Editor's note: This column by Alaska Humanites Forum President and C.E.O. Greg Kimura observing the 20th anniversary of the release of the landmark grunge rock album Nevermind was originally published in the Fall 2011 issue of The Forum, the newly redeisgned magazine of the Alaska Humanites Forum. To obtain a free copy, email: dholthouse@akhf.org.
Humanities folks like me are fools for historical anniversaries. 2011-12 marks the sesquicentennial, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, of the Civil War. In Alaska, where we commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of statehood in 2009, it marks the fortieth anniversary of both the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) and the creation of the Alaska State Park system.
This autumn also marks twenty years since the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind, an album that I and twenty-six million others had on 'repeat' on our CD players.
Every generation possesses its own soundtrack. The music imprints on the collective consciousness. Or reflects it. Think of the big band swing of Duke Ellington, the crooning of the Rat Pack, Elvis’s rockabilly, or the different phases of the Beatles.
For those of us in Generation X (born between 1964 and 1980), for at least a sliver of time at the beginning of the nineties, it was grunge music.
Epitomized by Nevermind and, a few months later, Pearl Jam’s album Ten, grunge was the first and last time that “alternative” or experimental “college” music topped the pop charts, displacing the era of manufactured arena rock bands. It was also the last time guitar-based rock and roll ruled before the rise of hip-hop/urban music.
Equal parts metal, art noise, and post-punk, grunge reveled in fuzzy guitars and stream-of-consciousness lyrics more often screamed than sung. It articulated all the angst and postmodern irony of the generation that grew up in the looming shadow of the Baby Boomers.
Generation X was told it would be the first in America’s history with a lower standard of living than its parents. In 1991-92, before the rise of the Internet and social media, it looked like America’s first failed generation.
The media glommed onto the moniker “Generation X.” The disposable “Brand X” generation. The name rankled, but stuck.
Then came Nevermind with its raging Generation X anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that yelled what we were feeling. Its loud-soft-loud formula, purposefully ragged edges, and the world-weary cynicism of its lyrics turned the soft hippie values of the Baby Boomers on their head.
But cynicism is not nihilism. Grunge was a musical statement of our generation’s search for authenticity. Of the value of substance over style. Of the very human impulse to reject being written off. The music spawned a whole aesthetic, from slacker cinema and genre fiction like Douglas Coupland’s eponymous Generation X, to flannel shirts and pole climber boots.
It is important here in Alaska to remember that the grunge aesthetic as well as the music was rooted in the Pacific Northwest, signaling another cultural shift. Its stars looked and dressed like us, and, for once, what mattered came from outside the New York-LA paradigm. Soon the region would be identified in the national imagination with more than the outdoors and grunge, as Microsoft and Starbucks became economic and cultural ciphers.
Yet, it was just for a sliver of time.
Two years later in 1993, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana’s lead singer, killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head. Baggy jeans replaced grungy ripped jeans. Rap/hip hop grew to outsell rock and roll. It has every year since 1994 to become not only the reigning pop idiom, but “Generation Y” and the “Millenial” Generation’s musical voice.
Twenty years on, Generation X is graying into middle age, but, Dylan Thomas-like, rages against the dimming, if not the dying, of the light. For all the 21st century optimism, the US and Europe again teeter on the edge of recession, raising questions not only about Generation X’s economic legacy, but also the outlook for future generations.
And what about music? The entertainment press waxes on about the moribund state of pop. Hip-hop seems to be running out of ideas. People are numbed by the indistinguishable Disney/American Idol/X Factor flavor of the moment being marketed to them.
I, for one, await the new Nevermind to shake things up, like happened twenty years ago. Until then, in honor of the anniversary, I’ll listen to the old one. Except now it will be on my Ipod, not a CD.
– Greg Kimura, Ph. D.
Editor's note: To the right is a recent photo of 20-year-old artist Spencer Elden, who, as a baby, was photographed underwater for the cover of Nevermind. Elden recently told CNN that he celebrated the 20th anniversary of the historic album with friends. "We hung out ... and just listened to Nirvana music, drank beer and hung out. It was a good time," he said.
