Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music by Greg Prato

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

• 
  Patrick

  Three things I learned:
  
  1. The drummer from Alice in Chains recorded "Facelift" with a broken hand.
  
  2. Eddie Vedder got paid $80 to teach Matt Dillon how to play guitar for the movie "Singles."
  
  3. The font for Nirvana's logo resulted from the graphic designer of "Bleach" just using whatever was already loaded on the computerized type-setter because she didn't want to put forth any effort since Sub Pop already owed her a bunch of money.
  
  I love oral biographies, especially about bands ("Fool the World" about the Pixies is another great example). This has interviews with Eddie Vedder--who never does interviews, Kim Thayil from Soundgarden, Mark Arm from Mudhoney, and Layne Staley's mother (pretty intense), as well as a hundred other people involved in the time/place in various ways.
  
  See also: "Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana" and "Our Band Could be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991."
• 
  Jimmy Leitsch

  Loved the content. Disliked the layout. The entire book is done in interviews, but with no context given by the author. I loved what each person was talking about, but had difficulty remembering who was who. There's a list of descriptions in the back, but constantly flipping in the back got annoying, especially if the description for someone was "concert goer." Again, I loved the content and learned a lot, but I wish Prato would create a new edition that was not an oral history.
• 
  Courtney

  Yes. I am still on this bullshit. It's fine. I get it.
  
  There's a reason why
  Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge is the more widely read of these two oral histories of grunge. And it's because, sorry to Greg Prato, it's the better done book. While, like mentioned, both are oral histories somehow Everybody Love Our Town has the better flow. There's often moments within this book that you have to take a minute to figure out who is being talked about and who is talking about them. There is a cast of characters at the back but what Everybody Loves Our Town does that this book doesn't is often put who is talking in brackets so that we are reminded why this persons opinion is here.
  
  The cast of characters obviously overlaps but there are some people here that are not in the other book and vice versa. The strangest exclusion to me seemed to be Courtney Love and her band Hole. Any and all mention of Hole is scrubbed from this text, and Courtney is only mentioned as Kurt's wife. Just seemed.. odd. I will say that Nancy McCallum (Layne Staley's mother) participated in this book and not the other, which, if you're a dead set Alice fan I guess is a point in this books favour.
  
  Once again, and like I mentioned with Everybody Loves Our Town, for a scene that claimed to be so supportive and what not there are plenty of people ready to tear others down. Pearl Jam was equated to an industry plant. Soundgarden didn't stick to their roots and chased mainstream success, blah blah blah. There's a lot of bitter people having a whinge about who was derivative and whatever. It's funny considering how often it seemed to be emphasised that whole thing was about the scene coming together and uniting punks, metalheads and rockers. It does get tedious after awhile. Though the use of various slurs pops up here too, it doesn't seem to be as overwhelming as it was in Everybody Loves Our Town. Gen X. C'mon. No need to call everyone a f-*. Yikes.
  
  The choice in this books size, layout etc are a point against it too. Such a silly complaint really but there's a decent amount of heft here and the size conduces itself to flopping over a lot. If you're a bed reader, like myself, that can be both irritating and dangerous.
  
  There's a couple of strange narrative choices made here. Mike Starr disappears from the story entirely post Brazil (nor does it seem he was interviewed for this) though, this was published before his death in 2011. And while Van Conner and Mark Pickerel from the Screaming Trees both contributed very little is spoken about Mark Lanegan, who I was fascinated enough by in Everybody Loves Our Town to pick up his memoir (Which I aggressively recommend to everyone. Possibly the best music memoir I've ever read and captures Seattle far better than this book does. So go read
  Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir). However there does seem to be a bit more of Mark Arm (Mudhoney) here than the other. Which he's an entertaining dude.
  
  So. Unfortunately. For this book (and Greg Prato) Everybody Who Loves Our Town just manages to do everything better, it's more comprehensive and an overall far better read. But if you're a grunge/"Seattle sound" nerd and just want to consume everything or just on a huge nostalgia trip then there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading this as well.
  
  Also, Candlebox absolutely seems to get ripped apart in this so maybe if you're a fan of them... steer clear?
• 
  Ed Wagemann

  There was a chapter at the end of the book that asked people how Grunge will be remembered. Some folks said it changed music, it changed the industry, etc. Maybe. The only thing that I can see that it did was it helped the corporate powers-that-be to have another pigeonhole which to exploit. Musically, as Jack Endino said, Grunge was basically 70s hard rock with a bit of punk attitude. And personally I agree. I dont feel that there is anything special about the Seattle scene or Grunge when compared to other scenes or movements in late 20th century western civilization. I don't see where Grunge accomplished anything meaningful. Still, I enjoy a regular share of the music, and I dress--even 20 years later--basically in a Grunge style, a style I have been dressing in basically since I was first able to pick my own clothes--probablly around 9 years old when I wore a pair of gray sweat pants and a flannel shirt to school every day...
  
  
  
  
  Why Everything You Think You Know About Punk Is Completely Wrong:
  
  http://generation-add.blogspot.com/20...
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Greta

  Woah, this book spent 6 years in my to-read list and I'm so glad I finally picked it up. A very enjoyable read, however, reading the last 100 pages is quite a bummer. Now I have to spend some time listening to Nirvana 24/7 as in good old teenage-angsty days until everything gets back to normal.
• 
  Anton

  It is a good book but if one needs a very good book on grunge I would rather recommend Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm. It is more expansive, has a much greater selection of interviewees and a couple of really moving sections (the murder of Mia Zapata and Layne Staley's demise).
  
  This one is solid 4/5.
• 
  Kelly

  If you have any interest in the History of Seattle music then this is the book for you. Although I found it pretty depressing at times because of all the talk of drug addiction, the lives lost to it & the talent wasted, the facts & the music kept me very interested. Great read
• 
  Christine

  This book was interesting. I've never read a book entirely of interviews before. And not necessarily ordered interviews.
  
  The beginning was kind of boring, lots about bands I've never heard of from the 50-70s. But it was interesting to consider the influences of some of my favorite music.
  
  Then you get into why you are reading the book. To understand the development of the "grunge" era of music. And you quickly learn to hate the following things...
  
  1. MTV
  2. Heroin
  3. The music industry
  4. Heroin
  5. Heroin
  6. MTV
  
  The book is kind of a fun read until people start dying. Then it's heartbreaking. All of these incredibly talented people who die entirely too young.
  
  I've started really hating the homogenized society we are becoming and this book really didn't help that. But it is a good read if you are interested in the era.
• 
  David Dewata

  Compolation of quotes. Boring.
• 
  Jeremiah

  
  While I came of age int he Grunge era I was never a fan of its biggest stars. (eg. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden). Mudhoney was the one exception, but they were never superstars on a national level like those other groups i mentioned.
  
  All that said, this is a fascinating oral-history style book. I am a big fan of this type of history because there is far less editorial interference in the narrative. It is also a way to get people to have a conversation about events without them being in the same room. I appreciate that the book spends considerable time setting up the peak of the Seattle scene by delving into the late 70s, early 80s, and what all set the stage for what is to come. The book also spends a lot of time in the aftermath. So many people didn't make it.
  
  Some people were not interviewed, or perhaps turned down the author. We never get Courtney Love or Dave Grohl's commentary, for example, except when they are being paraphrased by others. I finished the book three days ago and don't recall seeing their names at the beginning of quotes, but I could be wrong.
  
  The one danger with books like these is that there are so many names that it's easy to lose track. Some of the names I knew exactly who they were as their thread weaved from the 80s to the late 90s, but some of them I had to look up. Luckily there was an index.
  
  
• 
  Brian Nelson

  I got into music in the early to mid '90s. This was the music of my formative years. I'm really happy people are documenting it.
  I have two complaints about Grunge is Dead. The first is about the audiobook narration. All of the author asides, additions, etc. are quieter than the rest. I get that they wanted to show when it wasn't the interviewee's words, but sometimes it was hard to hear.
  My other complaint is with the oral history format. Sometimes it felt fairly disjointed. Overall, though, Prato did a good job piecing all the interviews together to tell the story in a relatively chronological order. It couldn't have been easy putting it together. And I got more used to the format as I got further in.
• 
  Scott

  The deal with this book is you’re just going to read snippets of interviews. For the whole book. Besides a contextual sentence or two to frame each chapter, the author just organizes all the dozens of interviews into small chunks where stuff about a certain person or event are next to each other. Now mind you these are (shall we say) “colorful” people who have questionable views on life but you get the real picture warts and all. This is how music books should be written and I found it pretty entertaining as well as variously frightening, off-putting, hilarious and exhilarating.
• 
  Nicola Batecola

  Similar to Yarm's "Everybody loves our town" (and, in fact, sometimes the interviews used are the same), this is a good, comprehensive account of the Seattle scene. It does have Layne's mom on it, and it covers most of what's interesting. However, Yarm's book has a better flow to it and feels easier even though it's longer. If you're super interested, get both books - they do overlap, but it's worth it.
  Nice work by Prato, it's a fine oral history, worth a read.
• 
  Melissa

  Interesting to learn more about the scene from the people who lived it. I do not recommend the audiobook - aside from the author's narration (they should have hired a pro and researched how to correctly pronounce names of WA towns), I had to reference the book several times to look up who was talking and what role they played.
• 
  Andrew

  Collection of interviews with people in the grunge scene. At first this was a bit difficult to understand since the stories jump around. A bit of wikipedia searching to get background on the people helps fill in the blanks in these interviews.
• 
  Donna Carpenter

  I'll always read books on grunge. Even if they are oral histories, which is a terrible, lazy format, especially when the topic switches from one band to another without any segue or obvious
• 
  Richard Haynes

  What happened was formed before the big 4. Good history lesson about the bands that were before the big acts of grunge. Time to go back and listen to these trailblazers.
• 
  Eric

  Great read, very informative, delves deeper than just the BIG grunge bands.
• 
  Jade

  Nice music history from first-person point of view.
• 
  Charles Poisonheart

  Nonostante un'immagine di copertina molto rivedibile, Grunge is dead. Storia orale del grunge è un volume estremamente godibile ed interessante che racconta attraverso le testimonianze dirette dei protagonisti (da Jeff Ament, Mark Arm e Jerry Cantrell, passando per Chris Cornell ed Eddie Vedder) l'epopea delle maggiori (e minori) band dello stato di Washington. Dagli albori dei primi anni ottanta (con U-Men, Skin Yard e Malfunkshun), passando per la nascita della Sub Pop, l'esplosione mainstream del grunge, toccando anche il movimento riot-grrrl, arrivando sino al 1996 ed alla disgregazione delle principali band. Per chi bazzica di letture musicali, è paragonabile -fatte le ovvie e dovute proporzioni- al monumentale Please Kill me di Legs McNeil, in salsa grunge. 
• 
  Josh Beedy

  Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I'm not a huge fan of grunge music specifically (or any other subgenres of rock discussed in the book, honestly) but I really like reading about music scenes regardless. It's super cool to see the way that these scenes built up and grew, and the way that the book portrays everything, through the quotes of those who actually experienced this "grunge movement," is really powerful. I'd never read or even heard of any books comprised entirely of quotes before reading Grunge is Dead--I honestly thought the book was a podcast that had been transcribed, and honestly it might as well have been. Everything being told through personal stories makes it feel like you're having a chat with whoever is being quoted. The stories told feel so personal, and a lot of them were, in fact, very personal. Looking through other reviews it seems like some of the people interviewed in this book aren't normally keen to do so. Honestly, it just makes it feel even more personal. That's my favorite thing about the book, the way that the personality of everyone interviewed can shine through their quotes.
  
  I definetely don't consider the "quote-book" thing to be perfect, though, because there's often some parts that the quotes make confusing. The thing I noticed the most is that often the quote-based nature of the book made it hard for the author to include proper transitions. On occasion, the topic of the quotes would fade into the next topic over a series of two or three vaguer quotes, but often I found that the topic would change suddenly. One second the interviewee was talking about Soundgarden, and then the next interviewee would be talking about Alice in Chains. Couple this with the fact that many of these bands are new, or at least unfamiliar to me, and this got quite confusing at times. I would assume that this would be less of a problem for someone more well-versed than I at this type of music in general (again, I'm not super big into grunge, metal, or really any of the genres discussed--I just like to read about music).
  
  Even though it was a bit confusing from time to time, I've thoroughly enjoyed Grunge is Dead. I think the book's meant for someone who has an interest in Seattle music already, like many of the other reviewers, but I learned a ton from this book about stuff that I don't think I would've ever learned otherwise. I agree with the other reviewers that the book had some really cool interviews, even if I wasn't familiar with those being interviewed beforehand. I'd honestly recommend it to anyone who loves reading about music. It might be a bit hard to read for some, and you might end up looking people up online, but I think for people who like reading about music, it is a very interesting book.
• 
  Doungjai

  an excellent look at the history of the Seattle music scene, with the main focus being the "grunge" sound that exploded in the early nineties. I like how the book was laid out as an oral history; with dozens of people contributing to this book, it did get a bit confusing after a while keeping up with who was who (thank goodness for the five page list of those who participated at the end of the book).
  
  the list of those who contributed to this book is a who's who of the Seattle scene, but there are a few notable names missing: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and Dave Grohl of Nirvana for starters.
  
  There were chapters devoted to those who left us too soon: Andrew Wood of Malfunkshun/Mother Love Bone, Mia Zapata of The Gits, Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. It was especially heartbreaking to read about Staley's last years.
  
  it was fun reading about the bands and their antics during gigs, and it was fascinating to read about the behind the scenes stuff, like how badly Sub Pop Records was run. and for every Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, there were at least a half dozen bands who sadly didn't receive the same amount of recognition that should have (Screaming Trees is the most notable example of this to me. Yes, they did get a big record label deal and a spot on the Singles movie soundtrack, it's always been my opinion that they should have gone farther).
  
  highly recommended, especially if you grew up in the early nineties and loved the music that came out of Seattle.
• 
  Hannah Jo Parker

  Yes, I'm a sucker for exactly this sort of book, but I still feel like it deserves 5 stars. It's an impressive, extensive look back at grunge and its impact on Seattle (and Seattle's impact on it). People like Mark Arm, Kim Thayil, and Eddie Vedder get a chance to tell the story from their perspective, so it feels authentic.
  
  I got out my copy of Sub Pop 200 and listened to it repeatedly while reading this book, so I could connect the songs to the people in the book. I appreciated the chance to reconnect with a time and a scene that were really important to me. I was one of those geeks who immediately read every word of The Rocket each time it came out and had the good fortune to see some of these bands in small Seattle clubs in the late 80s and early 90s.
  
  I learned a lot from this book, especially about the grim role heroin played in the scene, which was heartbreaking. But, even though there are a lot of very sad stories, there's a ton of humor, too. Many of the people who were interviewed for this book are very funny (I'd love to go have a beer with Kim Thayil sometime, for example, who seems rather grounded and funny). Some of the participants are bitter, of course, and some are even jerks, but I appreciated the various perspectives.
• 
  Mänsomläser

  Jag minns tillfället då jag hörde Nirvana första gången mycket tydligt. Mitt musiklyssnande ändrades radikalt efter det. Förutom Nirvana var jag aldrig särskilt förtjust i de så kallade grungebanden. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden och Alice In Chains var alldeles för “hårdrockiga” för min smak. Men oavsett vad man tycker om genren så förändrade de här banden musiklandskapet totalt.
  
  Boken består av över 130 intervjuer – “the oral history”, precis som i
  Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, en bok som jag gillar väldigt mycket. Här tycker jag det funkar mindre bra. Dels för att det saknas så många stora namn (Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, Courtney Love, Chris Cornell för att nämna några) och dels för att det är så många obetydliga personer som uttalar sig om saker som de förmodligen inte har någon insikt i (hur Courtney Love är som person till exempel).