I Wanna Be Like Henry
I was thinking this morning of a book that I had been reading a few months ago about grunge. I nearly got caught in the weeds of it again, as it hits pretty close to home. My own memory of this music genre molded much of how I felt growing up, and as I recall, everyone I knew had heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and had formed an opinion about it one way or another. What’s true is that within weeks of it’s release, it had dethroned Michael Jackson and become one of the top hits in America. While there is a multi-layered discussion to be had about the merits of Alternative Rock, or whatever other label you remember it as, the compelling aspect of grunge to me was how quickly it imploded on itself, because of the very nature of its idiom. What’s more compelling, is how those songs can take me back to when I was a teenager again.
The book, Grunge: Music and Memory, by Catherine Strong is a great read and I fully recommend it. There are multiple interviews that provide insights to people’s recollection of grunge as a musical phenomenon of the late 1980s and 1990s. Let’s be honest though; if you really want to measure popular success in the late 90’s, you need only ask yourself if Weird Al Yankovic covered it. One of the great cultural triumphs of MTV was having a satirical music video by this master of the accordion. It must be odd to someone who has no frame of reference to watch his material, though. It’s hard to get the satire of these videos without knowing what they are poking fun at, especially with how targeted Weird Al’s work was. I think it would be doubly ironic if all record of Nirvana was lost to time and Nevermind’s only remaining documentation was Weird Al Yankovic’s music video parody, “Smells Like Nirvana”. What would historians make of that?
There is an important connection music has to my memory of what it was like when I was first introduced to songs that had relevance or meaning to my life at the time. I remember where I was standing, (in my parents living room) when the news story came on that Kurt Cobain was dead. I remember the sleepover I had with my friends Jim and Mike, when Nevermind first came out. We decided that night that we would start a band. I would play bass, as my brother did before me. Jim would play guitar, as his brother did before him. Mike would play drums, because… well, Mike was just loud. I remember all those mix tapes I made with my friend Karen with their funky labels and mash ups of Smashing Pumpkins, L7, and Cake. I hope that when I’m old and senile that the nurses bring me my MTV. The best part of Eminem is the video where he’s running around in the hospital trying to convince people about who he is with his music. That’s me. That’s what I want.
The power of music to recapture our context of identity, especially as it relates to our own authenticity is powerful. Studies done to help Alzheimer’s patients regain quality of life show that music has a profound effect to associate memory to life experiences. Music and Memory.org came up in my search engine this morning and their research concludes that “These musical favorites tap deep memories not lost to dementia and can bring participants back to life, enabling them to feel like themselves again, to converse, socialize and stay present.”
The downfall of grunge, to me, was its crusade against capitalism, and at its heart, its voice against popularity, satirical representations of skill, and its self-destructive property against commercial success. The only way for it to transmit its message was to achieve mass distribution. Once it did, it had sold out, and lost its way. Its intersection with the idea that it only makes sense till you take a closer look at it, akin to quantum physics, is compelling. Whatever the reasons, grunge is almost certainly just a memory, and with it, I hope one day to react the way Henry does, in this video about how powerful music can be to restoring us to our former selves: