Recommendations of the editorial team
After the punk kids had lost the desire for speed records at some point in the 1980s, they wanted to celebrate the hard rock of their childhood again. Grunge was created in the area of tension between Black Sabbath and Black Flag and laid the foundation for the revolution of alternative rock. Chris Weiß experienced live how Nirvana and Co. This is where his proto-grooming tips come.
1. Randy Holden – Population II (1970)
Rotznässigen punk like ours became aware of Randy Holden when Mark Arm from Mudhoney Population II in the “Alternative Record Guide” of the “Spin” magazine, along with the more common suspects such as Stooges, Captain Beefheart and Birthday Party, celebrated in his personal top ten. As did research, Holden was known at best as a guitarist who read the Levites on the second page of her third album on the second page of her third album.
Today the solo album of this man was quickly found on the net, at that time you had to walk your chopping to find the part. What sweet, deafening noise came towards you, unleashed and escaped, produced by Holden’s mercilessly turned up guitar and a fittingly overwhelmed drummer. Proto-grunge before rock music could ever imagine being a proto at some point.
2. Wipers – is this real (1980)
Even 40 years later it is impossible not to be carried away immediately by the first album of the band from Portland, Oregon: Hit on Hit, as one says beautifully, with melodies that the Beatles can no longer do better, and this unique power of American punk. And of course the guitar from Greg Sage, about which someone should finally write a big book: nothing in the world sounds better. Except maybe the voice of the “Alien Boy” when she describes the search for love as a shop window stroll in anthems of alienated: “Want it so much, look but don’t touch”.
3. Flipper – Generic Flipper (1982)
If you were brave enough to dive into the underground of the early 80s, you had to take a hard time per se. But only the most of the most had the mummy to expose themselves to flipper, a band of broken niks from San Francisco, who chose bluntness to the principle and assured the listener that life was the only thing for which it is worth living. While the music as a noise was staggered with excited instruments, as if punk was pissed off in the delirium tremens. Or as “Spin” wrote: “You had to be pretty smart to play such stupid music.” Mark and Kurt Cobain listened exactly at the time.
4. Fang – Landshark (1982)
Hardcore from Berkeless. But what hardcore! Fang are so far from the politically heated punk of its time that this exquisit could also come from the moon. The guitar of Tom Flynn, one of the unsung (anti) heroes of the instrument, actually sounds extraterrestrial, lascivious and sick, hypnotic and drained in these songs about “Werrwöulfe”, skinheads and: land sharks. Singer Sammytown sings as if he is somewhere else. In 1989 he migrated to prison for eleven years after having strangled his girlfriend in the drug frenzy. “The Money Will Roll Right in” is the catch song for eternity. It is covered by Mudhoney and Nirvana. And metallica.
5. Gore – Mean Man’s Dream (1987)
Around the same time when the Melvins began to explore in the neighborhood of Kurt Cobain how the leading heaviness of Black Sabbath could be implemented musically without metal clichés with maximum force, experimented in the Netherlands Gore with a similar approach. Only more consistent and more radical than the Melvins.
A trio that – free of velvet and lyrics – had the hammer of the gods so relentlessly shed down that even Henry Rollins immediately tuned the high song on Gore. The second album is best that shows how to get headbanging and intelligence under a mane.