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When Nirvana Came to Britain..BBC2

Still, 1991 was a bloody great year (especially for me in my early 20s). I've not seen the BBC programme yet, however the Sonic Youth documentary '1991 - The Year Punk Broke' is definitely worth a watch for anyone who hasn't seen it.

1991 was a great year for music. Here's Spin's to 20 (a bit confusing as it counts down from 20 to 1, but the labels go from 2 to 21).
https://www.spin.com/1991/12/best-albums-1991/

Number 1 may surprise you. Not that it isn't a great album, but that it's #1.

I lived in Seattle between Bleech and Nevermind (89-91). Mudhoney was king. There many good to great non-grunge bands too. Posies and Young Fresh Fellows, for example.
 
I was 11 in 1991, wish I’d got to hear some of these bands at the time but for some reason I wasn’t interested in music much back then. Since then I’ve discovered Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Gruntruck etc. Funny to think I never heard them at all in the 90s!
 
1991 was a great year for music. Here's Spin's to 20 (a bit confusing as it counts down from 20 to 1, but the labels go from 2 to 21).
https://www.spin.com/1991/12/best-albums-1991/

Number 1 may surprise you. Not that it isn't a great album, but that it's #1.

I lived in Seattle between Bleech and Nevermind (89-91). Mudhoney was king. There many good to great non-grunge bands too. Posies and Young Fresh Fellows, for example.

Not sure about that top 20, I can't see the best album on that list. I'll give you a clue, it was released the same day as nevermind and badmotorfinger.


Bleach is my least favorite nirvana album. Just a kind of nerdy grungy garage rock. The others are great.
 
Not sure about that top 20, I can't see the best album on that list. I'll give you a clue, it was released the same day as nevermind and badmotorfinger.


Bleach is my least favorite nirvana album. Just a kind of nerdy grungy garage rock. The others are great.

Google thinks it's either Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primal Scream, or A Tribe Called Quest. I'm guessing Primal Scream.

Fwiw, I posted the Spin list just as a reminder of some of the albums that came out that year, not necessarily my favorites, though I do rate about half of them.
 
REM's Out of Time was a 1991 classic, although the production value was absolutely shocking, it still contained on my all time great songs, Country Feedback.
 
great documentary, loved that they stayed in a croatian hotel (I'm croat) in shepherds bush (down the road from where I grew up). nevermind was one of the first albums I bought, along with pearl jam's ten. had a massive effect on me and still listen to those albums now.

there's an interview somewhere where Kurt really didn't like how Nevermind was produced, that it was over-produced and In-Utero was closer to the sound they were looking for.
 
I liked Nirvana, I think Nevermind is a classic pop punk album, and In Utero is even better. But they didn't change anything about music. tbf, that's a big ask.
 
I look at it from the other angle. For me Nirvana (at least Nevermind) were the diluted mainstream pop production version of a scene I’d been following for many, many years with bands like Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney etc etc. For me Nirvana represented the end of something, not the start. FWIW I rate Bleach way higher than Nevermind. That had an edge to it. I’m not saying I don’t rate Nevermind, it just felt very pop and very late, and I’d largey disappeared into the techno scene by then anyway. It certainly wasn’t an isolated thing that came from nowhere, IIRC Cobain himself stated Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt at writing a Pixies song! This scene had existed since the very early ‘80s and was more than a decade old by the time Nirvana broke into the mainstream. There are also obvious trajectories into both shoegaze and Brit Pop too. None of this stuff comes from nowhere.

Very much the genre of music I'd would have been listening too during that time and still some of my favourites to this day but I'd say Nirvana was closer to Mother lovebone or Soundgarden but none of them wrote 'Smells like teen spirit' which made 'Grunge' accessible to the masses which made it pop(ular) music.
I don't think Nirvana or Nevermind changed music but Teen spirit was the first song by a band of this genre that broke into the mainstream and I'm sure Kurt's image, attractiveness and sad and untimely death helped with their popularity and trajectory into 'superstardom'.
Great band though my favourite LP by Nirvana is probably In Utero and Alice in Chains would be my favourite band from that genre.
 
great documentary, loved that they stayed in a croatian hotel (I'm croat) in shepherds bush (down the road from where I grew up). nevermind was one of the first albums I bought, along with pearl jam's ten. had a massive effect on me and still listen to those albums now.

there's an interview somewhere where Kurt really didn't like how Nevermind was produced, that it was over-produced and In-Utero was closer to the sound they were looking for.

Pearl Jam's Ten was probably their best album, but I got a bit put off after their Unplugged session, where Eddie basically just took his clothes off throughout the set, such a ponce. Wasn't really what Grunge was about.
 
I watched the documentary last night. Great watch.

Of course they didn't "change music", because all music development is iterative. But they certainly changed the trajectory of popular music.

Anyway, having been in my formative years when grunge was blowing up (middle school), I'm still a sucker for the sound. I love all three Nirvana albums, but In Utero is my favorite due to combining the raw edge of Bleach and the more skilled songwriting of Nevermind. Pearl Jam's Ten is also a favorite (but not as much as the Merkin Ball ep!). Alice In Chains are also great, pretty much every album while Layne was still alive...that self-titled album is a dark, gritty beast. Soundgarden on the other hand, I could never get into. I never got on with Chris Cornell's singing. I'm still warming up to earlier stuff like TAD and Mother Love Bone. I was too young and the music was too underground for it to have crossed my radar back when it would have made a deep impression.

As someone who was growing up with Nirvana, the music that came before simply didn't matter, in a sense, at the time because Nirvana was now. Of course it's great to go back and hear how the sound developed (Kurt was never shy about his influences btw). But the same can be said about any trend in music, "oh, this sound developed from this and that band/artist and it wouldn't exist with out it". Obviously. That doesn't mean it cannot be significant in its own right.

Shouldn't this be in the Music subforum?
 
I look at it from the other angle. For me Nirvana (at least Nevermind) were the diluted mainstream pop production version of a scene I’d been following for many, many years with bands like Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney etc etc. For me Nirvana represented the end of something, not the start. FWIW I rate Bleach way higher than Nevermind. That had an edge to it. I’m not saying I don’t rate Nevermind, it just felt very pop and very late, and I’d largey disappeared into the techno scene by then anyway. It certainly wasn’t an isolated thing that came from nowhere, IIRC Cobain himself stated Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt at writing a Pixies song! This scene had existed since the very early ‘80s and was more than a decade old by the time Nirvana broke into the mainstream. There are also obvious trajectories into both shoegaze and Brit Pop too. None of this stuff comes from nowhere.
This was exactly how I felt at the time but in retrospect I think they probably deserved to be judged on their own terms: some really good songs, which I only realised later.

Watched the documentary last night and considering that they had interviews with both surviving band members it seemed really flat and low rent: late night filler, really. Can't put my finger on why exactly but thinking back to documentaries like this that have worked, they've managed to communicate the excitement of the scene that a band started or stood for, and there wasn't one in the UK: all the excitement then was coming from dance music. As Sideshowbob says, they didn't change anything, and they didn't stand for anything either, or start anything, or even fit in with anything that was happening at the time. So that only really left Kurt's glib laddism on The Word (their "Sex Pistols moment" apparently) and eye-rolling over the way mainstream culture appropriated the look, and that's pretty much how I remember it at the time. It was all very Gen X.
 
all the excitement then was coming from dance music

Maybe that's a generational thing. Madchester had reached my corner of the suburbs by 88/89 but that was about it.

Superfuzz Bigmuff, Bug, Daydream Nation, Bleach - it was a pretty exciting time to be 16 :)
 
It would be interesting adding a poll of age to this thread...

As barely a teenager and more alternatively inclined, the Dance scene that was emerging (which was pretty big in Liverpool) just seemed to be full of chavs and hooligans, we sure did have a load of them legging us when they saw us that's for sure shouting 'moshers'...

Ironically. I did get into NuNRG , EBM and Cybergoth in my early twenties, London influence and the lure of Brixton Mass and Slimelight and Grunge and Goth was put aside in reaching for the lasers with some of my chemists finest.
 
Maybe that's a generational thing. Madchester had reached my corner of the suburbs by 88/89 but that was about it.

Superfuzz Bigmuff, Bug, Daydream Nation, Bleach - it was a pretty exciting time to be 16 :)
Yeah, I'm around the same age, maybe a bit younger, and '88-89 was a great time for that kind of music, but there was no scene for it where I was (Belfast). Maybe some indie discos. It was a couple of years later that Nirvana broke big and by that stage there was a big dance scene and some really great dance music: it just felt that that's where things were happening, both locally and nationally.
 
This was exactly how I felt at the time but in retrospect I think they probably deserved to be judged on their own terms: some really good songs, which I only realised later.

Yes, I’d agree with that. They were a great pop band, one of ‘the’ great pop bands, and one I largely missed as I’d shifted into other forms by that time (electronica, techno, plus exploring jazz, Krautrock, minimalism etc). To be honest I’d pretty much given up on guitar music at the time (aside from shoegaze), and ‘Brit Pop’ which appeared soon after only firmed-up that decision.
 
I am one on my own I know, but I think Nirvana were just another over-hyped band.
It’s only pop music, after all...

You're not on your own. I can enjoy Nirvana, but they were just another post-punk band. I don't really understand what was novel or exceptional about them. In fact, at the time I thought they were a bit passé and retro.
 


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