Our ideas held no water, but we used them like a dam –Issac Brock of Seattle’s Modest Mouse in Missed the Boat

Though I don’t have the last couple of albums, throughout the early & late 90s, I was a big Pearl Jam fan and fully on board with the Seattle Grunge anti-groove. In fact I pretty much bought every album the prolific band put out.  Like almost everyone else my age, I also have some Nirvana albums and I even tried, for a while, to pretend that I liked the out of control Courtney Love. At West Point, my roommate and I would rock out to Pearl Jam in faux-defiance (we always straightened up when push really came to shove) of the “officer-in-charge.”

The music was great, but what was the apathetic, angst filled grunge movement of the early 90s really about anyway?  Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder stirringly talks about the emptiness of the grunge breakthrough in Hype!, a documentary about how the late 80s, early 90s Seattle sound transformed a city music scene into an international youth culture.

In the documentary, Eddie Vedder says “If all of this influence that this part of the country has and the musical scene has—if it doesn’t do anything with it, that would be the tragedy. If it doesn’t do anything with it, like make some kind of change or difference, this group of people who feel this certain way, who think these sorts of things that the underdogs we’ve all met and lived with think—if they finally get to the forefront and nothing comes out of it, that would be the tragedy.”

Huh? Did I miss it? What way did “they feel or think?” Who are these underdogs exactly?

As Naomi Klein points out in her book, No Logo, the tragedy Eddie Vedder feared has already happened. She notes: Vedder’s inability to spit out what he was actually trying to say had more than a little to do with it. When the world’s cameras were turned on Seattle, all we got were a few anti-establishment F-Bombs, a handful of overdoses and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. We also got the decade’s most spectacular sell-out — Courtney Love’s awe-inspiring sail from junkie punk queen to high-fashion cover girl in the span of two years. It seemed as if Courtney had been playing dress-up all along. What was revealing was how little it mattered…did Love betray some karmic debt she owed to smudged eyeliner? Don’t you need to buy-in to something earnestly before you can sell it out cynically?

Klein’s last point is revealing and frustrating at the same time.  What was it that this scene was really buying into?

Klein goes on to point out that the Seattle grunge scene sort of imploded because no one really wanted to answer any of the deeper questions. Indeed, despite the Seattle scene’s seemingly genuine distaste for the establishment–no one within the scene was really ever able to clearly stand up and articulate any type of deeper purpose.

Post Grunge Seattle Movements?

Grunge may have fizzled, but Seattle continues to be a very interesting bleeding edge city that has a knack for pumping out new ideas, coffeehouse movements & even Christian awakenings.

Starbucks, for example, is a Seattle brand that doesn’t just want to be a brand…it wants to be a movement.  Starbucks wants to “align with one of the greatest movements towards finding a connection with your soul.” (see Starbucked).

I’m a big fan of Starbucks coffee and I enjoy hanging out there with a great cup of joe and my laptop in tow, but I’m not sure that I would say that it has touched my soul lately.

Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill church in Seattle, however, provides real “soul brew” with messages that Vedder’s Seattle “underdogs” can relate to.  Driscoll’s movement has leveraged technology and a post-grunge feel to become one of the 10 most influential churches in America.  Driscoll’s message resonates with left minded Christians in Seattle as he takes on the religious right with messages and works like Religion Saves and 9 other misconceptions.

Seattle’s heart didn’t die with grunge…new movements & big ideas seem to continually pop up and spread across the globe in a hurry from this creative city. What will they think of next?  What Seattle movements do you like?

Hat tip to Fabricio Santibáñez for the photo & Naomi Klein for pointing me to Hype! & Starbucked

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