Книга Grunge!: The Story of the Music That Redefined Rock
Witness one of the most stunning revolutions in rock ’n’ roll history in this authoritative and visually rich history of grunge.
In the early 1990s, a new sound from the Pacific Northwest changed everything. Grunge! charts the rise of the movement that redefined rock through its raw power, authenticity, and emotion—and the community that gave it life. Longtime Seattle journalist Gillian G. Gaar, who lived the story firsthand, explores how bands such as grunge’s so-called “Big Four”—Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains—rose from dive bars and DIY record labels to dominate airwaves, fashion, and pop culture worldwide.
Richly illustrated with rare photography, concert flyers, and memorabilia, Grunge! traces the genre’s roots in the region’s earlier garage rock and punk scenes, then follows its explosion and enduring influence, year by year, from 1986 through 1996. Gaar also spotlights:
- Key venues like the Central, Vogue, and Off Ramp that helped nurture the scene
- Foundational labels, including Sub Pop, C/Z, and Kill Rock Stars, that transmitted Seattle’s sounds around the globe
- Photographers and chroniclers such as Charles Peterson and others who visually captured the chaos and creativity
- Essential bands, including the Big Four and trailblazers such as Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney, Melvins, Screaming Trees, the Gits, 7 Year Bitch, TAD, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and Foo Fighters
Grunge! revisits the years when Seattle ruled the world, offering an insider’s view of the movement that blended punk attitude, heavy riffs, and unvarnished authenticity into a cultural force that still resonates.
For fans of rock history and 1990s culture, this is the ultimate tribute to music’s last true revolution—authentic, loud, and forever influential.
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“Noted music journalist Gillian G. Gaar is uniquely qualified to pen a history of grunge because she was there. Grunge! makes for a complete and well-detailed history of the music, mainly due to Gaar’s fine writing and unique insight. And it will surely send readers to their favorite streaming services to investigate deeper cuts from the bigger bands, and any cuts from the others. Which is the best outcome that the author of any music history book could hope to achieve.”
" - HoustonPress.com"
"Every turn of the page drags you right back into the lower levels where a broken-chord revolution was quietly, yet fiercely born. While most rock biographies treat the ’90s Seattle explosion like a lightning strike; Gaar’s work reminds us that it was a slow-burning fuse lit years earlier in independent record shops and basement venues. She doesn’t just chronicle the grunge era; she pulls you face-first through the damp basements, broken promises, and the tinnitus-riddled squalor that forged an insurrection in the dark before the corporate suits even learned how to spell Seattle. A rigorously documented inventory of a reality that actually happened, drawn from her own direct, eyewitness chronicles, then violently dragged through a distortion pedal and poured right back out on a raw, fuzz-drenched frequency.
" - The Spill Magazine