Vedder is McCartney ; McCartney is Vedder

[PryTo]

Whats the last album or act in any genre that would be considered a cultural event?

A great question that got lost in there. I"ll give it some thought. But part of the point I've been trying to make was that Nevermind was a cultural event and will be remembered that way. Ten was a big, popular album and will be remembered as such.

[malice]

I guess, to me, grunge was just another form of hair metal/hard rock/whatever.

that explains a lot - grunge (although the term is a made up one by the media) wasn't hair metal. and the only real classification that I seem to remember holding any weight - have any sense of accuracy, I guess - was 'alternative' - which to me always referred to music being alternative to mainstream rock and roll - which at the time was largely hair metal.

and also, Jane's Addiction wasn't ever a band I could have looked at as part of that hair metal or even 'traditional rock and roll' music.
I don't know anything at all about LA or really anywhere, but the idea of Pearl Jam as a hair band, even as a band that was on the tail end of the hair band fury? it's antithetical to everything those bands- all of them, were about both aesthetically and musically.

Pearl Jam and Nirvana were basically riding the same wave all things being equal and first doesn't necessarily carry any importance as far as musical style when we're talking about a few months - 1991 through 1992 was really when all those bands made an impact.

Soundgarden had been around for a number of years before either of them, no? and their sound didn't change all that radically as a result of the big wave of that movement, they were finally just given an opportunity to reach a larger and more musically sympathetic audience as a result, yet I don't discount their influence on the Seattle sound because they weren't initially as big as Nirvana either.

anyway - you're welcome to your opinion, I am (very atypically) not looking to argue, just I don't think there's much in common with what I think of as hair bands and Pearl Jam's music nor their image as musicians in the first couple albums they put out.
my feeling is that Ten had big production sound because the idea of doing it differently didn't occur to anyone who was looking to make a profit from that album - I don't think the label knew what to do with those bands in 1991, they wanted to make them all fit into a set of preconceived ideas about what the music should be like so that's what they did.

[spike]

guys, malice is right.

[BurtReynolds]

random thoughts:

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

2.We often credit grunge with the death of GNR (who I don't consider hair metal), but I wonder if that was really the case. If GNR had their shit together, I think they would have pulled through just fine, like Metallica and other harder metal acts. It was the glam stuff that really was crushed. GNR was dead either way because of Axl.

3.My definition of hair metal is different from Pry's, then.

4.The internet age makes any kind of large scale and sudden change in the mainstream completely impossible, IMO. Not even close, really. New niches will form that nudge the bloated, lowest common denominator shitbag that is modern mainstream music a little, but not much. The 70s, 80s, and much of the 90s feel so different from each other, but style and taste shifts from the late 90s to today are so gradual they blend together in comparison. You don't have those radical, decade defining shifts in the mainstream any more. Hip hop is the last big contributor IMO, and that was mid 90s.

[PryTo]

I guess, to me, grunge was just another form of hair metal/hard rock/whatever.

that explains a lot - grunge (although the term is a made up one by the media) wasn't hair metal. and the only real classification that I seem to remember holding any weight - have any sense of accuracy, I guess - was 'alternative' - which to me always referred to music being alternative to mainstream rock and roll - which at the time was largely hair metal.

and also, Jane's Addiction wasn't ever a band I could have looked at as part of that hair metal or even 'traditional rock and roll' music.
I don't know anything at all about LA or really anywhere, but the idea of Pearl Jam as a hair band, even as a band that was on the tail end of the hair band fury? it's antithetical to everything those bands- all of them, were about both aesthetically and musically.

Pearl Jam and Nirvana were basically riding the same wave all things being equal and first doesn't necessarily carry any importance as far as musical style when we're talking about a few months - 1991 through 1992 was really when all those bands made an impact.

Soundgarden had been around for a number of years before either of them, no? and their sound didn't change all that radically as a result of the big wave of that movement, they were finally just given an opportunity to reach a larger and more musically sympathetic audience as a result, yet I don't discount their influence on the Seattle sound because they weren't initially as big as Nirvana either.

anyway - you're welcome to your opinion, I am (very atypically) not looking to argue, just I don't think there's much in common with what I think of as hair bands and Pearl Jam's music nor their image as musicians in the first couple albums they put out.
my feeling is that Ten had big production sound because the idea of doing it differently didn't occur to anyone who was looking to make a profit from that album - I don't think the label knew what to do with those bands in 1991, they wanted to make them all fit into a set of preconceived ideas about what the music should be like so that's what they did.

All good points. I'm not looking to argue, either. I was saying hair metal, which immediately evokes images of Warrant and Poison, when what I meant was metal, which was a big, popular genre that included a lot of different sounds and styles, but all of them having that big guitar/big drums/big chorus sort of thing going for them. Metal in the 80s included everyone from Warrant and Poison to, yes, MLB and Soundgarden. And I do see PJ as being at the tail end of that overarching metal umbrella, which spawned/included grunge, which then morphed into alternative. And yeah, a lot of those labels and morphings were driven by marketing departments. The music wasn't all that different, to me anyway.

[Norah]

A lot of words in this thread.

[digster]

random thoughts:

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

.

Musically, I think a lot of Ten was written before Ed showed up, so he may not have been the main factor. I think Andy Wood was a big voice in the songwriting for MLB, if not the main voice. So he may have brought some of that, which the other members responded to.

[PryTo]

random thoughts:

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

Andy Wood, for one, who was an over-the-top glam "rock star" character. Very different from Ed, who was from SoCal, influenced by (from listening to Bad Radio) the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a different group of musicians. I get the sense that Andy Wood listened to a good deal of Queen in his day; I don't get the sense that Ed did. I can't imagine Andy Wood on a surfboard.

[BurtReynolds]

Yeah I didn't think about Wood being a big part of the songwriting. I assumed Stone and Jeff handled it.

[digster]

I am definitely not too well-versed in MLB, but I was under the impression that Wood wrote for piano and then the band took them. This is coming from half-remembered interviews rather than a lot of knowledge of their music or process.

[PryTo]

random thoughts:

2.We often credit grunge with the death of GNR (who I don't consider hair metal), but I wonder if that was really the case. If GNR had their shit together, I think they would have pulled through just fine, like Metallica and other harder metal acts. It was the glam stuff that really was crushed. GNR was dead either way because of Axl.

Fully agree with that. Axl sort of epitomized everything that was wrong with metal in the 80s, at this point early 90s. The cartoonish stage "costumes," the misogyny, "Get in the Ring" and so on. Metallica had already distanced itself from GNR when they toured together in 1992. (I caught that show.) And while we're on the subject, let's not forget what Metallica looked like when they were headlining Lollapalooza in the mid 1990s.



Metal up your ass, doods.

[PryTo]

Yeah I didn't think about Wood being a big part of the songwriting. I assumed Stone and Jeff handled it.

I always assumed he wrote the lyrics and had the overall vision for the group.

From wiki: All lyrics written by Andrew Wood, all music composed by Jeff Ament, Bruce Fairweather, Greg? Gilmore, Stone Gossard, and Wood.

[spike]

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

andy wood died, jeff and stone got depressed and dark, then hooked up with a deep and moody singer. ten was coming from a totally different place than MLB - you could almost say it was the rejection of MLB. it's all in the PJ20 movie, really.

[malice]

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

andy wood died, jeff and stone got depressed and dark, then hooked up with a deep and moody singer. ten was coming from a totally different place than MLB - you could almost say it was the rejection of MLB. it's all in the PJ20 movie, really.

and a hundred other sources prior to the PJ20 movie...

[spike]

1.What caused the radical departure between MLB and Ten? Was it Ed? Was it just Seattle in general? MLB is pretty strongly 80s crap to my ears, but Ten doesn't sound like that at all other than a few production sounds like Digster said.

andy wood died, jeff and stone got depressed and dark, then hooked up with a deep and moody singer. ten was coming from a totally different place than MLB - you could almost say it was the rejection of MLB. it's all in the PJ20 movie, really.

and a hundred other sources prior to the PJ20 movie...

well yeah, but i thought i'd highlight the most glaring example.

[spike]

also, it's incorrect to assume that nirvana invented grunge or whatever. seattle was a gestating music scene for a long time before 1991, and cobain would be the first guy to say that he didn't invent the wheel, but rather was influenced by that scene - a scene that stone gossard and jeff ament were just as much a part of, maybe even more so.

[spike]

as an aside, it fucking bothers me how often i'm in the mood to listen to van fucking morrison these days.

[LetMeSleep]

Most bands play to their frontman's strengths. And Andy Wood appears pretty flamboyant and maybe the anti-Ed. Well, the persona of Ed we have seen.

[Lament]

This thread sucks.

"When the hell did Bruce Springsteen become 'classic rock'?" -Dudes in 1994

"When the hell did U2 become 'classic rock'?" -Dudes in 2004

"When the hell did Pearl Jam become 'classic rock'?" -Dudes in 2014

"When the hell did Coldplay become 'classic rock'?" -Dudes in 2024

"When the hell did Mumford & Sons become 'classic rock'?" -Dudes in 2034

And so on and so on...

[dimejinky99]

Pj were a lot more visible on Mtv over here for Ten, than Nirvana. Jeremy alive and evenflow seemed to be on every hour whereas Teen spirit was the only one of Nirvana's videos that got that level of play