For the last few years, I have been so nostalgic for the sounds of the 90s, I can't even explain why. It may have all started Fall of 2010 when one of my favorite rock writers, Steven Hyden (The AV Club), posted a series of articles about the music of his youth called Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation. Focusing entirely on rock in the 90s, the 10 part series had me hooked. Because of that series, I started seeking out anything and everything I could find about the era, reading Courtney Love's 1998 biography for example, but only because I found it on a book table on the Upper West Side for $5.
The end of 2011 saw the relase of Pearl Jam 20 and finding Yarm's Everybody Loves Our Town as the result of obsessively Googling "grunge" and any band associated with the tag. It all could not have been more perfect. Being too impatient to wait for the paperback, I bought the hardcover. Which is great for a physical book nerd like myself (I don't own a Kindle/iPad or the like, I still prefer the feel, smell and read of an actual book), but horrible for a subway commuting New Yorker. It feels like it weighs 20 pounds, which is not so convenient on sometimes overcrowded trains. For that reason, I had reserved my reading to before bed and over the weekends. Which is fine for any normal length book, but not so fine for a book consisting of roughly 540 pages. This past weekend, I holed myself up in my apartment to get rid of an annoying ear infection (and avoid the heat) so I had some time on my hands and was FINALLY able to put a (slight) dent in this book.
Though I don't want to get too far into a review type post until I have actually finished the book, I will say this...there is SO much more to grunge, than Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. These four bands, though amazing, really only scratch the surface of what grunge actually was...and Yarm spells it out perfectly.
In an effort to completely immerse myself in this book, I decided to make an unofficial playlist of music mentioned thus far in my reading... Some artists were not available on Spotify, but I did my best to dig up something, on the few I couldn't find...
U-Men - Dig it a Hole
Cat Butt - Maximo
The explanation of how the band got their name, almost made me throw up...
Mr. Epp - Mohawk Man
Book cover photo care of Amazon
