Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

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Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music Details

Review "The most significant interviewee has to be Pearl Jam's [Eddie] Vedder, whose band has become Seattle's last great surviving grunge ambassadors. In a lengthy phone interview with Prato, the notoriously guarded Vedder, calling from Hawaii, opened up." --Rolling Stone"Start with the Sonics and keep moving. 'Grunge is Dead' is the ground floor, bloody version of that other Seattle music oral history. Prato's reporting is thick with anecdote and he pulls meaty descriptors from the hundreds of voices that tell the story of the scene. Unvarnished, the way this shit should be delivered." --Steve Miller, author, 'Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Rock 'n' Roll in America's Loudest City'"'Grunge is Dead' is a classic - best documentation of the grunge scene there ever was." --Martin Popoff, author, 'The Big Book of Hair Metal: The Illustrated Oral History of Heavy Metal's Debauched Decade'"It is a classic. If any kid really wanted to capture what the grunge movement was all about, 'Grunge is Dead' is the book to read, undoubtedly." --Keith Roth, The Electric Ballroom Radio Show""I thought it was really good." --Mark Arm, Mudhoney singer/guitarist"It's pretty much filled with comments and stuff from just about everyone that was around during those years--more of the insider on things than the outsiders attempting to fill in the blanks! Anyway, I do recommend this book. It's a fun read!" --Chad Channing, Nirvana drummer"I like this book. It lets the people who were actually here tell the story directly, without the author having any particular axe to grind." --Jack Endino, Seattle producer/musician"The author is not from Seattle, but the book is done in the Please Kill Me style so it doesn't really matter. It has some cool interviews with the guys from Mudhoney in it and it's always interesting to read a version of history that you were a part of." --Tobi Vail, Bikini Kill drummer"All those records from that time continue to let the world know what things sounded like in our little universe, but if someone wants to know what people were feeling and thinking about the scene as it all transpired, this is where I point them to." --Robert Roth, Truly singer/guitarist"(Grunge is Dead) is an accomplishment that will find fans as long as the music does. The book is remarkably comprehensive, nearly 500 pages long, and filled with rarely seen photographs, astute analyses of popular culture, insider gossip and interesting, funny and painful stories." --Washington Post Express"A complete, exhaustive and authoritative account of Music 1.0's last successful marketing experiment . . . an invaluable record." --Eye Weekly"Probably the most complete time capsule of a particular era in music history that has been penned to date." --Popmatters.com"Goes straight to the cow's craw for this enlightening oral history of the scene from the people actually involved, and no stone is unturned . . . the final word on an exciting musical mutiny, and triumphs as a potently honest view of the perhaps the last punk rock revival." --Synthesis "This tome is heavy and honorable, like a tombstone. If grunge is dead now (and by all accounts it is, despite its ongoing impact on rock music today) it was most certainly was alive." --Popdose.com"Fifteen years after Kurt Cobain's suicide comes an exhaustive tome (nearly 500 pages) . . . if you're still embracing the plaid button-ups of yesteryear, you might actually feel like you've died and gone to heaven." --Filter"The book is remarkably comprehensive, nearly 500 pages long, and filled with rarely seen photographs, astute analyses of popular culture, insider gossip and interesting, funny and painful stories." --Express, Washington, DC "An enlightening chronological history of the Seattle rock scene from the 1960s through the mid-90s, as told by the folks who lived it." --YuppiePunk.org"By approaching the subject as an oral rather than a written account, [Prato] gives the story back to Seattle . . . a multifaceted portrait of the music that pretty much defined the decade." --Blurt Magazine"Grunge is Dead' takes an inside look at one of the most successful and tragic rock scenes ever, by talking to the actual people who helped create it." --Stone & Double T, WXRX, Rockford, IL Read more About the Author Prato is a writer who contributes regularly to Rolling Stone. He lives in New York. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. As my high school days were drawing to a close, there was certainly something bubbling in the hard rock world. Bands like Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction, Living Colour, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were showing that not all rock bands had to sing about “fast cars and fast women” or dress like goofball spandex cowboys. Having only attended strictly big arena rock shows up to this point, I didn’t know quite what to expect when I agreed to attend a show on Saturday, March 17, 1990, at a club called L’Amour in Brooklyn, New York. The two main reasons I purchased a ticket for this three–band bill were to see the aforementioned Faith No More, as well as sci–fi metal headliners Voivod. After FNM’s fantastic set, the next band, which I was least familiar with, came onstage.The singer didn’t wait long — upon the first notes of the opening number, he was climbing over the crowd on pipes attached to the ceiling (if my memory serves me correctly — already shirtless, and wearing shorts that were completely covered in silver electrical tape), before dropping himself into the sea of “moshers” below. The guitarist looked like something out of Cheech and Chong, with a full–on beard, and his eyes seemingly constantly closed — as if he were reaching a state of nirvana playing monstrous Sabbathy riffs. The bassist’s large mop of curly hair bobbed in time to the music, while the drummer bashed out some impressively complex yet primal beats. This, my friends, was my introduction to the mighty Soundgarden.Needless to say, soon after, I was a major convert, buying just about every Soundgarden recording that I could get my hands on, and reading all the interviews on the band that I could gather. And in most of the articles, it was mentioned that there were other similarly styled bands from Soundgarden’s hometown — Seattle — that were on their way up the ladder as well. Over the next year or so, it appeared as though each month, there was a new band from the Seattle area to discover — Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains, Tad, Temple of the Dog, Mudhoney, the Melvins, the Screaming Trees, etc. And of course, when Nirvana and Pearl Jam hit, the rock world had thankfully shifted towards music that was both honest and real. And along with it came the word that would forever be associated with the movement: grunge.While the movement didn’t turn out to be as long lasting as many figured it would, what it packed into a four–year period (1990–1994) was pretty darn extraordinary. How many songs from this period are still being played on the radio? How many of these albums sound as great today as when they first came out, continue to sell, and are still being discovered by younger generations? I rest my case. It may have only lasted a few years, but for a few brief and shining moments, grunge certainly shifted the direction of culture (and even fashion), and brought in an unmistakable feeling of change — just as the ’60s hippie and ’70s punk movements had.The original idea for doing this book came about when I was doing a Soundgarden article for Classic Rock magazine back in 2004. While interviewing the group’s early producer, Jack Endino, he mentioned that almost every single article being written about grunge bands nowadays were by writers who were not from the Seattle area, yet were giving their “revisionist take” on what happened. Which got me thinking … what if a book was comprised of nothing but quotes from the actual people that experienced the movement firsthand, tracing it from its very beginning to its end? In other words, letting them tell the entire story as it unfolded (with only chapter intro paragraphs from yours truly). Nearly 130 interviews later, here we are. Read more

Reviews

Absolutely LOVE this book!! I was so happy to actually read information I hadn't already read somewhere else! I appreciate this book because of the quotes :) It really brings you that much closer to this movement in history, makes you feel like you know that person or band just a little better than before. It's not a book for someone looking to find facts or literal info...it's literally the thoughts, experiences, perceptions of the musician and bands in the eyes of the significant other, friend, etc. A unique read! You can't help but feel the authenticity of these quotes, considering the sources. Grunge fans, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc., I highly recommend!

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