Magic Whip was great. Why do you hope they leave it at that, though?

Dinosaur? Hooks? Nah. Arena rock morphed with punky sludge. Also major chords. Lots of major chords.

J&MC? Also lots of major chords. One noise album followed by a bunch of pop albums (dont get me wrong I love both of these bands).

No. Nirvana did something else. They approached melody in a very unique way. Like they were writing “Drive My Car” or “Here, There and Everywhere” for manic depressive punks. Loudly.

Nirvana created a more unique sound than Dino or JAMC. Can’t think of any artists who have truly replicated what they did with those bummer notes and making it rock.

JAMC was basically improved upon by Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized. I’d start naming bands that sound like Dino but I fear I’d never stop.

Can you think of anyone who truly sounds like Nirvana? Besides maybe PJ Harvey for a couple years?

^^ that’s good writin’

===

ANYWAY

after oh, i don’t know, centuries of stubbornness, which i hope paid off somehow, i’m finally finding the DRAG CITY catalog on spotify!!

which to some represents the end of civilization (life went on after rome fell) but to me it’s *fucking heaven*

i’m starting with the whole of the royal trux albums, one by one, in order

FUCK YES THANK YOU FOR NO POSSESSIONS

i’m ready to go anywhere with my music. i might self-deport...

***PLEASE LIBRARY OF BABEL COME TO US NEXT***

I've no idea about major or minor chords but I still hear plenty of hooks in Dino and JAMC. They were just influenced by different bands/sounds.

I disagree that Spacemen 3 improved on JAMC but that's just a taste thing. I hear no connection whatsoever between Spiritualised and the JAMC.

Spacemen 3 also started a year before JAMC.

(And were also only "noisy" for a short part of their overall time)

Holy shit that is big news. I've always been sad at the lack of Smog.

Yeah. I said that. “One noise album followed by several pop albums.”

The noise element they started with — essentially riffing on VU — was done to perfection by Spacemen 3, even if S3 started earlier (not sure about timelines off the top of my head). Ditto for Spiritualized. It’s all very VU. J&MC added some Beach Boys and new wave into the mix with Darklands, but none of that has much to do with Nirvana.

Hooks aren’t what set Nirvana apart. It’s hooks and delivery and the method of writing.

Again, who sounds like them? Not J&MC. Not Dino. Nor does Nirvana sound derivative of either. At all. Surprised nobody threw Melvins out there. Would have been much closer. But none of these bands wrote three-chord pop songs that struck the tone of Nirvana.

Just saying, Nirvana doesn’t really sound like any of the bands they were influenced by, nor do the bands they influenced truly sound like them.

Nirvana was musically interesting as hell.

I hear no connection between J&MC and Nirvana, past J&MC’s early singles and hits of Psychocandy. Totally different sonic beasts.

None of these bands wrote songs like Nirvana. I prefer some of these bands to Birvana personally, but the conversation was about whether or not Nirvana was musically interesting. I think it’s insane to suggest they weren’t. Still shocking that their songs were radio hits. I loved through it and yet I can barely imagine it. Seems almost inconceivable now. That alone is interesting.

Again, anyone know of a band that sounds like Nirvana? Hits the same buttons as Nirvana? Because I kind of don’t. Certainly not at the international level.

A bunch of Replacements songs. It's by no means EXACTLY the same thing, but since you said "like" and "buttons"...

Bleach sounded somewhat Melvins, but I'd say Pixies were the closest sounding to Nirvana at the time. Meaning pre Nirvana. Doolittle especially.

Killing Joke moreso to these ears, but then again I could never abide the pixies.

I agree, on both counts.

wat! pixies was so much fun. but anyway....

grohl’s drums sounded straight out of the melvins, but of course i had not heard of the melvins at the time—so that sound was totally new to me, as to most of the global population back then. i can remember hearing them in a car crossing a bridge in dc. i remember the exact moment. i was “holy fuck what is that” and i had this manic grin take over my face.

thing is the melvins would not have caught on like that even if you had them on exclusive 24h radio rotation because they lacked the other side of things— the catchy tune, ha ha ha.

and yeah the pixies had that— the pixies were so much fun! why you no like? not saying they were revolutionaries or anything—-just great fun. yeah. more fun than REM. not as much as the B-52s.

so one could try saying nirvana = melvins + pixies. and that works a little maybe, but nah. it doesn’t add up. nirvana had their own thing on top of that. and that was... kurt. people can split hairs all they want and name names but in the end nothing was like them on the year punk broke ha ha ha. nothing. nothing.

although i remember was it a year before that? i remember also hearing kool thing and saying “fuck what is that” and i went to a strore and asked to identify the thing and bought GOO, and fortunately the friendly record store employee was not a snobby cunt, and not only he identified the song but sold me evol on top of that. thank fuck for the unpretentious friendly record store guy who told me with a smile that i was gonna like that instead of saying he didn’t listen to the radio and sigh at having to deal with me.

but anyway that was the dawn of time and pre-napster. sweet sweet napster.

I was never that into Nirvana, either. I appreciated Kurt being a figurehead but never really related to him the way some obviously did. If anything I preferred Hole (at least Pretty on the Inside) to anything by Nirvana. I never got The Pixies at all, despite endless tries. Even my interest in Sonic Youth was starting to fade by the early 90s.

yeah i never was a member of his cult of personality, but as talent goes, i felt he had it in spades.

early hole was great for sure, and im not saying nirvana was the best music out there at the time— but it connected to the culture in a very particular way. one that has not replicated or matched since in the rock genre. talking about the mass phenomenon—which was my original point about “cultural relevance” (and rock being overtaken by hip hop in youth culture).

in the late 90s/early 2000s i was in grad school, teaching college students— there was 1 punk kid, and everybody else was massively into eminem. what year was it when 8 mile came out? that was his cultural orgasm probably. eminem was the music icon that followed the 90s, but he was not a rocker. also did not eat buckshot as his last meal, so not so much myth around him, but yeah.

I felt that by the 90s, American Indie had become more explicitly 'American' in its cultural references. I was more into 80s Swans and the post No Wave thing, which felt more broadly urban than anything really national. Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, etc. seemed to have a greater connection with cities like London or Berlin or Manchester than to anything particularly American whereas I never felt any of the big Grunge bands could've come from anywhere but the US so always felt more exotic than something I could really relate to.

yeah everything from the lumberjack look to everything was very west coast. people were moving from ny to seattle lol. don’t know about references—always been weak on lyrics.

i remember late 90s the big thing that came out of england was the... what’s the name of victoria beckham band? girls gone wild something. and some blur/oasis competition apparently? i forget things.

again— not talking about music that was interesting to me, but more about mass culture. in the 2000s rock’s response to hiphop supremacy was—nickelback lololol.

I dunno. Just felt like it was a good way to end the Blur name after the letdown that was Think Tank.

Well Brit-Pop was a contrived backlash against that very American-ness felt to be dominating British pop culture in the early 90s, but was just as parochial. But it's also true that Britain had been through Acid House in the late 80s which was absorbed by the more interesting British bands at the time. MBV's Loveless was definitely informed by that scene.

i see.

btw, reason i mentioned mass cuture is because as we all know well (but often forget) art has always followed money— from ancient athens to the renaissance to new york in the 50s. economics is not nothing. art follows the same laws.

and yes yes, the evil mainstream, bla bla— but a rising tide lifts all boats. fringes are fed from the center.

anyway, for science, i was just doing an experiment—

tried playing some nickelback. was overcome by vomit. you can hear what they took and sanitized from “grunge” (whatever that is). and it’s just unlistenable nasty. i’d rather drink lysol. just fucking NO.

but then i put on the slim shady LP (i have it on right now) and i’m not blown away in any way but it’s entertaining and funny and i’m gonna play the rest of it.

btw, there was a line there about which one of the spice girls he wanted to impregnate—nothing parochial about such global fantasies.