Tfw you just started into grunge music after 20 years of despising the genre

>tfw you just started into grunge music after 20 years of despising the genre

Are there any good bands outside of the big 4 or are they all derivative buttrock?

Are the smashing pumpkins considered grunge? At least at times...

You could go with that.

Also Jeff Buckley's rock is pretty much grunge

Yes there are many good bands, such as:

Mudhoney
Screaming Trees
Skin Yard
Treepeople
Mr Epp and the Calculations
The U Men
Babes in Toyland
Love Battery

Tad
Mudhoney
Melvins
Green River
Jane's Addiction

a couple of those might not technically be grunge, but they were kind of part of the same era/movement and are still really good and are worth checking out if you like grunge.

Grunge is generally pretty boring. I really don't ever need to see it make a comeback.

They were kind of a grab bag of things they liked - neopsychedelia, shoegaze, grunge, goth, but then became a kind of meme grunge band for a second when it exploded.

Ok thst explains it then. Im now listening to them for the 1st time (mellom collie).

Also, how would you characterize neopsychedelia

I think a way some aspects of grunge - the aspects that can be resuscitatable, or that can still be marginally cool even when grunge has been utterly spoiled, are the doomy, sludgy aspects, so the closest thing to it having any underground cred would be in like Melvins or more vaguely in stoner rock

"We like psych music so now we make it in the 80s onward trying to sound like 13th Floor Elevators"

Melvins pretty much inspired grunge, since they were part of the scene before any of the other bands and were friends with a lot of the band members (most importantly, Nirvana).

I think the grunge sound is a lot better when it gets more experimental/heavy, which is why I like Melvins and Tad.

neopsychedelia is a loose idea, not really a single genre, that first got conceived in the '80s, when some people started ignoring the punk taboo on it and either went trippy in a new kind of way (noisey, ambient, gooey, droney), or being more retro psychedelic 60s rip-off.

it could encompass anything from Flaming Lips and Butthole Surfers to Spacemen 3 to 'Paisley Underground' bands to shoegaze to earlier Lenny Kravitz.

sure there are some neo-psychedelia bands that do this, but for a lot of bands I think it's more just a case of a band sounding a certain way, then getting compared to another group that did it first.

although I am sure there are quite a few bands that are entirely derivative.

damn, this genre thing is pretty messed up. Im so bad at grasping different genres and applying them to artists I listen to...

my point there is that neopsychedelia was always used too loosely to really be a certain genre. it was more just gesturing towards the fact that various bands in the 80s were getting psychedelic or 60s influenced in different ways. but most of them really couldn't be considered part of the same genre.

genres are bullshit. they should only be used as a general description for a band's sound, but instead they end up being a mold for people's expectations that are just a distraction from the actual music.

neo-psych defines derivative

Yeah, it's a shame. The moment the average person starts to pick up on a pattern it gets codified really fast. Which isn't so bad right away but it's just that people lose touch with the spirit of the idea very quickly and start to just turn it into a formula that doesn't really know why it does what it does.

Stop focusing on genres unless you wanna specialize in one. but overall its just a label thats becoming more and more useless for the internet age since none of them are properly tagged

I disagree. Genres are good for describing influences and the direction bands take those influences. Without genres we'd have to guess at the specific musical stylings an artist is aiming for. If Van Gogh wasn't seen as "impressionist" or "modernist" he'd just be "shit" compared to Michelangelo

Some bands that were described as neo-psych were very original though. Music that has a quality or effect that can be described as psychedelic doesn't necessarily have to be achieved by reverently mimicking 60s tropes. That kind of 13th Floor Elevator retro imitation shit usually isn't even that psychedelic in effect.

It depends if the band in question is psychedelic in effect (in that their music affects consciousness/experience in a more heightened way), or in that they're some horrible 60s retro shit.

but thats the old way of looking at genres
today it's pretty much useless besides for marketing reasons for booking shows

not necessarily. if you don't think there's a need to distinguish trap from jazz-hop then you might just not be into talking about music at all

What a meaningless post. The thing with Van Gogh isn't simply looking at it and hearing "impressionism!" in your head and that giving it value. There are specific things he does with color / light / expressivity / form that not only have an affective power in themselves (you should see them in person) but also real innovations that proved to be relevant in their influence on other players

Seaweed, The Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Temple of the Dog, Tad, Love Battery, Skin Yard, The Afghan Whigs, Soundgarden, U-Men, Pearl Jam, Babes in Toyland, Malfunkshun, 7 Year Bitch, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains, Hole, Screaming Trees, L7... more ore less in that order

genres themselves don't deserve value. i never argued that. i'm saying that the purpose of genres is to show that just because things are vastly different doesn't mean they don't have influences or cultural reasons for existing.