Paint it Black wins with three votes.  Gimme Shelter, Under my Thumb and Miss You ran it close with two votes apiece.  Sway, I Can't Get No (Satisfaction) and Sympathy for the Devil received one vote each.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Paint it Black wins with three votes.  Gimme Shelter, Under my Thumb and Miss You ran it close with two votes apiece.  Sway, I Can't Get No (Satisfaction) and Sympathy for the Devil received one vote each.

We are the most vanilla of forums.

As a fan of pearl jam, kinda feel they have a big enough collection to justify their own place.

Also think they outgrew the seattle thing pretty quickly with only ten feeling like a proper grunge era album. And even then it's not true grunge.

While I don't think it represents their best work, it does feature most of their most recognisable stuff with Jeremy, Even Flow and Alive all being strong contenders (while Black is probably the best song on the album, it doesn't scream grunge to me)

Also hard to leave Alice in Chains and Mudhoney out of a settle discussion - Would?s rumbling base line is very iconic of the time and Mudhoney were the band who many of the successful bands would name check on mtv but never could quite break into the mainstream themselves - some might say they didn't want to and they've had plenty of albums since the grunge era.

Going back to pearl jam - I think ten overall is too well produced an album to be true grunge. In a similar manner this cuts out Stone Temple Pilots (another group I think would warrant a topic on their own) and some of the sub pop era bands probably see the likes of STP as band wagon jumpers in regards the era.

So.... I think the long serving mudhoney deserve a little spotlight. Choice cuts for me would be such you dry, here comes the sickness, overblown (itself a fun commentary on the seattle scene) but I feel its best to go with the song that many see as the breakthrough track of the grunge era - touch me, I'm sick.

https://youtu.be/_nGsT_qFMBs

Very much an unsung band, I wouldn't call this my favourite mudhoney song or even the best grunge song you'll ever hear but it's an early one and you can hear its influence in the links of hole and nirvana.

Fun fact on mudhoney - they can be rightfully seen as the non-commercial champions of the grunge scene. Both pearl jam and mudhoney came from the band green river with mudhoneys Mark Arm and Steve Turner taking the lest glamorous approach to music while pearl jams Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard actively looking to get onto a big label. There's not a huge amount of early green river on Spotify but it has a sound much closer to mudhoney with a touch of sonic youth as well.

poprock wrote:

It always helped (for me) that Mudhoney had - and displayed - a sense of humour. Grunge’s earnestness was a big barrier to entry for me at the time - it’s a genre I grew to love retrospectively.

Fair point. I blame a lot of that on Eddie Vedder and his initial success at the start. I do love their music (his solo stuff too) but I find my eyes rolling whenever I read a vedder interview. Far too serious and desperate to be "worthy", especially in the early days.

I saw Pearl Jam play an acoustic set at the Crocodile Café in Seattle. Pure luck – I was there for 4th of July weekend and saw a queue outside when walking past. Asked people what they were queuing for and when it turned out to be Pearl Jam I just joined the queue. Well worth waiting a couple of hours for!

Ah yea baybee! I would love to recommend a Pearl Jam in here or a Soundgarden, or some Nirvana but imma go with this, because the chorus is heckin fun to yowl along to.

I love Pearl Jam. Well up for them at some point.

Agree they left grunge fairly early. For me their best album is probably the self titled from 2006

Your topic, your choice Moot. Release your inner dictator.

WE ARE DOING A PEARL JAM NOW. IT IS PEARL JAM DAY.

I love me some pearl jam and a lot of the grunge stuff, though mostly the acts that went more mainstream. Vs prob still my favourite PJ album, thought it was also the first one i really listened to and got me into them so it has that attachment too.

Honestly don't think I could pick a PJ. I remember staying up through the night as a kid to record one of their gigs off Radio 1, to turn the cassette over and hit record again. Of course it was repeated during the day a few days later. Dammit.

Ha, i was typing my post before the Pearl Jam announcement.

My fave Pearl Jam song is possibly Elderly Woman Behind The Counter in a Small Town. I have a weird things with rock bands where my fave track tends to be when they go all mellow. Possibly influenced by spending a lot of my youth with my musician mate, who after a few 'drinks' would bust out the acoustic guitar for same late night singalongs. Plus it's just the most ridiculous song title for a rock band.

that's 2nd