Scene theory

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.