Britain’s two best albums, according to Kurt Cobain: “This music relaxes you”
Grunge was a decidedly American phenomenon. It captured the harsh life in Seattle that many of its progenitors were facing.
The genre itself is one born from massacres, miserable weather, and being washed up on an influx of drugs. As punk waned when the 1980s arrived, it was time for something new to reflect the times. The final frontier in the far corner of America was the perfect flowering ground for the next revolution. It was a revolution well and truly without a cause. But why Seattle? And why would 1983 be the catalyst?
Well, in the unfortunate February of that year, three armed men stormed Wah Mee Club. It was operated as an illegal casino in the derelict outskirts of the city. The three men proceeded to hogtie the punters in attendance. They robbed them. The assailants then proceeded to shoot the victims in the head.
The only apparent motive for the massacre, which resulted in the death of 13 people and severely injured another, was money. The next morning, headlines about the deadliest mass murder in Washington state history hit the newsstands. The number one single, ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’ by Irena Cara seemed out of place.
In fact, optimism was not a feeling that had been faring well in the city for a while. The headlines before this ghastly attack had been dominated by “Boeing bust”, and it cost 100,000 people their jobs. A quarter of them left the area looking for work. This led to a subsequent headline in later years that read: “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?”
Businesses were moving elsewhere, too. The city was in turmoil and depopulated. Thus, by the time of the Wah Mee Massacre, there was a whopping unemployment rate of 12%, and rapid dilapidation was distending. The AIDS epidemic was rampant, and kids wondered what on earth they could do. Grisly grunge was the uproarious answer.
Meanwhile, over in Britain, a differing turn of events was shaping another new sound. The end of the Margaret Thatcher era and economic austerity had provided the nation with a renewed sense of optimism and purpose. Tony Blair was hatching a ‘Cool Britannia’ rebrand for Blighty, and past achievements were being reflected on. Britpop arose as an upbeat, poppy, yet punch-drunk movement, celebrating the likes of The Beatles that came before.
Not everyone was a fan of it in its beer-swilling entirety. However, one key facet that even inspired bands who shirked the genre was its sense of a snapshot of life. Though it might have been wildly different from grunge in many ways, it shared the sentiment of shunning polished pop tropes and, instead, reflecting existence with a sense of truth. Fake American accents and outwardly commercial attitudes disappeared from Britain’s alternative spheres.
A few rare bands looked to conflate these new outlooks springing up on either side of the pond, capturing the roughshod distortion of grunge and the prettified pop of revitalised 1960s music that was propping up Britpop.
Two of the main proponents, in a unique league of their own, were The Vaselines and Young Marble Giants. Kurt Cobain adored both of them. Hailing from Scotland and Wales, respectively, they became the Nirvana star’s favourite British bands of the day.
And when he was asked to select his favourite albums of all time, Cobain picked out Dying For It by The Vaselines and Colossal Youth by Young Marble Giants as the very best of what Britain had to offer him. At that moment in time, in Cobain’s eyes they even squeezed out his beloved Beatles, with the Fab Four failing to make his top ten for Melody Maker.
“[They’re] definitely our number-one favourite band,” Cobain famously declared of The Vaselines. Nirvana even covered them on multiple occasions. As for Young Marble Giants, the frontman declared, “This music relaxes you; it’s total atmospherics. The drum machine has to be the cheesiest sound ever…I don’t know much about them. I first heard Colossal Youth on the radio after I started getting into K music when I lived in Olympia. It was a year before I put out the Bleach album”.
It’s notable that both informed his sound, not just his record collection. The scene in Seattle could be quite consuming, but these overlooked British acts provided an alternative that elevated Nirvana’s sound with instructions that you could be rough and light at the same time, and that you could embrace cheesiness but still be radical.
So, while they might not stand amongst most people’s reckoning of the greatest British albums of all time, this is almost why Cobain singled them out: they were deeply original additions that went against the grain in a humble and sincere way. By Cobain’s own unique definition, that’s as punk as it gets.
Speaking about Cobain, Eugen Kelly of The Vaselines bemoaned how little contact they shared. “I feel sad that I never got the chance to speak to Kurt and express how grateful we are,” he told Glasgow Live.
Adding, “But you can never say ‘we don’t want to talk about it’. It’s a magic thing to happen to any musician, that some other musician likes your stuff enough to play it live and then record it – and, of course, they became one of the biggest bands in the world. I always want to say thank you.”
