donjunio

Then I would say "Zuma," "Sleeps with Angels," and the live "Weld," considering your passion for grunge. Then "Mirrorball" with PJ, I think you’ve already listened to that!

"after the gold rush," which is his most classic work, "On the beach," which for me is his most intense and poetic work, "Everybody knows this is nowhere," the cornerstone with Crazy Horse... I would say three are enough to start!

I’m definitely glad!

Anyway, "homegrown" also met the same fate as "chrome dreams" and was never released (but its fragments have come out here and there). You confused it with "American stars and bars"!

Welcome zuma, with such a beautiful username I can only embrace you. I'm still trying to resist the temptations and I'm awaiting the moment when I'll have it physically in my hands, but it's getting tougher and tougher....

-Cobain, who certainly would not have endorsed such a travesty. Then you talk to me about trip-hop. But if at a certain point, in the 90s, you could see the showgirls from Striscia la Notizia doing their semi-nude dances with that music playing in the background!!!!

Well, regarding the Reznor-Cobain discussion, I can only tell you that in one of my first discussions on Debaser, a couple of years ago, I found myself defending Trent against the classic alternative-carbonari and those who "listened to him before he became famous," accusing him of having massified and trivialized the true industrial culture of Foetus and Ministry at the altar of the dollar god. Reaching a wide audience intelligently and without compromising one's art remains a great achievement for me; I’m not a fan of the sectarianism of alternative-Hindus, even though among my idols, I have many brilliant outcasts and losers, from Bruce Palmer to Greg Sage himself. I prefer Jay Mascis to Cobain: should I be snobbish just because Kurt sold three times the records Jay did? The wave brought by Nevermind was certainly a short-lived revolution (Restoration wasn’t far behind; the industry takes over everything: the hope of building an alternative society to capitalism based on music has faded since 1969; there's not much to do), but for me, it indelibly marked the spirit of those years, representing the USA and Western society from the perspective of a "Teenage Wasteland." After all, rock is a flame that has always burned quickly. How long did punk really last? The 40 minutes of the first Sex Pistols album. The wheel turns, and as someone said, those who stop actually fall behind.
It’s quite clear that if you define "implosive" Alice in Chains (some implosions are welcome, especially after creating albums like "Dirt" or "Above" by Mad Season!) and "never born" Mudhoney (true pioneers of the scene), you have a marked idiosyncrasy towards the term "grunge."
<< putting Soundgarden in the grunge category was even comical since it’s clear they resembled groups like Black Sabbath far more than the American indie bands from the late '80s that were supposed to be the genre’s inspirations. >> But have you ever heard "Bleach"? If that album isn't indebted to Black Sabbath, with its dark thicket of heavy riffs, albeit reinterpreted through the prism of Black Flag... grunge isn’t a precise style (just like the post-rock or trip-hop you mentioned), it’s a powerful term born to best define the pastiche of metal, punk, and psychedelia that many practiced in Seattle, within various peculiarities. In this "style," Soundgarden were the undisputed masters; we could use our friend Black Dog for an erudite exegesis. Musically, I believe the Seattle bands are still a source of inspiration for many today; just ask AlessioIride and his band. Certainly not the only one, because at that time there were also many other excellent scenes (post-rock and stoner, to name the most obvious ones), but the "Seattle Sound" is far from having been homogenized and digested: just think of how many reviews are on this site. In short, grunge was certainly a social phenomenon, but it was also a musical story of great success.
Regarding the attitude of the artists, I prefer artists who question the contrast between art and business, perhaps amid thousands of contradictions, but at least sending a message of ethical integrity. It's too easy to say, "we're in the game now, so let's dance" and accept any nonsense from the industry, like sponsorships for clothing, exclusive distribution contracts with Auchan, or selling one's art for a TV commercial, as even Dylan did. Then you believe that commodification and grunge travelled on parallel tracks, due to "compromising media contaminations": good for you. Tori Amos, however, doesn’t seem to have batted an eyelid when one of her songs remixed by Van Helden became a club hit; the royalties must have settled any ethical doubts. The same happened to Nirvana, but posthumously to Cobain, who would certainly never have authorized such a travesty. Then you talk to me about trip-hop: but if at a certain point in the '90s you saw the Veline of Striscia la Notizia doing their semi-nude dances with that music in the background!!!!

"Nevermind" brought nothing new compared to, I don't know, any Pixies album from the late '80s, so it can't even be considered groundbreaking (or let's define it that way for extramusical reasons)... I don't think I've said it was revolutionary from a stylistic standpoint. It was revolutionary in the sense that it eroded the wall the American media built around punk, in that it changed (for me, for the better) the tastes and attitudes of many, forcefully entering the imagination of people even little interested in music, and because it brought a new way of conceiving rock, more intimate and sensitive. I don't believe it was all about drugged kids from MTV: otherwise, William Burroughs wouldn’t have asked him to collaborate on a record. And while Cobain was fortunate to take advantage of the work of others before him, it's redundant to point that out. Restating again that he never renounced this (he went on the Letterman Show wearing a Melvins t-shirt), the same can be said for Reznor. He also brought to the surface attitudes and experiments from a certain type of '80s culture (Foetus above all), knowing how to find, just like Cobain, an exciting and enjoyable synthesis for the masses. The point I made about Trent's attitude goes beyond the temporal discussion or dates: it was just to emphasize that certain marketing tricks were well known at the time, both from the Nirvana management (made up of scumbags, people who breathed a sigh of relief when Cobain, already unmanageable, pulled away to exploit the icon ad libitum), and from certain artists themselves. And anyway, what you define as the "obsessive manner" of promoting Nirvana's material happened when the phenomenon was already well established: it was MTV that jumped on the Nirvana bandwagon, realizing too late that there was a whole user base that had been neglected up until that moment: Nirvana was already a well-known name in the music scene. Obviously, this is just the opinion I've formed, both from what I remember of the time and from the retrospective analysis of the period.

Anyway, regarding the Pixies-Albini issue raised by Azzo, it’s no coincidence that the collaboration sank quickly and amidst great arguments. Albini stifled the grace and melodic sensibility of the Bostonians, who were so fed up with Steve's well-known bad temper that they recorded everything very quickly, just to end that ordeal. Albini, notoriously touchy, has claimed to have disowned that album, stating that he never laid a hand on it. It's truly singular that such an influential album was born in such a tumultuous context: it’s the uniqueness of rock!

Yes, but the discussion is about the producer, not the album. There are producers whose work you immediately recognize; Date was one of those, Albini goes without saying, the same applies to Moulder, or, still in the metal realm, Ross Robinson from the early Korn, not to mention Steve Lillywhite from the English new wave. Wallace and O'Brien, as excellent as they are, make you sound amazing (and indeed they are highly sought after), but they don't bring particularly innovative tricks to the musical table. Wallace, just to give an example, is also the one who mixed Nevermind, making it perfect and clean for radio.