For me, it’s Mudhoney, L7, Nirvana - in that order.
In my opinion the worst band of the era (and one of the worst bands of the last century) was Pearl Jam. God I hated Pearl Jam.
All the grunge acts borrowed the Pixies soft-then-loud style. At least Cobain had the decency to admit it:
Nirvana is about the only one I hear any Pixies similarity with, though (and I think Kurt missed by a mile if he calls “Smells Like Teen Spirit” a Pixies-rip off. He may have been trying to rip them off, but he created something only vaguely Pixies-ish in the process. The bassline is Pixies-ish. The chord progression, not so much. The melody, nope. Soft-Loud-Soft. I guess.) Soft-then-loud is hardly a Pixies invention, although they took it to dynamic extremes. Plus I don’t really hear that much soft-then-loud in Soundgarden. The Pixies are my favorite rock group, but I think their influence is way overstated.
I should add, I am not stating they had no influence–they certainly did have influence on the genre. But I hear much more Black Sabbath and 70s hard rock influence then the Pixies. Saying the genre “stole from the Pixies” is overstating their influence by several orders of magnitude, in my opinion. Black Sabbath, 70s hard rock and punk are much more immediate influences.
- Nirvana
- Smashing Pumpkins
- Alice in Chains (tie)
- Soundgarden (tie)
- Pearl Jam (and they’re only here because of “Ten”)
I saw what was left of Smashing Pumpkins (just Billy right?) last year, kick-ass show. His banter with the crowd was good, and they played plenty of the old stuff.
At the risk of getting all semantic with this, grunge referred to a different style of music and got blended with the broader name alterantive. Grunge sort of fits some of the output of some of these bands, but it does not fit Smashing Pumpkins even the tiniest bit, and it probably doesn’t fit Pearl Jam either. The other bands here at least had some sludginess to their sound.
Anyhoozle… this is really hard. I think I have to give the edge to Nirvana even after all these years. They kept their songs much simpler than Soundgarden in particular but I think that gives them a directness that holds up well. There’s a reason they hit it big the way they did. As far as the Pixies thing goes, they’re obviously a very big influence on Nirvana in particular, but Cobain pretty much dismissed everything he did as a ripoff of something else. (Nevermind was just like Cheap Trick, but with bigger guitars? Okay, if you say so.) He was uncomfortable with being praised so much so he downplayed it. I only have Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, but I don’t hear anything on there that hints at Come As You Are or Nirvana’s take on Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, for example.
After that I’ll give Soundgarden an edge over Alice in Chains. I love Cornell and Staley as singers, but I’ll give Soundgarden some extra points for musical variety. Both of them could change it up, though: Soundgarden worked in all that Beatle-y stuff, particularly on their last few albums, and Alice in Chains did those two surprisingly powerful acoustic EPs. I wish they had put out more music, but Layne Staley was living what he wrote and everybody knew it.
Rather than try to decide between Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins I’ll point out that nobody’s mentioned Rage Against the Machine yet. Again, not really grunge at all - updated heavy metal used as live loops underneath rap vocals - but whatever you think of their philosophy and politics, their commitment and the power in their music could be jawdropping. And Tom Morello was very good at creating riffs and odd sounds even if later on it seemed to get repetitive.
Well I disagree. Define “grunge.” To me, it is that soft-to-loud-dynamics, heavy guitar sound typical of the scene. Do you have a different definition?
Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins definitely fit that musical pattern in the 90s.
I’m using what I think is closer to the original definition: a very heavy, sludgy style of rock with a strong Black Sabbath influenced. The Melvins are usually given as the prototype example. It’s closer to what Nirvana was doing on Bleach, for example (except for About a Girl) than what they did for most of the rest of their career. I realize the broader definition got accepted anyway, due to popular use, but I did want to point out that these bands had some significant differences even though they got popular around the same time and had some general similarities. I hear some of the elements I mentioned in Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. Pearl Jam was also based there but I don’t hear as much of it in their sound, and I really don’t hear any of it in Smashing Pumpkins, who - as you can tell by Billy Corgan’s choice of headgear - came out of Chicago.
Well my test is to see what bands I still listen to at age of 43!
In order
Pearl Jam
Nirvana
Red Hot Cilli Peppers [are they grunge? they were part of the scene in the early '90s]
Sound Garden
Silver Chair!
Silver Chair was a bunch of kids that used to live around the corner and although they ripped off every band they could they did it with a sense of irony and fun.
The Melvins were definitely a big Nirvana influence, as well as grunge in general. I think Neil Young was a grunge influence as well (called by some “The Godfather of Grunge.”)
Sidenote, what does everyone think of the new Alice in Chains material? It’s not bad from what I’ve heard.
Ah yes, Daniel Johns - precocious vocalist…
You know, I worship at the altar of fine song-craft and Nirvana more than any of the other bands crafts great 3-minute, melodic songs in the grunge vein, which IMHO is why, coupled with Cobain’s tragically brilliant marketing move, Nirvana is at the top of the legends list in the mass media. But I am so burnt out on their stuff I don’t think I will ever put on one of their CDs in my house again - no need.
STP are next in line from a songcraft standpoint.
I have always been a **Soundgarden **and **AIC **guy. Putting on My Wave or Rusty Cage before a fun night out or Down in a Hole when I have a little alone time and a bottle of Jack and want to mope 
- both are very good at what they do.
But, to be clear - nobody comes close to Jerry Cantrell (AIC) as a guitarist. Yeah, he’s a brilliant songwriter and vocalist, but as a guitarist? He is a Guitar God™. Thayil is great, Cobain was distinctive, DeLeo (STP) is next after Cantrell but a far ways behind him…Stone Gossard is a solid rhythm player. Mike McCready is finally sounding decent to my ear only recently - he has improved. His lead work on stuff like Evenlow and Alive (songs I love) just stunk. Amateur hour stuff…
Nirvana out in front, although like WordMan I’m not in a hurry to listen to them today - heard their stuff a million times over.
They were just a brilliant synthesis of all Cobain’s influences - mix David Bowie, Black Flag, the Beatles and the Melvins and the results could well be disappointing. Cobain pulled it off superbly - Nirvana were always an exceptionally well-balanced band for want of a better word, beautifully poised between punk / rock / pop.
Pearl Jam were (are?) a very classic rock influenced band. Like all unleavened classic rock outfits, they can suffer from being a wee bit boring. Some great songs, and Vedder is a class vocalist, but it sounds like they have some wanker in the band who just wants to jam. We picked up their greatest hits just recently on a road trip round Australia and I thought it held up surprisingly well. By the 22nd song, though, it was time to switch the radio on.
Surprised to see the stone temple pilots mentioned. The music press here in the UK just dismissed them as a completely derivative novelty act, as a result I don’t think I’ve ever listened to one of their albums. They also did that to the Offspring, though, who are great fun, so what do they know.
Stone Temple Pilots, they’re elegant batchelors, they’re foxy to me, are they foxy to you?…
…that would be Mike McCready
STP are the Green Day of grunge - people who don’t know what they are talking about and only focus on the gossip mill dismiss the band as pretenders or “false punk” or “false grunge” :rolleyes:, but if you take the time to listen, both have great, great songs, incredibly well performed and their own musical voice. I would kill to have STP’s discography and hit list (or Green Day’s). Each of their 4 or so CD’s have at least 3 great, enduring songs - which is the acid-test for whether I buy them; yes, there is some inconsistency, but that happens…
The Offspring isn’t what I would call grunge. If I was to include them, they would go pretty high on my list.
You know, he never seems to get a lot of credit for his playing. The band’s songs were never complicated but they had heft to them. How do you evaluate him?
In guitar circles - I would say that gets a LOT of credit for his playing. The thing I like is that he has great tone, he can shred like nobody’s business but rarely does it, instead his lead work is in service to the song - I give huge props to that. Listen to the lead in the Rooster - it is more like a Tom Morello / Rage solo than a metal-shredder, although it is more melodic vs. Morello’s squonking/noise-art.
Cantrell’s tone is really good, too - I like how he uses his Ernie Ball Eddie Van Halen guitar - tasteful use of whammy (love the detuned tone he gets on the new single, Check My Brain…)
All around he is just in complete control of his guitar and that comes across so clearly… and he is a melodic musician before he is a guitarist, which I really respect…
I’m surprised at the diversity of answers here. Honestly, I thought “best grunge band of the 90s” was a category kind of like “best play about a prince of Denmark”. I’m not saying the whole pool isn’t great, but really, there’s Nirvana and then there’s everybody else.
ETA: I’m probably not as saturated with them as most dopers, though.
I like Nirvana and have a couple of CD’s, but other stuff like AIC and STP just seems more interesting these days. It’s probably over-saturation.
The OP was asking more for personal favorites than an attempt at an objective ranking of the bands in terms of influence or technical ability. If the question were “Who was the most important grunge act?” then I’d have placed Nirvana much higher than I did, but I didn’t really care for Nirvana in 1993 and if anything like their music even less today.
If the question were “Who was the most popular grunge act?”, then album sales figures tell us that Pearl Jam was #1 with Nirvana a fairly close second and the others lagging behind. That’s true whether we compare the top-selling albums for each band (Ten, Nevermind, Superunknown, and Dirt) or the total sales figures for all albums by each of the four bands.
Having lived next to a college bar in the early '90s, I thought I would be happy if I never heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” again as long as I lived. Surprisingly, this thread made me so nostalgic I downloaded it on iTunes. We need a sheds-a-single-nostalgic-tear smiley.