Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Okay, another themed music thread.

I lived in Seattle from summer of 1990 to summer of 1993. The summer I moved there MTV's rotation of rock videos was primarily comprised of glam/hair metal. A ton of Poison, Winger, Warrant, Nelson, and their ilk. That year Nevermind dropped, and everything changed.

Of course the music scene there had been churning for years, and it wasn't really an overnight thing. There was also actually a pretty good range of stuff mixed into what got labeled Grunge; it was guitar-based rock, of course, but with varying degrees of metal and blues and punk and post-punk mixed in. Of the classic heavyweights, Nirvana of course was more punk-influenced while Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were more metal-oriented, and Pearl Jam more blues-inflected.

The other night I stumbled on some videos on Youtube that I've repeatedly looked for online over the years but never been able to find. It seems that a bunch of bands I remember have just had stuff uploaded finally in the last year or two. Memories of songs from my teenage years that I literally haven't heard (in some cases) in eighteen years came flooding back.

This thread is for sharing some of these lesser-known bands. NOT the big ones everyone knows like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam. I love them too, but this isn't the thread for them. We're talking second or third-string. Bands who never got big. Maybe they got a video or two on MTV in the middle of the night; maybe Beavis & Butthead made fun of them once, but they never made it big for whatever reason.

All right then. With that said and the stage set, let's look back two decades and see what great stuff we find...

My first mentions go to Hammerbox, Gruntruck, Skinyard, Inflatable Soule, and My Sister's Machine:

Hammerbox

Gruntruck

Skinyard

Inflatable Soule

My Sister's Machine

Hammerbox is a big fave of mine. I'll hold my hands up, that I only encountered them thanks to the 3D0 version of Road Rash, but yeah, excellent band.

Also liked Paw, but they aren't from Seattle.

Love all the ones you've mentioned.

Does Mother Love Bone qualify?

Mother Love Bone- Stardog Champion

I mother earth:

Screaming Trees:

Forgot a big one!

never heard this song on the radio. loved it though. hold judgement until you've heard the whole song.
damn good guitar solo for a grunge group.

Candlebox- Rain:

Okay, another themed music thread.

I lived in Seattle from summer of 1990 to summer of 1993. The summer I moved there MTV's rotation of rock videos was primarily comprised of glam/hair metal. A ton of Poison, Winger, Warrant, Nelson, and their ilk.

Ixnay on the hairbandne. Do not speak of the Great Evil lest ye summon it by calling its name!!!

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Hammerbox is a big fave of mine. I'll hold my hands up, that I only encountered them thanks to the 3D0 version of Road Rash, but yeah, excellent band.

Never played Road Rash, but I saw a number of people on YT referencing it. Glad it got them a bit more notice.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Also liked Paw, but they aren't from Seattle.

No objection to Paw! I'm more focused on genre, time period, and not-being-big-stars for this thread. It's not Seattle-only. Got a specific song you want to mention/post a video for?


Alarmingrick- Nice choices in MLB and I Mother Earth! Screaming Trees is borderline of being too famous, IMO, but we'll let them in, especially with their seniority (founded 1985).

I think I have to veto Candlebox, though. Even if you don't see them as a bandwagon group (weren't founded until 1991), they had quite a lot of radio play, with what, six hit songs?

Tad! Gotta have a bit of Tad in there. Such an underrated band. This is the first track from Inhaler, an album which I happen to own on vinyl, but haven't listened to in years, due to my player being fethed! Forgot how good how it is...


Also can't believe no-one has mentioned Mudhoney! Awesome band, great tune.


These next two may technically be cheating...

The first is by Temple of the Dog, which is a grunge supergroup featuring Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron from Soundgarden, and Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Jeff Ament, who went on to become Pearl Jam. Their eponymous debut (and only) album is indispensible for anyone interested in grunge, and this is the best song on it in my opinion. Just sublime.


The next is from Mad Season, another grunge supergroup featuring Layne Staley from Alice in Chains and members from Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees. This tune is called 'Long Gone Day' and is from the group's first and only album Above. It features Mark Lanegan on vocals. It's weird one, but I love it.


Yeah.

Albatross wrote:
The next is from Mad Season, another grunge supergroup featuring Layne Staley from Alice in Chains and members from Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees. This tune is called 'Long Gone Day' and is from the group's first and only album Above. It features Mark Lanegan on vocals. It's weird one, but I love it.

Spoiler:

In fact, feth it, let's have another Mad Season tune:

Spoiler:

Yeah

I think The last two are going to get bounced. but god i loved Above. great disc.
Thanks for Tad! had never heard of them, but that's a great song.

I did leave quite a good number of great bands out. Tad and Mudhoney are excellent choices.

Temple of the Dog and Mad Season are disqualified for being too well-known.

Mad Season, as you've noted, is a post-boom supergroup.

Temple of the Dog is incredible, and fits the time period, but went Platinum, for goodness' sake. Hunger Strike and Say Hello 2 Heaven got massive MTV play and were standards on rock radio for over a decade. Anyone who has only heard the radio singles, however, would be well served to check out some deeper cuts. I HIGHLY recommend "Reach Down" and "Call Me a Dog", and only slightly less-highly recommend "All Night Thing" and "Wooden Jesus". Any fan of rock music who doesn't own this CD should feel ashamed.

Yeah, I just wondered how many of our younger members would have heard of the last two...

All period IIRC, not all strictly speaking Grunge.

Hater- Who Do I Kill:

Butthole Surfers- Who Was in My Room Last Night:

Revolting Cocks - Do Ya Think I'm Sexy:

Monster Magnet- Spine of God:

Therapy? - Opal Mantra:

Kerbdog - Dry Riser:

Mannahnin wrote:I did leave quite a good number of great bands out. Tad and Mudhoney are excellent choices.

Temple of the Dog and Mad Season are disqualified for being too well-known.

Mad Season, as you've noted, is a post-boom supergroup.

Temple of the Dog is incredible, and fits the time period, but went Platinum, for goodness' sake. Hunger Strike and Say Hello 2 Heaven got massive MTV play and were standards on rock radio for over a decade. Anyone who has only heard the radio singles, however, would be well served to check out some deeper cuts. I HIGHLY recommend "Reach Down" and "Call Me a Dog", and only slightly less-highly recommend "All Night Thing" and "Wooden Jesus". Any fan of rock music who doesn't own this CD should feel ashamed.

Screaming tress used to be favs on MTV's 120 Minutes during that period so I think they are disqualifid as well...

A great band from that same time that got totally overlooked was Boston's The Cavedogs. Saw them a number of times in the early ninties when I was regularly trekking to Boston to hang out with friends on weekends...

Albatross: Point taken. And they are great, of course.

George: Some interesting picks! Hater is kind of a later side project, right? More Garage than Grunge, but nice lesser-known cred, definitely. Butthole Surfers don't really match, genre-wise, and had a hit CD later in the decade, but that track is awesome and a classic, and I suspect that Kim Thayil would vote for its inclusion out of shared Sabbath-love, so allowed! RevCo more Industrial, but period. Monster Magnet is period, and I have a soft spot for them, but I don't think they quite fit. That's a cool track, though. They also got pretty big later in the 90s, and have that whole WWE association, which kind of has to condemn them if we're playing music afficionado (snob). Therapy? is totally cool, though a little on the late side of period, and I am not deducting any credit for coming from another continent. Allowed! Kerbdog I don't actually know! Checking them out now... Pretty darn cool. Also a bit late... Didn't even record their debut until I was back in NH. :( But I don't really get to define the scene. Nice one!


CT Gamer: Sweet Oblivion was a big enough album to definitely put Screaming Trees' right to be in this thread in question, but they are grandfathered in for seniority.

The Cavedogs... I actually hadn't heard of them before. These guys?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LPks6qJYAE

With Hammerbox, the song that got me into them was Trip.



Simple Passing was also on Road Rash which I really like, after that I managed to get hold of Numb.

Think my fave song overall is Trip, possibly due to the memories of playing the game with my brothers all those years ago, but this is also a fave from the album.



It is a fine album mind, don't think there was a song on there I disliked, been a while since I listened to it though. Going to have to break it out tomorrow when painting.


As to Paw, well I love the songs that where on Road rash, Jessie, Pansy and The Bridge, I think Pansy was my fave of the three, but they where certainly good enough for me to get Dragline.

Nice. Yeah, pretty much all of Numb is great. It's just a crime that those guys never made it big.

George Spiggot wins on Monster Magnet's Spine of God, BTW. I was just watching Motorvision, and the entire time Matt Cameron is wearing a shirt with that logo on it!

BTW, user jcfgrunge has uploaded most of that aforementioned legendary concert video onto YT.
http://www.youtube.com/user/jcfgrunge#p/search/0/D7tpHHEFc8M

But that's off topic for the thread, of course.

Some more obscure stuff:

Malfunkshun (Andrew Wood's prior band to Mother Love Bone):

Gruntruck- Crazy Love (this is the one that got on Beavis & Butthead):

Green River- Swallow My Pride (proto-Grunge; Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament before they joined Mother Love Bone, guys from Mudhoney too before Mudhoney):

A tiny bit out of the period you speak of, but they were signed to sub pop. Don't know how big they were in the US, but here they were effectively unknown.

Hazel - Truly:

Babes in Toyland?

I lived in Olympia WA for a few years, where the "seattle sound" evidently did a lot of of its gigging, and the guys from Nirvana, along with the Melvins, the whole cast of K records, Courtney Love, etc all lived in little crusty houses while making the "seattle sound". I was thankfully not there during the grunge explosion but a few years later.

It still reflects there, the record shops still do the hip to be vinyl thing, the kids all still have ratty blue dreadlocks, earth-first tofu eating punk tattoo sporting cliche "youth culture" like wearing their rebellion as a uniform and the like. The local bands still sound like attitude trumps effort and its not cool to actually have any virtuoso talent at your instrument. The MELVINS still play a show every year. I have been to three of them. Just a great sludge rock band.

I really dug the L7 and Screaming Trees back in those days. Which, makes me think, there really was no "grunge" genre, just a lack of fashion cares. Just a "look". If anyone can tell me how Nirvana's hoarse screaming and atonal power chords have anything in common with pearl jams bluesy guitar solos, Mother Love Bone's half-glam-half-junk-pseudo-hair band singer other than time frame and approximate location, or how any of them relate to Sonic Youth's feedback layered noise or the classic-rock-2-decades-too-late style of the Screaming trees or the chugging sludge of Melvins, out-of-tune shitrock attitude of Mudhoney, please let me know. I hate putting things in genres.

It's kind of surreal going to the local music scene in that town, I'm not sure if its tragically nostalgic or really cool.


btw thanks for all the great video links guys. gonna go relive high school for a while... I heard of it back before it was cool... all that crap

Why does it matter whether something is well known or not?

Guess I never got that about music.

Not from the Seattle scene but Im throwing them in anyway since they are so good.

Dinosaur JR


Sonic Youth

Early 'Stone Temple Pilots'. Whilst not from Seattle and accused of being Grunge posers, they moved more towards rock in their albums from 1995 onwars, after the 2 featured below. I was listening to my CD of Purple in the car a few weeks ago.

Interstate love song from 'Purple', their second album.


Meatplow also from Purple


Vasoline also from Purple


Plush from 'Core', their first album

I think 'Purple' is where STP started to properly come into their own, personally.

This thread has inspired me to check out all the old grunge stuff I was into when I was a kid! It's mad - all those American bands seemed so exotic when I was 13, as there was no internet, so we had to rely on what little was covered in the UK press. With youtube, you can see pretty much anything you want - last night I lost two hours in a 'youtube trance' watching Nirvana interviews and such. There's some great stuff that I've never seen.

BTW, I've been cleaning the house to 'Dirt' by Alice in Chains this afternoon. Seemed appropriate....

@George Spiggott - Woah! Kerbdog! Together, we make up 25% of the people who actually BOUGHT that record!
Have you heard their second record 'On the Turn'? It's pretty good, though poppier than their first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktDeuXe1AjY&feature=related

and they were, sort of, big ( over here anyway) for a while but...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yan77UKYcg4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktDeuXe1AjY&feature=related

and they were, sort of, big ( over here anyway) for a while but...

That is excellent. Nice find.

Some more cool stuff, especially from across the pond.

Babes in Toyland is awesome. Hazel and Dinosaur Jr. are definitely akin to the bands I'm talking about.

Stone Temple Pilots are great; I first heard Sex Type Thing on the radio in Seattle, and I always thought the imitation-Grunge attacks were off the mark. Core is an awesome CD. Of course, that might also have contributed to it going octuple platinum, and making them utterly unsuitable for this thread. Plush has always been a favorite of mine, both in the original and unplugged versions. Wicked Garden and Dead & Bloated are outstanding tracks. Big Empty, from The Crow soundtrack, is iconic. I always hated Interstate Love Song, but I know a lot of people loved it.

Guitardian- Yeah, there was always variety. But there are some common elements to the sound in many of these bands. Try listening to Soundgarden and Gruntruck back to back. There was the fashion thing too, though as you said, it wasn't originally a conscious thing like Punk was. It was just cheap & practical clothing for the Pac NW and for people who didn't care about fashion. They still had long hair (for the most part), but they weren't punks, and they mostly (yeah, there were exceptions like Andy Wood) didn't care to be pretty like the hairmetal guys who were all over the charts.

malfred wrote:Why does it matter whether something is well known or not?

Guess I never got that about music.

It can matter in multiple ways. Like a favorite book, film, painting, sculpture, or TV show, there is additional pleasure in knowing of a wonderful piece of art, when not everyone knows about it. There's also the joy associated with introducing friends to a new and pleasurable and impressive thing. That's leaving aside the less-noble pleasure of feeling superior because you know about something that others don't.

The main reason I asked for lesser-known stuff in the thread is to avoid wasting time repeating the great bands everyone's heard already. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Temple of the Dog. Or later stuff like Stone Temple Pilots.

A grunge topic? o hell yeah! mentioned above are some of my top bands so good to know that im not the only grunge fan left.

mono men, you men, the nymphs, the fluid, truly (not great) and 7 year bitch!

out of what i posted the nymphs are the top of that list.

Guitardian wrote: It still reflects there, the record shops still do the hip to be vinyl thing, the kids all still have ratty blue dreadlocks, earth-first tofu eating punk tattoo sporting cliche "youth culture" like wearing their rebellion as a uniform and the like. The local bands still sound like attitude trumps effort and its not cool to actually have any virtuoso talent at your instrument.

This isn't anything to do with Seattle or Grunge. This is standard punk subculture junk. It's the same everywhere (except possibly the tofu-eating earth-first bits; I think those are mostly West coast).

Remembered this group at work today. not really Grunge, but i discovered them around the same time frame.....



edit: forgot the spoiler

The only band out of Seattle I've ever liked has been Queensryche.

None of the alt-rock/grunge sound* ever appealed to me - I pretty much ignored much of the 90's 'new' bands as a result.


*But 'brit-pop' also never appealed.

chromedog wrote:The only band out of Seattle I've ever liked has been Queensryche.

None of the alt-rock/grunge sound* ever appealed to me - I pretty much ignored much of the 90's 'new' bands as a result.


*But 'brit-pop' also never appealed.

not to sidetrack the thread, but 'Operation: Mindcrime' was outstanding!+1

alarmingrick wrote:

chromedog wrote:The only band out of Seattle I've ever liked has been Queensryche.

None of the alt-rock/grunge sound* ever appealed to me - I pretty much ignored much of the 90's 'new' bands as a result.


*But 'brit-pop' also never appealed.

not to sidetrack the thread, but 'Operation: Mindcrime' was outstanding!+1

Have to agree...I love that album..
Lot's of good bands listed so far...big +1's to Guntruck,Green River and Mudhoney and I also have to say I'm happy to see Sonic Youth mentioned,I think they get over looked a lot.