2010: Time For A Grunge Revival?

As someone who traipsed round Chelmsford town centre as a 13-year old looking for a corduroy shirt like the one I’d seen Eddie Vedder wearing, I think it’s safe to say grunge was my first true love. The mid-90s was a great time for British music, the likes of Suede, Blur and Oasis starting to mould the country’s most exciting musical times since the rave petered out, but I didn’t give a fuck about those lightweights – all I cared about was grunge. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, the Singles soundtrack – these were the only must-haves for my chubby, curtain-haired self in 1994. At the time, they were just a step above anything the UK had to offer; they rocked in a way that we didn’t (apart from the five mins when Therapy? were really good) and contrasting with Liam, Damon & co’s limelight-chasing, the more reluctant Ed Ved, Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan were to embrace their new superstar status, the cooler they became, enshrined in my head and on my bedroom walls as untouchable, unparalleled heroes, the fact that there was an Atlantic Ocean between us only adding to the mythical status I’d bestowed on them. Of course, within a few years, most of them had either died, split up, gone to jail or turned crap and, left with a choice of broadening my musical horizons or starting to like Bush, I discovered the Manics and Radiohead and my only-liking-bands-from-America dictum went out the window.

An old lumberjack shirt dies hard, though, and the greasy-haired slackers of old still loiter lazily near the top of my all-time lists and, off the back of a few years of 80s-pilfering, 2010 could be ripe for a grunge revival. It would make sense; 2009 saw Pearl Jam and a Layne Staley-less Alice In Chains both released critically-lauded career-boosting albums, with Eddie Vedder & co. set to headline London’s not-too-shabby Hyde Park in the summer, and this year will see Soundgarden reform with their full original line-up and new records from Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. The only problems? Well, last time we saw Chris Cornell was on a Timbaland-produced solo album that sounded like Flight Of The Conchords without the funny bits, ‘A Song For A Son’, a new song the Pumpkins, for whom Billy Corgan is the only original member left, unveiled just before Xmas, resembles Queen covered by the Krankies (and, yep, that’s me talking about my favourite ever band) and Stone Temple Pilots are fronted by a psychotic twat in a cap who was last seen pulling all the wrong faces in Velvet Revolver. But, hey, err, grunge runs deep and I’m still hopeful. Sounds it, yeah? For a proper grunge revival to take place – I’m making up these rules as I go – we can’t just rely on the old guard, though – surely, SURELY there’s a young band about to form somewhere who’ve got their fill of Mudhoney on Spotify and are ready to whip out the Big Muff. They must – of course – have a rock chick on bass. Grunge rules, k? 

There’s been false dawns before, yes – the year of the Pixies reform saw Nine Black Alps and The Subways touted as new grunge stars, whilst the FM fuzz roar of Dinosaur Pile-Up last year was nothing but a false re-start – but this year, it could happen – I’ve got my corduroy shirt and a grunge-ready page in the mag ready to go, just in case…