deathtokoalas
rust never sleeps was pretty "grunge", but it's hardly the first example of the sound. the meat puppets don't represent that aspect of cobain's influences, though. this is more influential on his unusual sense of humour. it has a history in punk rock tracing back through the damned to the who. contemporaneously speaking, and putting the cowpunk thing to the side, they sit more on the butthole surfers, sonic youth, flaming lips and cardiacs (i've never heard cobain cite cardiacs, but others have) noise-psych-punk side of things. that sound evolved into stuff like mr. bungle and.......sonic youth, cardiacs, meat puppets and flaming lips. and rem broke it first. what that means is that if you're interested in early "grunge", this isn't the place to look. try black flag, swans, melvins, flipper & early soundgarden.

Freddy Mertz
Cobain was Scratch Acid, at least vocally. I literally feel bad for Dave Yow sometimes; I hope Kurt threw him a few bucks

Michael Dudczak
I agree with most of this minus early Soundgarden.  Heck, Thayil even cited the first Puppets' album as one of his favorite/influential albums.

There's also a depressing lack of non-US bands in your "early grunge" list (can't discount the 70's/80's UK psych rock scene from the discussion of influences).  You even left out The Wipers, as far as early Seattle grunge goes.

deathtokoalas
soundgarden was really the first band to put together the grunge sound, which had absolutely nothing to do with british metal. and the wipers were a punk band that people looking for early grunge will be disappointed with.

be wary of doom metal revisionism.

soundgarden self-identified as a politically oriented punk band in the tradition of black flag and the mc5, loathed led zeppelin with a passion and were quick to react negatively when compared to 70s metal. nor was the comparison at all accurate, beyond the inclusion of a lead guitarist.

they made a series of pr errors in the late 80s and very early 90s that had them mismarketed to metal fans, and it's unfortunately stuck with them all these years. but it's very wrong, and it always has been. i don't see any use in giving people a forum to continue to spread information that has been continually debunked as false for decades.

early soundgarden (that is before badmotorfinger) is stylistically evolved out of the "slow punk" of swans, black flag and melvins. there was "slow punk" and "noise rock" before soundgarden, but there wasn't really 'grunge'. that's their creation, primarily.

Captain Obvious
like there is even such a thing. 

deathtokoalas
all genre names get abused. but slowing down punk is a thing that happened, and grunge is a pretty apt description for it.

TheZurul
you know what's up, my dude. listen to this guy, everyone. he's done his homework

deathtokoalas
do i not make it abundantly obvious that i'm female?

Zappabain
I find very interesting what you say, though I'm not so sure in respect of Cobain's influences at least, as he listened metal (at least Celtic Frost, and had been a Sammy Haggard fan), loved Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, ... though he tried to hide it as it would be against Osborne's (Melvins) teachings :p Sadly I haven't listened to most of the bands he said he listened to (Skid Row, Scratch Acid, Butthole surfers, Fugazzi, ...) so I don't know much yet.

But Cobain was clearly influenced (almost copying...) by The Wipers "Is this real?" riffs in Nevermind, and he repeatedly admitted to like the band. Nirvana even recorded those covers of Return of the Rat and D-7... Though I think Nevermind shouldn't be considered precisely the grunge definition (if there is one), as for me grunge is more Screaming Life and Bleach, and In Utero, though that one sounds very different it keeps that punk attitude. Nevermind has that clean production, chorus on guitar, that makes me feel it is another style; I can't imagine those songs with Bleach sound...; Nevermind has aged badly though it's a good album (though I always felt Polly was cheesy or something (I'm not native speaker so I may not use the correct word)).

deathtokoalas
i don't think cobain ever denied growing up listening to some metal (although i think you may have misunderstood his opinion of skid row), and you can definitely hear a little bit of a metal tinge on some stuff. i mean, he named a song "aero zeppelin". that's a pretty clear hint of where he was coming from....before he hit puberty.

but, my point is simply that none of those things are where people want to go if they're looking for 80s music that fits the "grunge" tag. i don't think there's any question that he cited the wipers as an influence. but, he also cited the beatles as an influence, and that doesn't make the beatles early grunge.

Zappabain
Yes, if you do not consider Nevermind as grunge, the most melodic counterpart, the one everyone knows... But I agree with you, as I do not think Nevermind is a good example of grunge so Wipers are not grunge roots in that sense... About hiding his metal likings, I was paraphrasing ”Heavier than heaven” biography, only about pre-89 era, when he idolatriced The Melvins so much and Buzz Osborne had lend him some cassettes, etc. God, this would be so weird and ridiculous if Buzz himself read this...

deathtokoalas
even with nevermind, the influence from the wipers is certainly not it's glossiness. i'd suggest looking towards something like bad religion, or maybe husker du, if you're looking for that glossy pop-punk sound with a bit of an edge. the wipers were a pretty lo-fi punk act.

i think the skid row story probably comes from the fact that nirvana were initially called "skid row" and had to change their name when the hair metal band became famous. kurt was clearly more of a metalhead than a number of his peers were, but it wouldn't be that type of metal that he was into.

Zappabain
Yes, I was not thinking in the hair metal shit; I seemed to remember it was a local band, but I may have mixed it with themselves being called Skid Row or a local band with ”similar” name :) sorry.

what pitchfork says is not historically relevant. to the contrary, we can expect pitchfork to fall apart in a three part process:

1) generational change. yeah, well, i've been clear that i think connecting music to generational change is bollocks, but that won't stop it from happening. well, actually, maybe the internet might put an end to that silliness. in five or ten years, pitchfork will be the uncoolest thing in the world. IT'S WHERE YOUR PARENTS GO TO GET MUSIC REVIEWS. so, some other site will replace it? no. radio was killed by mtv was killed by internet. it's the shift in technology that makes the difference. how did we end up with an internet music monopoly in the first place? what does pitchfork really provide besides lame opinions? in the end, this idea of a music review monopoly is just totally pre internet economy. we have the monopoly because consumers that were switching over didn't know any better. they've lived with music monopolies their whole lives. but in the end, once kids that have only known decentralization take over the interwebs, we're going to end up with a plurality of specialized sites rather than a centralized one. a big punk site. a big metal site. a big hip-hop site. it will be good for each genre, especially if we can get a substantial community-run experimental site up and running. pitchfork may become the pop site. they can keep being ignorant and close-minded from that perch, but their influence will be restricted entirely to the close-minded and ignorant mainstream. i think we might be closer to the last part than we realize.

2) mocking. when it happens, pitchfork is going to be the laughing stock of everybody under 30. then 50.

3) irrelevancy. in the end, nobody's even going to care that they slammed whatever record that is otherwise universally hailed as brilliant, or that they spent so much time promoting so much forgettable pop garbage. they'll become a sort of curiosity about the 00s that mostly elicits a sort of mocking laugh, like bell bottoms. or afros. or mtv.

wait until they start changing reviews. that's when you'll know the end of their idiocy is near.

in the end, allmusic will outlast pitchfork.

the thing that bugs me about them the most is their over-use of the idea "pretension". i'm a pretty ridiculous punk at my core. i'm all about ripping down pretension. basically, though, the writers there seem to think that anything that tries at all is "pretentious", which is itself actually pretentious. they're pretending they can tell the difference, when in truth they don't have the slightest clue. it's acted as a disincentive towards creativity, because everybody knows that trying anything different at all is going to lead to a bad review. from a marketing perspective, it's better to play it safe and just continue producing boring pop music.

well, unless you've made it to their approved list, which is entirely arbitrary. their xenakis reviews indicate they don't have the slightest clue what they're listening to, but on name recognition xenakis is approved as always 'not pretentious'. as a mathematician that's actually read some of his books? i think iannis' ideas are a little unclear at points, enough to label him...completely and utterly and totally fucking pretentious. we can forgive the staff for not knowing xenakis (i just wonder why they bothered reviewing xenakis in the first place). the animal collective are a more egregiously obvious example. this is the absolute height of pretentious garbage. knob twiddling high school flunkies pretending to be art rock icons. it's disgusting - makes me want to vomit every time i hear it. but they love it. and them loving it is fucking pretension...

so, let's make a few things clear.

pretentious:
- jimmy page playing pentatonic scales on a sitar.
- members of elp trying to write pop operas
- the clash insulting peter gabriel for being too upper class
- oasis placing themselves in the same sentence as the beatles
- djs thinking they're musicians
- in general, pretending you know more than you do and failing when you try to do it

not necessarily pretentious:
- working with a producer to hire musicians to write and record parts for you (usually on instruments nobody in the band plays).
- cryptic, difficult lyrics that combine together to a coherent point
- solos (guitar, synth, whatever) longer than four bars that don't merely form a melody
- non-standard instrumentation
- ambience
- in general, using knowledge you've assimilated to create something creative and/or different (which often confuses people)

in the end, this will all work itself out.