Fossils from the Grunge Era; Excavating the cave of a beast.

If I’m the one to pick the three most important figures from the long buried grunge era, my names would read as follows: Andrew Wood, Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain.

Capitan Kurt
Kurt might be the populist choice, but he somehow got the whole Leader Badge shoved down his throat with Nevermind and I don’t think he intended to go that far. But what can you do when the ball gets rolling, except blowing your brains out. There might be a lot of reasons for Kurt Cobain to go into the heroin thing, flooding the Seattle scene like a pre-historic locus, wiping out so much talent in its way. More likely the kid had problems he needed to work out, but junk don’t want to solve anything, it just wants you to keep feeding your body like there is some parasite in there feeding off of addiction. But Nirvana became the flagship of the grunge fleet when the kids started to return the Michael Jackson album they got for Christmas for a bluish album with a naked infant under water, swimming towards a dollar bill. It landed Nevermind on top of the album chart and skyrocketed the band into the Elite Hall of the music business with something new, something that reminded the kids of where they were; in the middle of adolescence; in Adolescentia, a place where grownups don’t understand shit. That album blew my mind when I heard it the first time and sent my brainwaves from post-MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice and into rock forever. That time in history is in many ways one of the high watermarks where every new album was yet another explosion; Nevermind, Dirt, Vulgar Display of Power, Ten, Core, Siamese Dream, Rage Against the Machine. The list goes on and on and I probably missed some important albums here, but the point is; the early nineties left a musical void when grunge collapsed and MTV got more and more pop oriented. The rest of the nineties never managed to live up to the musical expectation created by this new line of hard core, anti star mentality. And what mostly blew the scene apart was junk, that potent drug who send you on the way to self destruction. That is a bad thing when you look at it from most angles, but it also created some haunting albums.

When Lane is gone what is left of Alice in Chains?
Take a look at Alice in Chains for instance. Dirt is the stronghold in grunge and an album pervaded with junk, in almost every song. Where would the album be without heroin? The creativity within the band would have found some other channel to project their dirty rays through, but it would never have been something as special and rare as this gem of an album. But you have to pay a price when you launch headfirst into that contaminated lake smelling of decomposed bodies, wasted youth and humiliation; that lake of blood, dirty water and poppy juice. Layne paid the price with his life, like so many others did. Junk does that to you, it makes you go all the way to the lid of the coffin where you lay down voluntary and slams it shut. There are survivors of course, like Keith Richards, Anthony Kiedis and Slash, but not all escapes from this daredevil game. And Layne certainly did not escape from the lake, instead it ended his career and claimed his life, but he marked history with his seal. When he finally died, Alice in Chains officially disbanded and floated around until they reemerged with another album in 2009; Black Gives Way To Blue. The album was a huge disappointment, if you experienced the band at its heights. The band, with William DuVall clinging to the batton, performs strong enough but those who are too young to remember the early nineties, might not be as convinced of the band’s sound as the cult members are. DuVall is not a poor substitute but we do miss the edge Layne brought along with his voice. It’s such a shame Black Gives Way To Blue isn’t a kick ass mindblower of an album. I’d love to see them delivering something unforgettable as Dirt. But you can’t get it all, can you. You get to see the band live, minus Layne, but this is as close to the original thing we’ll ever get.

Malfunkshun
Andrew Wood on the other hand died just as Mother Love Bone was about to be the next thing. From the ashes of his death rose Pearl Jam, but that’s another story. For me Andrew Wood, L’Andrew the Love Child, begun when I picked up an album by a band called Malfunkshun in 1996. By that time it was six years since the Love Child died of a classic case called Heroin Overdose. Just like Sublime’s Bradley Nowell, Andrew died when the sun was about to bless his band, Mother Love Bone, with success. As many musicians do Andrew played with more than one band, and Malfunkshun might be one of the more special albums to be released in the post-grunge period, when the memories was still fresh. He never recorded an album with Malfunkshun, as he did with Mother Love Bone, but unreleased tracks became the self-titled album Malfunkshun in 1995. Chris Cornell and the soon-to-be Pearl Jam paid homage to Andrew with a band project called Temple of the Dog and that again inspired filmmaker Scot Barbour to make the documentary Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story. Andrews story is that of a persona inside grunge who died not only before the band had a chance to make it, but also before grunge broke through. He was a source of inspiration, a flamboyant fella with a facial kiss-like thing going and playing his love rock in a power trio who was unlike anything else on the scene. His death was another loss, a 24 yr old about to flash his feathers.

When the music’s over
Heroin took away some of the greatest personalities in a genre that ended up as a hype, a monster that crawled back into its cave and died with its belly full of talent. Heroin has been the ultimate anti hero for so long, and it is time this myth died in the shadow created by a mountain of dead bodies. Ain’t that enough? Yeah, I may want my rockers bad but the balance of a bad boy and a dead boy is hard to handle. Rock is dirty and druged out but in the havoc of death the monuments created by great music still stands and will continue to stand when earthquakes, floods and tornadoes sweep across the wasteland of half-forgotten rock stars. But they do live forever; in the music they created.