The other day I downloaded the complete Soundgarden discography (minus the most recent album), which is notable for only one reason: I lived in the Pacific Northwest during the heyday of what came to be called—in the mainstream media anyway-- “grunge rock”, when bands like Nirvana, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney, and the Melvins released their seminal early works, and yet, with possibly a few exceptions, I was for the most part indifferent to their existence.
I suppose I can be forgiven for not owning copies of 8 Songs or Bleach when they were brand new; I struggled through junior high and early high school at the time, in a Mount Vernon, WA that could hardly be accused of riding the cutting edge of underground culture. Only a tiny minority of kids my age had much of an idea what was happening music-wise even in a city as nearby as Seattle, and many of them had, I imagine, older siblings or hip friends from out of town to help indoctrinate them into an appreciation of local independent rock n' roll.
By my junior year, Northwest rock gained international acclaim with the debut of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, an event that has since become recognized as one of the biggest moments in recent pop music history. Still, apart from Nirvana's output and a couple of Melvins albums, I remained generally ignorant of hard rock produced in my home state. Up until then, it was through a stoner friend of mine and his metalhead buddy that I got most of my information about the heavy stuff, and their tastes weren't local.
While other kids my age jammed to Mudhoney and Soundgarden, I was still stuck in the mire of thrash metal I'd entered late in the seventh grade. More often than not the bands whose tapes spun creaking in my Walkman were Slayer, Megadeth, Kreator, Voivod, maybe the Death Angel tape I bought when I was fifteen with money I earned cleaning gutters and cutting firewood for an old lady in my neighborhood.
Like most teenagers not raised by wealthy, overindulgent parents, I had little-to-no money to spend on the things I enjoyed, so every trip to the record store came loaded with a number of serious, budget-conscious decisions. My purchases concentrated on the bands and labels I knew, and seldom strayed from that narrow path. If I hadn't heard of it, there was little chance it was going to leave the store with me. The parents of the metalhead threw money at him like talking ATMs, and the stoner sold enough dope to keep him waist-deep in new tapes, often as many as ten a week, by bands he'd up until days before never heard of. My own parents were hardly going to hand me cash to spend on music that to them sounded like three blenders fucking a cat.
Lack of a consistent pipeline of information about contemporary hard rock was a partial factor in my ignorance of local bands, but there was another reason as well. A couple of days after downloading the Soundgarden discography, I went biking along the Santa Cruz river with Badmotorfinger on my mp3 player. Until then, I had never heard the album in its entirety. Certain songs were familiar, in particular “Jesus Christ Pose”, but the rest was unknown to me. It's a superior example of the down-tempo, bass-heavy, '70's influenced rock that was coming out of the Northwest around that time.
Then something occurred to me. I was enjoying this album a lot more now, in my late thirties, than I would have around the age of 17, when it was brand new. The reason seemed obvious: I'm a much happier person now than I was then, and my outlook is much more positive. The music I listened to in my teens was geared toward disenchanted introverts and weirdos with few friends. I stalked the corridors of my high school zoning out on Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Butthole Surfers, and a copy of the Melvins Bullhead that I probably listened to at least three hundred times throughout my senior year. That isn't the soundtrack to a contented adolescence.
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| This isn't the cover to Bullhead...It's Lysol. Close enough. |
On the flipside, there was the music aimed at disenchanted extroverts, the stuff my peers hung out in parking lots and drank beer to, smoked bowls to, made out to, and went to see performed at the OK Hotel and elsewhere on delirious trips into the city. Soundgarden, Mudhoney and others like them fell into that category for me. I only developed a grudging appreciation for Nirvana after Nevermind had topped the charts and everyone my age was talking about them as if they'd found the cure to virginity.
So I sing the praises of the internet age. Without it, I'd have a lot less opportunity to try out bands I otherwise wouldn't want to risk hard-earned and limited funds on. Still unsociable after all these years, I'm not in a position to rely on word-of-mouth when it comes to new—or, in Soundgarden's case, old—music. It's a dream come true, really. Finally a technology exists that allows a misanthropic cave-dweller like me to be almost as on top of things as the most freewheeling hipster.
Science!
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