RAIN CITY REQUIEM by Gavin Bertram
Penned by New York journalist Mark Yarm, Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge arrived to coincide with Nevermind’s 20th anniversary.
“
Everybody loves us
together hundreds of quotes from those who
in the scene at that time looked up to,” Yarm
Everybody’s getting kind of old
were there into a fascinating narrative.
says. “But they didn’t get much attention
Couldn’t hold a regular job Long live rock and roll (Overblown, Mudhoney, 1992)
A
– partially because they rejected that. And Of course, there has to be some pre-history,
they broke up before grunge broke, and they
and so Yarm begins this weighty 500-plus
rejected the opportunity to reform to cash in
page tome by relating the exploits of Seattle
on it. It’s not something that many people will
band the U-Men in 1985.
care about that much, but for me it was very
NY music form that comes to dominate the culture will inevitably be maligned and ridiculed after its peak.
important to have their voices in there because they were such the forefathers of this scene.” That band, more in the garage punk mould
That’s particularly true of anything that has its
than those they inspired, released the Step On
roots in the supposedly hallowed ground of
a Bug album in 1988, before disbanding. In the
punk rock, where progression of one’s career
meantime though, acts including Green River,
or creative outlook is viewed with suspicion if
Screaming Trees, Melvins, Soundgarden,
not hostility.
Mudhoney, and of course Nirvana were burgeoning in the north-western city.
After Nirvana’s unbelievable rise and tragic fall, the music that had come to be known
All were steeped in the lore of underground
as grunge fell victim to this syndrome. But
music, with early releases on independent
20 years on it’s possible to look back on the
labels like Sub Pop, SST, and C/Z. It was a
movement with clearer eyes, and rediscover a
vibrant, self-supporting scene with really no
raft of gems.
discernible connection to the mainstream music world.
Mark Yarm’s recent book, Everybody Loves Our Town, focuses on the phenomenon that
Gradually, though, it was co-opted into that
was the Seattle music scene of the late 1980s
realm as first Soundgarden, and then Alice
and early 1990s. The tale is told masterfully
“The U-Men are considered a proto-grunge
in Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana, and
through the oral history form – weaving
band, the one band who pretty much anyone
Mudhoney were picked up by major record
20