Michael Lavine

Grunge

Text by Thurston Moore

(Abrams Image)

Book Review by Adam McKibbin

It's come full circle: a word invented on the fly as a throwaway description of a burgeoning scene come, years and years later, to rest in big letters across an artful photography book for the coffee table, again summing up the scene, this time posthumously and definitively. And there, too, is the fallen and unwilling hero, the star of the show even in death. Mr. Cobain still commands a spotlight, of course, but - without looking at the names or backstories involved - one could be excused for wondering about crassness.

So how about those names? The collection belongs to Michael Lavine, an accomplished photographer who was one of Sub Pop's go-to names for capturing their bands at the time (circa late '80s and early '90s). If they were your alt-rock heroes, chances are that Lavine knew them and shot them: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, Smashing Pumpkins, et al. In later years, Lavine made a genre leap that none of those guys could imagine and got into hip-hop (well, maybe Chris Cornell could imagine). But his archives contain obvious treasures for fans of the bands involved, as well as curious onlookers looking for a case study that goes beyond the big names.

As for Thurston Moore, well, his name still carries a good deal of credibility, and that stamp of approval on behalf of the artists is probably worth as much as the text he provides with his five-page foreword. With that said, he makes the most of his limited stage time, giving a tidy historical summation of the dawn of grunge as well as some biographical background on how Lavine came to be so closely tied to the scene and the people who drove it.

The headlining images in Grunge are obviously the ones of a pre-fame Cobain, a pre-bald Corgan, a pre-barber Cornell, etc. There are genuinely arresting shots of Cobain - clowning with Dave Grohl, looking forlornly into the lens in 1990 and then plaintively into the same man's lens in 1992, as his world completely changed (and with Courtney Love peeking out ominously from behind him).

There are bands that were quickly and forever lost to obscurity and other bands that pack arenas still to this day. Lavine captures them all without overtly injecting himself or silly concepts into the proceedings. He trusts his subjects to bring the personality, and there's no shortage of personality on display. Gibby Haynes vamps, Mudhoney's Mark Arm seems to be constantly playing and laughing, Eddie Vedder tapes his mouth shut, and Mark Lanegan contemplates serial murder (apparently). For folks interested in those names - not to mention Sonic Youth, L7, White Zombie, Jon Spencer and others - Grunge makes for a great holiday gift - something that casual fans may not fork out the dough for themselves, but would probably love to have on their bookshelves.

The people who drove the scene were not limited, of course, to the musicians - famous or otherwise. Lavine compellingly documents some of these scene kids during the front portion of the book - in photos with titles like Girls on Car and Ted, Peeing. In his effort to make sense of a local movement that blew up well beyond anyone's expectations, Lavine wisely includes them here, and affords them a good amount of space. It's Ted story, too, after all.