So, what were you doing 30 years ago?

[wmhill]

I was gigging and running a mom & pop music store. Nirvana was a bain on anyone working in the music retail scene at that time. Greasy kids coming in all day with their gramps old sweaters and playing really fast (and bad).
Interestingly, my wife lived in SoCal and often saw Nirvana in dive bars around Tijuana. She said that they were kind of scuzzy and they would hang on breaks in the parking lot by themselves as nobody wanted anything to do with them. The tables turned somewhere along the way for them.

 

[Deleted member 365158]

I just turned 43 today, so 30 years ago I was about 13.

Bands like Nirvana were my gateway into deeper and heavier music beyond the mainstream gargle-bucket the radio was feeding me. I was a loner/outsider and this felt like loner/outsider music that I could relate to. In the 80s, it was either good times party pop, glam metal about getting lots of girls, or "I'm a tough guy, 'cuz I listen to Slayer!"

But there was nothing really for me; for someone who wasn't having a good time, never invited to the parties, harshly rejected by girls, and beaten up by the tough guys. So when Nirvana ushered in the brand of alternative rock that spoke to that, that's when music became a powerful influence in my life. It was (and still is) my companion, my solace, and one of the few things I trust in the world. Music understood me the way no one else did. That even a weirdo kid like me can actually carve out a place in this world, and be myself in the process. That's one thing that stood out for me with Nirvana; it wasn't an over-the-top spectacle show, it was the idea of "have the strength to be yourself."

Of course, when Nirvana got big, I started looking deeper because I wasn't going to listen to the same music that the people I hated did. Again, this is young teenage immaturity. But to this day, I still prefer listening to obscure bands that no one's heard of and genres that the average person doesn't quite "get" (e.g. I love death metal).

Happy birthday fellow Taurus and bass player!

i was probably playing hackysack
And smoking in the parking lot at the high school i went to.

 

[tothemax]

Touring west coast with band leading up to playing the Saturday night of this Garage Shock festival in Bellingham, WA.
Yes, 'garage rock' was a thing decades before hipster lightweights got a clue.
View attachment 4261755

What a perfect segue,

by '91 I had hung up my music ambitions and was on my way back from being stranded in Alaska. A buddy an I had gone to central Alaska to work at a mine, and by mid-September the temp was dropping about 10 degrees daily and losing about 15 minutes of daylight. We realized the mistake we had made and started pooling our funds for an escape. By early October we had sold enough of our tools and gear to make the winter drive from Tok back to California. I remember a night in early October when we were both huddled in our cabin (in sleeping bags) around an oil stove - "yep, we really eff'd up this time". It was 35 below outside and dropping. A couple of adventures later I remember spending our last cash at a mini mart in Bellingham for a 12 pack of Olympia a loaf of bread and some balogna. We were camping in my van in the Bellingham marina. We were both smiling because no matter what the situation was, we weren't in Alaska anymore... I ended up getting boat work in Bellingham then later Seattle which led to a few seasons commercial fishing, you guessed it - back in Alaska. But not during the winter. Bellingham will always be a special place, we went to one of the fisherman's bars for Halloween that year and had a great time, might have been the club in LB's poster.

I didn't really start playing again until around 2005... when I auditioned as a guitar player and was handed a bass.

 

[Michedelic]

And the live music scene began to crumble right before our eyes. Grunge literally destroyed local live music in my area. Nobody wanted to see anyone play Journey or VanHalen or pop anymore because that was "selling out". But they also didn't want to see a band b!+@#!*÷= and moaning about Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder's problems because that simply wasn't entertaining. Before grunge I was literally in 5 bands. I played four nights a week and rarely left a two block area of my college town. During/after that depressing garbage several clubs kept swinging away at having live bands. But it wasn't the same. Rock music was no longer celebratory. It was an outlet for teenage boy angst.

You could say I have a problem with grunge. And Kurt was the non singingest non quitar playingest (made up words) famous person who ever walked.

I did not wish him an untimely death. The poor guy beat himself up pretty hard.

That just accentuates the fact that the arrival of Nirvana, or I should say the massive sucess/acceptance(as I stated before, there had been already stuff like them emerging, including their first album, Bleach)was truly the very first 'ok, boomer' moment. For well over a decade previous, I was part of a music scene that wanted to see the likes of Van Halen and Journey go away, so I can't feel your pain. When wasn't rock an outlet for teenage angst? Isn't that the whole point?

 

[MIMike]

I was in my early stages of...
...mixing driver sizes in cabs.
If TB wasn't around back then was this even breaking any rules?

Playing in a surf band and enjoying a moderate resurgence in that genre.
Those guitar players in that band were some of the best I've ever played with.
Lost one of them to cancer last fall...RIP MII.

 

[Max Bogosity]

I was the right age, but just did not get the appeal of Nirvana or the other grunge bands. I wanted to hear great musicianship, and grunge sounded like a deliberate step backwards. It was like punk without a sense of humour.

 

[Jon Lars]

I was five years into a career in hydro engineering. I still corresponded with my Pell Mell band mates, including Steve Fisk - producer on Nirvana's "Blew". Also, was living near Ellensburg, home of Screaming Trees. My former manager Bruce Pavit was finding success with his new record label after running his little magazine for awhile.

 

[obimark]

I was attending college and kind of liked Nirvana when I first heard it, but not as much as Red Hot Chilis. I was sucked in hard with their Mothers Milk album which in my opinion was Fleas best playing. Of course I played Teen spirit in a couple of bands that went nowhere later.

 

[Lowbrow]

That just accentuates the fact that the arrival of Nirvana, or I should say the massive sucess/acceptance(because, as I stated before, there had been already stuff like them emerging, including their first album, Bleach)was truly the very first 'ok, boomer' moment. For well over a decade previous, I was part of a music scene that wanted to see the likes of Van Halen and Journey go away, so I can't feel your pain. When wasn't rock an outlet for teenage angst? Isn't that the whole point?

agreed. Much of the blowback here seems based in resentment that it gutted the old guard/covers scene, which I guess is understandable if that's how you had been applying your musicianship.
Possibly similar to what you seem to suggest, I came up in the punk scene (NYC) a little more than a decade earlier, and edgy original music had always been my thing. As my cohorts and I experienced it, Nirvana/grunge was another iteration of the sound and mindset, and their success was a great acknowledgement. Soon we had Green Day, and in an amazing turn of the popular mindset, the formerly 'unlistenable' music of our beloved Ramones was blasting out in sport stadiums and car commercials.
This wasn't a decline, it was the public finally getting hip. Of course it also meant commoditization and homogenization of punk/grunge, but it introduced a whole new genre to the mainstream consciousness.

 

[Plectrum72]

First year out of high school trying to figure out *** I was gonna do with my life while working full time and going to college. I do know that by the fall when Nevermind was released and into early 1992 when grunge started ramping up, I was wondering why the focus was on Nirvana instead of Alice in Chains who released Facelift a year prior, Pearljam who released Ten a month prior, or Soundgarden who released Badmotorfinger the same day as Nevermind. Don't get me wrong, I like Nirvana, but I just don't think their music was quite as good as their grunge predecessors and contemporaries. I'll take Man in the Box, Evenflow, or Outshined over Smells Like Teen Spirit any day of the week and I still like playing Smells Like Teen Spirit.

 

[Bunk McNulty]

Playing "Losing My Religion" and listening to a lot of jazz.

 

[Shepsdad]

I was 25 and working for a home builder in the farmland of Indiana. I was the singer in a Doors cover band, we spent most of our time sweating in the guitarists garage, occasionally playing for random neighbors who came over to see what all the ruckus was. We never played a real gig.

I had seen the video for SLTS, which was the first time I had heard of Nirvana, and was telling the guy I worked with about it as we drove out to the job, a few minutes later, that song came on the radio and I was like "THAT'S THE SONG"! The next day, we had the cassette of nevermind and that's all we listened to for probably the next month. I still listen to that album in its entirety a few times a year.

 

[jnewmark]

I was playing in an 8 piece, wedding/corporate party band, 2-3 nights a week, 50 weeks, a year, on average. Band lasted 20 good years.

 

[Green Knight]

I was playing in an Iggy pop cover band and in my first year of university.

 

[GwenOnBass]

Thirty years ago means for me it is the time of the infinite boarding pass. On a flight to one or another newspaper, with the whole of N. America as my territory. Prepress, all about prepress. If the paper doesn't go to press then I'm looking for a new job come morning. That's actually in my contract, in more weasely words. More NDAs than I can count. Some pretty well-known papers, maybe ones you read.

 

[BobDeRosa]

Building a non-musical career, raising kids, not even thinking about playing bass.

 

[bassdude51]

Married. Two kids. House. Living next to a nuclear power plant.

Thirty years later. Married. Larger house. Next to a nuclear power plant.

"Living in the USA"..........."somebody get me a cheese burger".

 

[roccobass]

Hmm. 1991. Ironically, one of the most enjoyable and on the fly bands I was in, disintegrated because of the BL's overindulgence in meth. He ruined the band's rep with club owners.

Same year: On the brighter side, on our last gig, a drummer from another band saw me play and asked me to join their band. Wasn't quite as on the fly as the other band, but great guys and quite stable. My best band stories are from that. I was with them for the next 14 years.

 

[jimmydean]

I think I was playing a gig at the 9:30 Club in D.C.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

I was on a break from bands and electric instruments and was trying to teach myself flamenco guitar. Although I had an Aria 4-string kicking around and not long after bought my first Wal Pro 1 fretless together with a little practice combo for £450 for the pair (store price!!!).