I adore Pearl Jam. :( Their first two albums are marvellous. I don't have any of the others but I like a few of their other tracks too.

Pearl Jam were the 'rock' act the indie crowd dared to admit liking....

 

Not true, not in the slightest... As an "Indie Kid" at the time, myself and my mates also liked other "rock" acts such as Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Pepper, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana, Firehose, Smashing Pumpkins, Tad, Dinosaur Jr, Rage Against the Machine..... I could go on, but you get the picture..... ;)

 

I adore Pearl Jam. :( Their first two albums are marvellous. I don't have any of the others but I like a few of their other tracks too.

 

"10" and "Vs" are both decent albums IMO... They definitely captured a certain mood and time, although not as inspiring as "Nevermind", "Dirt", "Superunknown" or "Rage Against the Machine" it has to be said, but still....

Not true, not in the slightest... As an "Indie Kid" at the time, myself and my mates also liked other "rock" acts such as Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Pepper, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana, Firehose, Smashing Pumpkins, Tad, Dinosaur Jr, Rage Against the Machine..... I could go on, but you get the picture..... ;)

 

 

 

By any chance, were you a student in either London or the West Midlands in the early 1990s, as I seem to remember that, here in ‘Granadaland’, a lot of ‘indie kids’ were still in flares, waiting for the second coming of The Stone Roses.

 

Apart from the first two bands that you mention and Nirvana, I do not think I would have known who most of these acts were in the early 1990s and in fact, the name Firehose means nothing to me now.

 

I think these acts were the kinds of alternative rock bands that you would find covered more in Melody Maker or Sounds than in the NME, which I remember being slightly more ‘mainstream’ than the other two publications. I would not know who most of those acts were as my magazines of choice would be the NME, Q and Record Mirror [though Sounds and RM ended publication a couple of years into the 1990s].

 

I was actually reading something at the weekend about Pearl Jam’s upcoming tour [though it could have been in an issue of the Guardian Guide from a few weeks ago] and I thought that it was very true what the reviewer said in regards to the general criticisms, that the band has received over the last 20 years, from the wider rock media.

 

The criticism, put bluntly, is that they are not Nirvana and even after 20 years they are viewed negatively by the press as they are still not Nirvana. Therefore they have always been viewed with suspicion, at least in this country, as most people think they are ‘Corporate Rock Monsters’ of the worst kind.

 

Even though when I was at University, this is what I would have also believed to be true, I think this criticism is slightly unfair, especially as in the last 15 years, the Foo Fighters have been licensed to a number of major labels, one of which is Sony, the same multinational corporation that both Pearl Jam and Bolton were signed to, back in 1992.

 

Loz

 

The whole distrust of Pearl Jam started when Kurt Cobain called them commercial sell-outs which the NME happily ran with. (NME always was the least forward looking of the inkies)

Grunge was broken in the UK by The Melody Maker anyway, particularly by Everett True, who arse-licked any hairy rocker who came out of the North West of the US.

 

Grunge was basically metal that it was OK for indie kids to like.

 

Me, I was in seventh heaven when all these US bands started mixing Sabbath riffs with Punk attitude.

Nirvana weren't even the ones who were supposed to break big and I remember seeing them third on the bill to Tad and Mudhoney at The Astoria in 1989(?).

My Mum liked him (whether she does is another thing) and had two albums by him!

Michael Bolton is a lot of things. Ahem. But I'd include him on my list of secret guilty pleasures.

Michael Bolton is a lot of things. Ahem. But I'd include him on my list of secret guilty pleasures.

 

 

I was listening to Rod Stewart’s “Downtown Train” this morning on a compilation of tunes that were all sung by the many favourite artists of Michael Parkinson. Whilst listening to that particular tune, not only did I think that Mick Hucknell could actually be a good replacement for Rod in The Faces, but that “Downtown Train” sounded very much like a tune that Bolton would have recorded in 1990.

 

Whilst many people think that admitting a liking for Hucknell and Bolton will some how damage their social standing, especially if that admission is not given with an arched eyebrow and layer of ‘irony’, somehow Stewart is still looked upon as being quite acceptable, even though most of his albums in the 21st Century could have been projects given over to Barry Manilow. I think that you could say that Stewart has been ‘sailing on a sea of credibility’ ever since the 1970s, as in the 1990s his records were just as good [or as bad] as records by Bolton.

 

Loz

 

The whole distrust of Pearl Jam started when Kurt Cobain called them commercial sell-outs which the NME happily ran with. (NME always was the least forward looking of the inkies)

Grunge was broken in the UK by The Melody Maker anyway, particularly by Everett True, who arse-licked any hairy rocker who came out of the North West of the US.

 

Grunge was basically metal that it was OK for indie kids to like.

 

Me, I was in seventh heaven when all these US bands started mixing Sabbath riffs with Punk attitude.

Nirvana weren't even the ones who were supposed to break big and I remember seeing them third on the bill to Tad and Mudhoney at The Astoria in 1989(?).

 

Grunge was more like Metal for people who'd gotten fed up of the 80s Metal cliches, the big hair, the spandex, the fifteen minute guitar solos..... :lol: The fact that they went back to the likes of Zep and Sabbath as their influences it was more like the Grungers understood the original "heavy metal" attitude and vibe a lot more than the spandex-clad likes of Motley Crue, Duf Leotard or Van Halen, and by mixing it up with Punk, it made it a more exciting prospect too.....

 

By any chance, were you a student in either London or the West Midlands in the early 1990s, as I seem to remember that, here in ‘Granadaland’, a lot of ‘indie kids’ were still in flares, waiting for the second coming of The Stone Roses.

 

Never wore flares myself mate... Nor did I have a "bowl cut".... :lol: I still enjoyed Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Neds Atomic Dustbin, Ride, Lush, Poppies, etc though.... "Second Coming" when it came out, was a MASSIVE disappointment........

 

I was based in Scotland for most of my life til I moved to London in 2002...

 

Never wore flares myself mate... Nor did I have a "bowl cut".... :lol: I still enjoyed Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Neds Atomic Dustbin, Ride, Lush, Poppies, etc though.... "Second Coming" when it came out, was a MASSIVE disappointment........

 

I was based in Scotland for most of my life til I moved to London in 2002...

 

 

At that time [1992] I would not really know what would be going on in the Scottish Music Scene, as I stopped buying the Scottish music monthly Cut Magazine a couple of years previously. I do not know if you used to buy this magazine or are a fan of graphic novels, but if you are then you may know this magazine from an infamous comic strip by Grant Morrison which caused a lot of fuss at the time.

 

I used to get that magazine around 1988/1989 and the types of acts that would be featured would be ones like The Blue Nile, Win and Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. I think, through the pages of the magazine, I would have known acts like Paul Haig and Edwyn Collins first as solo artists before I discovered their work with Josef K and Orange Juice. In regards to Orange Juice I do not think I knew anything about their music in the early 1980s, apart from the fact that they had dolphins on the cover of “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”.

 

At that point I was a fan of Aztec Camera and owned their “Love” album [one of my favourite LPs at the time], but I do not think I knew of the Postcard Records link between Haig, Collins and Roddy Frame until a few years later. If you are in your 40s then you may have been part of "The Sound of Young Scotland" scene, though if you are also in your mid-30s, you will have probably just missed out like me.

 

I would have been in my later years of school when grunge broke into the mainstream, but as an indie fan, I think it would have been better to have been a 6th Former, 10 years earlier in the early 1980s when record labels like Postcard were first being created.

 

In the early 1990s, you did have Teenage Fanclub in the indie charts, but generally it seemed that Scottish music was being mostly represented by Del Amitri, Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet, acts who, at that point, did not release the best music of their careers [i like some of their other records]. Even though I would never want to listen to some of Wet Wet Wet’s records again, I think as a vocalist Marti Pellow is slightly under-rated. I prefer him than Michael Bolton.

 

Loz

Edited August 13, 201014 yr by Zippy T Doodar