Greetings! My name is Thomas Nadelhoffer. I am a professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston. I have been obsessed with music since my teenage years during the 1980s. Back then, I was a die hard fan of punk, heavy metal, and thrash metal--a love that hasn't dissipated. So, I decided to dedicate some of my downtime during the Covid-19 pandemic to put together chronologies of some of my favorite musical genres: punk (see here), thrash metal (see here), and doom metal (see here). I most recently decided to develop a similar chronology for a genre that draws heavily from these genres and that is also near and dear to my heart--namely, grunge.
I still remember the first time I heard the brutally heavy sound of the Melvins after the release of Ozma in 1989 , which led me to discover Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Nirvana in short order. It didn't take long for the rest of the world to also discover the insanely talented music scene in Seattle (and the surrounding area). This chronology represents my attempt to trace just *one* of the distinctive sounds from *some* of the leading bands of the so-called “grunge scene” (that is, the variety of bands living and performing in Washington and Oregon in the late 80s and early 90s). Start with the glorious fuzzy guitar rumble of bands like the Melvins, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Nirvana, and so on. Where did that sound come from—that amalgam of punk and heavy metal with a sound all its own? This chronology represents my attempts to figure that out. I am using the same approach—and content borrowed from—the other chronologies I already developed.
My own preference for the doomier and punkier side of grunge no doubt influenced (biased) my selection process and so on. But I nevertheless hope that some people might find it useful. Because Nirvana is my favorite bands from the scene, the chronology is shaped in various ways by what Kurt Cobain and other band members have said about their influences as well as what other groups from the scene have said in interviews, documentaries, etc. The grunge scene was steeped in an interesting amalgam of musical influences which I try to capture below. Like all chronologies in subgenres of rock, this one starts in the 20s with the blues—where any genre of rock music has it's origins.
There is also a special focus in this chronology on garage bands from the late 50s through the 70s and metal and punk bands in the 70s and 80s, which heavily influenced the sound that one eventually finds in bands like Melvins, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, L7, and others. In addition to including bands that influenced the grunge scene—and/or participated in it—I have also included bands that were being influenced by the grunge scene as new genres were developing in the late 80s and 90s like sludge metal, post hardcore, and so on. I did a deep dive on bands from Seattle and the Northwest more generally, so I included as many of these bands in the chronology of grunge as I could find (starting with The Fabulous Wailers and The Sonics in the 1960s and running through The Wipers, Fang, Tales of Terror, and U-Men in the early 1980s).
To highlight the tragic ending of the meteoric rise and fall of the grunge scene, I have only included three albums from 1994: (Alice in Chains: Jar of Flies EP (1994); Soundgarden: Superunknown (1994); Stone Temple Pilots: Purple (1994). These are the last albums in the chronology (although I do list some of the post-1994 music that has been released by grunge-era bands and their spins offs).
Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994 effectively broke apart the grunge scene as the media sensation it had been. His tragic death was followed years later by the drug overdoses of Layne Stanley (2002), Scott Weiland (2015), and Chris Cornell (2017)—to name just a few of the more prominent casualties of the grunge scene. Many of the artists who produced this incredible crush of amazing music in the late 80s and early 90s paid a hefty price for the fruits of their labors. This chronology is dedicated to them, for changing music, and for changing my life for the better (at a time in my young life when I desperately needed the connection their music provided).