The Grunge Movement
Posted by Troy | Filed under Art/Design, Books, Culture, Music
I spent my freshman year of college at Bob Jones University (it’s a long story for another post) – the world’s bastion for conservative Christian fundamentalism.
When I say “conservative” I mean it… these guys call Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell liberal…
Within a few weeks I was confronted by my dorm supervisor… brought into a private meeting.
I think he was trying to tread lightly, since they have so many culturally-sheltered students when he asked me…
“are you familiar with the Grunge Movement”
(apparently my purchased-in-the-nineties-but-made-in-the-sixties cardigans and jet-black-dyed hair had stuck out a bit in the sea of starch and ties and pleats)
I actually was familiar with grunge music of course… but had never heard of a “movement.”
I don’t think anyone else had (or has) either.
It would be a bit ironic… it’s the only movement I can think of that would be immediately shunned by its own participants just for being a “movement”…
Today NPR pointed me towards a new book by photographer Michael Lavine called Grunge.
Flipping through the sample shots on his site, I’m experiencing a weird combination of emotions…
I feel old… the photos look like something out of a history book and I really wonder if it’s possible 20 years have passed…
I feel a little self conscious… because my wardrobe hasn’t changed…
I’m not saying my style is the same, but I literally have the exact clothes hanging in my closet (or piled on my floor) as I did in 1995 and my sweater bin smells of mothballs and mohair…
And I can’t help but wonder if I’m a little bit like Uncle Rico… stuck in some moment in the past… super-cool to myself, but super-ridiculous to everyone else..
But honestly it makes me a little proud.
Because it was at this time in history that became who I am… and I’ve never had to compromise…
And because I don’t believe those photos and that music still strikes a chord with me because I was a teenager at that time, but rather because the message was a timeless one… perhaps never captured better in any other form.
Sometimes I’m afraid I’ve become boring in my thirties because I don’t put in as much effort as in my teens to be countercultural…
but that’s just the point of the Grunge Movement, now isn’t it?
Tags: 90s, Culture, Music, photography
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2 Responses to “The Grunge Movement”
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David Says:
November 5th, 2009 at 5:59 pmmuch love for grunge and for a changeless Troy.
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Raol Duke Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 10:09 amAwesome post…right there with you
Raoul Duke: Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime, the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant.
