MetalSucks

So that grunge-themed episode of The Simpsons aired over the weekend, and even though some of the early/mid 90s jokes were a little too cloying (When Homer and Marge divy up their stuff after deciding to break-up, Homer tells Marge “You take the Microsoft stock, I’ll take the Enron stock.” Rim-shot!), the show’s parody of grunge was dead-on. For anyone who missed it, below find Home Simpson’s grunge band, Sadgasm, doing shockingly good parodies of Nirvana (soft verse, screamed chorus) and – ugh – Bush.

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-AR

Ah, our good old friends Grunge and Alternative, those bastions of ’90s rock nostalgia. Are they one in the same? Did they start out meaning different things but over time come to mean the same? At some point in ‘92 we started hearing both of these terms bandied about in equal measure to describe the crop of bands emerging from the Seattle scene and their ilk, but over time these words seem to have lost all meaning. What the hell is “grunge” music anyway? And for that matter, what the fuck is “alternative”?

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I remember exactly where I was the very first time I heard Nirvana. I’m sorry to say, I’m not one of those super cool people who already knew the band from Bleach – no, the first Nirvana song I ever heard, like 99% of the rest of the world, was “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And it was, of all places, in PE class.

See, the American Heart Association or whatever the fuck they’re called was doing some stupid program to encourage jumping rope as a means of getting exercise and increasing cardiovascular health. My school, very much to the chagrin of the student body, decided to participate in said program, and so we ended up being split into groups, and each group had to choreograph some lame routine involving jumping rope in formation and a piece of music.

I don’t remember what song my group chose for our surely awful routine; I don’t remember what song any of the other groups chose for their routines, either, save for that one group that chose – you guessed it – “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

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