Quotes from “Grunge” i.e. Alternative documentary “Hype.”

Glutter Continues writing on the “Grunge” Scene: The Music Issue.

Hype is an indie Documentary by Doug Pray that follows the growth and explosion of the Seattle Rock scene and the commoditization of music and personalities.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“No one was too worried of success. We were in Seattle, not LA, no one was going to come over to sign us. And the people who stuck it out is because they really really enjoyed playing music.”

“There was like four clubs where you could play live music. So people rented out halls, did their own line up, promotion and swept the floors at the end of the night.”

“It’s just a given here, nobody sits around going, “Oh nothing ever happens here, nothing ever goes on here.” By the time that a kid gets out of high school, they’ve joined a band, done a couple of fanzines, started a label and did a radio show.”

“All you really need is a microphone and some magnetic tape.”

“We were the kids who got beaten up in school…. We’re just nerds dammit.”

“I hate the category of grunge. I just like loud loud music, I don’t need the category of Grunge.”
Said by a Japanese fan in Japan no less!

“Who didn’t get a flannel for Christmas?… and you tie it around your waist and run off and do a stage dive. But here because this is a logger territory, all these goonballs just wear flannel anyway. That became the stereotype.”

“There was a big element of put on involved in all Seattle Music… a lot of Sub Pop’s world domination attitude, the whole thing was ridiculous!”

“It was essentially been one big prank. We’ve always pretended we were something we weren’t. Now that we are huge and have a lot of money, we try to pretend we are small and indie and have street cred. ”
Owner of Sub Pop Label

“There were mannequins in stores with like longs johns and shorts for three hundred bucks… (did we have them fooled).. We wear long johns coz it’s fucking cold up here.”

“It was our thing that all of sudden it belonged to people who you never thought you would share your music with. Mainstream periodicals and fashion magazines, and you start realizing there is a whole load of people there that is making money from selling the “grunge” or the “Seattle scene” or whatever….
Kim Thayil of Sound Garden

“It’s so profitable, they just keep taking and taking. The don’t know how to restrain themselves, they are frothing at their mouth over this. The bands aren’t really in it for the dough, they really aren’t. If they did it would tip over music….”
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam

“It is very obvious that the whole idea of Seattle became a marketed commodity.”

“But that’s what makes pop culture so significant for those little consumers out there. They have no interest in history or economics or science or art. They are kind of interested more in gossip and the nature of celebrity and it is not at all encouraging to find out that you participate in that society -one way or other.”
Kim Thayil of Sound Garden

“It fucking heart breaking to see how disillusioned to people get – that the escape was so sort after.” Manager of Alice in Chains talking about heroin use.

“There is definitely the idea that success is bad. It’s part of the rebellion, that part of the rebellion against the of the eighties, you know? Our peers and our parents. We didn’t really want to be successful because with that comes the trappings of responsibility.”

“This kind of success, this hype, it can destroy what’s real, like what is music to you… it can destroy your life and make it a commodity and you’re supposed to be happy about it because you’re successful.”
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam

“[Kurt’s suicide] symbolically it was perhaps represented the end of something…. It was hard, I didn’t take it well.”

“If all this influence that this part of the country has and this musical scene has. If it doesn’t do anything with it…. if it doesn’t do something with it and make some kind of change, make some kind of difference. This group of people who feels a certain way, this group of people who think these things, that the underdogs we all met and lived with think. If they finally get to the forefront and nothing comes of it. That would be the tragedy.”
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam

PS. Here We Are Now, Entertain Us: When I believed Music Could Change the World