Had their super-charismatic lead singer Andrew Wood not died of a drug overdose in 1990, Mother Love Bone-the band from which Pearl Jam sprung-would likely have made it big. Q.) Is there a grunge band that should have made it big that did not? Nirvana’s “Negative Creep” comes to mind too. It almost seems too obvious an answer, but Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick” is pretty much perfect-and perfectly encapsulates the scuzzy “grunge” guitar sound and scabrous humor of the scene. It pretty much deflates the hype surrounding the scene at the time and takes a semi-veiled jab at at least one grunge superstar. “Everybody loves our town” is a lyric from “Overblown,” an extremely arch song Mudhoney wrote for the Cameron Crowe movie Singles. Q.) Where does the book’s title come from? Of course, a few were overly earnest and some were sticking needles in their arms, but for the most part-and I think this comes across in the book-these musicians were just super-funny and huge jokesters. Probably the biggest one is that all these musicians were overly earnest gloom mongers sticking needles in their arms.

Q.) What are the biggest misconceptions people have about grunge? And in the process, they honed their own sound. So, in effect, musicians in that region had to make their own fun.

People in the rest of the country pretty much considered it the hinterlands a couple interviewees told me that back in the day, people who weren’t familiar with Seattle would ask them, in all sincerity, “Seattle? Aren’t there cowboys and Indians out there?” Often times, touring bands would simply skip Seattle because it was too far out of their way.

Many people don’t seem to realize that in the ’80s-before the Starbucks/Microsoft/Amazon boom era-Seattle wasn’t the cosmopolitan place it is today. Q.) Why do you think grunge took off in Seattle as opposed to somewhere else at that time?Ī lot of it had to do with geographical isolation.

Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm