to cash in on the craze.
When thinking about media coverage of the Grunge phenomenon you can’t go past the attention lavished on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Not only his musical talent but also his private life, marriage, child and drug habits were covered by newspapers and magazines. Perhaps looking into Cobain’s relationship with the media and how that contributed to the shifting identity of the Seattle music scene would be interesting.
So how to phrase this essay topic? Grunge, scene theory, Seattle, Sub Pop, Kurt Cobain, the media… where/how do these fit together? This is going somewhere I’m sure. I can now see the benefits of having to write your own essay topic. It really makes you think.
Quotes of interest:
“The bands that stuck it out did it because they really, really, really enjoyed playing their music. And that was really only positive reinforcement they got.”
Jack Endino (Skin Yard) Record Producer
“I think every community has their pools of talent, it’s just a matter of being able to take on the responsibility of marketing.”
Jonathon Poneman, Bruce Pavitt co-founders sub pop
“Nirvana didn’t go to the Mainstream, the mainstream came to nirvana”
Kirst Novoselic
TIL NEXT TIME! (tomorrow)
Reminder to self – listen to…Mudhoney, TAD, Screaming Trees, Green River
It appears that Grunge music arose in Seattle for particular reasons. The VH1 documentary listed geographic isolation, economic despair and the bad weather as reasons why the disgruntled youth produced this new music. Like many new subcultures Grunge arose out of boredom. Also what probably contributed a lot was that bands never toured as far down as Seattle. If the kids wanted music, they had to play it themselves. There were very few venues, it was all do-it-yourself, and nobody was worried about success. Or at least that’s the impression that I’m getting.
What makes Grunge so interesting to me is how quickly the “mainstream” (how on earth am I going to go about defining what that is?) appropriated the elements of the Grunge subculture, particularly in popular fashion. When Nirvana’s Nevermind shot to number one on the music charts and Grunge became ‘popular’, how did that affect the Seattle scene, especially with the aversion to success/no selling out, independent aesthetic of the music? Dick Hebdige’s article on subculture and style looks at style/fashion and its importance within a subculture. Which is interesting in Grunge as it seems the style was more important to those listening to the music rather than the ones playing it. This is particularly relevant when looking at the signifying aspects of Grunge, flannel shirts for example.
‘Sub Pop records’ is a highly integral part of the Grunge movement. As an independent label co-founded by Jonathon Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, Sub pop records was right in the thick of it, even helping create this ‘hype’. There seems to have been mixed feelings over this record label. Some say that it helped small bands record their music and get it out there for the world to hear. Others see it as a money-hungry enterprise that slapped a label on Seattle bands in order to cash in on the craze.
When thinking about media coverage of the Grunge phenomenon you can’t go past the attention lavished on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Not only his musical talent but also his private life, marriage, child and drug habits were covered by newspapers and magazines. Perhaps looking into Cobain’s relationship with the media and how that contributed to the shifting identity of the Seattle music scene would be interesting.
So how to phrase this essay topic? Grunge, scene theory, Seattle, Sub Pop, Kurt Cobain, the media… where/how do these fit together? This is going somewhere I’m sure. I can now see the benefits of having to write your own essay topic. It really makes you think.
Quotes of interest:
“The bands that stuck it out did it because they really, really, really enjoyed playing their music. And that was really only positive reinforcement they got.”
Jack Endino (Skin Yard) Record Producer
“I think every community has their pools of talent, it’s just a matter of being able to take on the responsibility of marketing.”
Jonathon Poneman, Bruce Pavitt co-founders sub pop
“Nirvana didn’t go to the Mainstream, the mainstream came to nirvana”
Kirst Novoselic
TIL NEXT TIME! (tomorrow)
Reminder to self – listen to…Mudhoney, TAD, Screaming Trees, Green River
Looking at Sub Pop record's contribution to the creation (and the destruction) of the Seattle grunge scene (scene being key word here). It is interesting to look at the past and present bands that are/were signed to Sub Pop:
http://www.subpop.com/artists/
Note: Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and... The Flight of the Conchords...? Interesting.
http://www.subpop.com/artists/
Note: Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and... The Flight of the Conchords...? Interesting.
Never has research been so good on the ears.
Nirvana's Something In the Way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SARB4D0TDxU
Underneath the bridge, the tarp has sprung a leak
The animals I've trapped have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass and drippings from the ceiling
It's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings
Something in the way Mmm-hmm
No idea what the lyrics mean..... but in the true sense of Grunge... it really doesn't matter.
Nirvana's Something In the Way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SARB4D0TDxU
Underneath the bridge, the tarp has sprung a leak
The animals I've trapped have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass and drippings from the ceiling
It's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings
Something in the way Mmm-hmm
No idea what the lyrics mean..... but in the true sense of Grunge... it really doesn't matter.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Questions
After last week’s lecture on ‘Indie’ and Independent music and its inclusion of the ‘Grunge’ sound/subculture I became increasingly interested in Grunge. Watching the Hype documentary cemented Grunge as my topic for the final essay. Where did that term even come from? I must look that up…
AHA! “The word grunge is believed to be a back-formation from the US slang adjective grungy, which originated in about 1965 as a slang term for "dirty" or "filthy." Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green River—and later Mudhoney—is generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe this sort of music.” (Wikipedia, 2009) Or of course it mentions Bruce Pavitt, one of the co-founders of Sub Pop record label, as responsible for popularizing the term in the late 80’s.
Green River, Mudhoney, The Melvins, The Monomen, Screaming Trees and, yes of course, Nirvana were all a part of this ‘Seattle sound’. What is most interesting is how the rest of the world interacted with this sound and the aesthetic connected to it. So for the essay question I am supposed to be formulating I will definitely be going with the second topic, “The Local and the Global”. Some rough questions I will look at answering -
How did grunge rise to such popularity? (I already of course know mostly how this happened as it was covered in the Hype documentary)
How the world became included in the cultural context of one logging town
What those included in the local scene, thought about all the ‘hype’.
So essentially how Seattle at the time of grunge kept its local scene mentality (if it did at all) despite the subcultures rising popularity? And of course…did Grunge really die?
So I will have to clearly do a lot more research to fully understand the ‘grunge’ phenomenon, its significance as both a local scene and/or how it, as a subculture, formed a global network. The range in the library catalogues seems a little limited, but I will certainly start there. As this is a University assignment I am reluctant to turn to the internet (ignoring the fact I used Wikipedia above!) for information but then again that’s where music is moving too, along with its fans and cultures.
AHA! “The word grunge is believed to be a back-formation from the US slang adjective grungy, which originated in about 1965 as a slang term for "dirty" or "filthy." Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green River—and later Mudhoney—is generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe this sort of music.” (Wikipedia, 2009) Or of course it mentions Bruce Pavitt, one of the co-founders of Sub Pop record label, as responsible for popularizing the term in the late 80’s.
Green River, Mudhoney, The Melvins, The Monomen, Screaming Trees and, yes of course, Nirvana were all a part of this ‘Seattle sound’. What is most interesting is how the rest of the world interacted with this sound and the aesthetic connected to it. So for the essay question I am supposed to be formulating I will definitely be going with the second topic, “The Local and the Global”. Some rough questions I will look at answering -
How did grunge rise to such popularity? (I already of course know mostly how this happened as it was covered in the Hype documentary)
How the world became included in the cultural context of one logging town
What those included in the local scene, thought about all the ‘hype’.
So essentially how Seattle at the time of grunge kept its local scene mentality (if it did at all) despite the subcultures rising popularity? And of course…did Grunge really die?
So I will have to clearly do a lot more research to fully understand the ‘grunge’ phenomenon, its significance as both a local scene and/or how it, as a subculture, formed a global network. The range in the library catalogues seems a little limited, but I will certainly start there. As this is a University assignment I am reluctant to turn to the internet (ignoring the fact I used Wikipedia above!) for information but then again that’s where music is moving too, along with its fans and cultures.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I have never had a blog, or twitter and I barely use facebook so this could be very interesting. I am very much new to this whole thing. Hopefully this post works! As for the topic of my essay I have decided to go with none other than...PUNK. What I am really interested is how some subcultures are seen to 'die out' after a while. Is that just because the media stops reporting about them or is it because maybe the cultural context around the subculture changes. There are still punks around but are they really the same punks of the 70's and 80's? Not sure. Perhaps I will find out. Perhaps I won't. Perhaps that'll be my essay topic. I hope so. It's hard thinking of topics. I think I must do some reading first. I aim to have a topic before friday!
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