Do you like Grunge music? There are times when it ROCKS. But more often than not, it is melodramatic and lame. It also ruined the concept of the rock star, which is hugely unfortunate.
The rock star was a reaction to postwar America. Give the hippies this: they were right that American society at that time was a buttoned-down place. It was just in the exact opposite direction of what they claimed. Instead of an oppressive right-wing hellscape, the America of the 1950s and 1960s was engaged in constant liberalization, unleashed and promoted by the hippies’ “Greatest Generation” parents.
Against this left-wing conformity stood the rock star. Bombastic, given to the pleasures of the flesh and occasionally the mind, and totally lacking in self awareness, these musicians gave America a glimpse of the power and danger of artistic creation—and, in their mass performances, a chance to experience and share in the divine.
Grunge ruined all this. Favoring minimalism over excess, and ironic detachment over unthinking expression, the Grunge “rock star” inverted and destroyed that title—and what’s worse, did so in the name of preserving it. T-shirts and flannel were in, with just the right tinge of not-give-a-shit-ism. Impossibly tight leather pants and big hair, which, as any stylist will tell you, takes enormous labor to produce, were out. Van Halen once demanded that venue staff provide a bowl of M&Ms in the dressing room with all the brown candies removed.1 Nirvana thanked the roadies profusely as they left the stage.
Does any of the above matter? Maybe not; we all have a lot of other problems in our lives. But in making the idea of the rock star impossible, Grunge robbed us of the one Dionysian outlet available to us in the gleaming, sleek, modern state in which we live—which seems less gleaming, sleek, and modern with each passing day.
Enough postcard Nietzsche. Enjoy the glories of being young and enjoying rock n roll:
Contra everything I’ve written above, Van Halen’s insistence on this had nothing to do with prima-donna-ness. Instead, the band made the demand to see whether the venue staff had actually read their contract specifications. If there were brown M&Ms, it was a red flag that the venue hadn’t delivered on other, more important items—like sound quality and lighting.
I enjoy it when Thomas777 takes a crack at cobain. I need more gen-x analysis to help me understand my youth.
In addition to lighting and sound, I believe the brown m&m bit was to protect against shitty staging- didn’t want equipment falling on you.