The Story of Grunge Audiobook By Michael Stewart Foley, The Great Courses cover art

The Story of Grunge

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The Story of Grunge

By: Michael Stewart Foley, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Michael Stewart Foley
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About this listen

You can’t truly understand the last decade of the 20th century without a look at the muddy, electrifying rock music that would come to define it: grunge. For such a short-lived genre—at least in the mainstream—grunge had a lasting impact on American music and culture. It also provides a unique lens through which to examine the post-Reagan, pre-internet America of the 1990s.

In the six lectures of The Story of Grunge, you’ll explore the rise and evolution of the genre, tracing it from Seattle subculture to MTV and the Billboard charts, all the way to its decline and evolution into new forms. Along the way, you’ll meet the pioneers of grunge and see how they, and their music, continue to influence popular culture today.

While the emergence of Nirvana in the early 90s marked grunge’s ascendency, you’ll begin at an earlier point in the story, exploring the birth of the genre’s unique look and sound from within the wider punk scene in the Pacific Northwest. From there, you’ll see how grunge was a vehicle for politics and social consciousness in music, including feminism and the Riot Grrrl movement. And you’ll also understand why the rapid rise of grunge was not quite the authentic, organic process it might seem, but rather the result of marketing savvy and cynical commercialism.

The death of Nirvana’s lead singer and grunge icon Kurt Cobain in 1993—combined with increasing oversaturation and commercialization of the genre—certainly diminished the creative energy that spurred the rise of grunge. And yet, as you’ll see, the music, style, and anti-corporate philosophy of grunge has had a deep and lasting impact that continues to resonate well into the 21st century.

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I learned a lot.

I liked the way the story was told. I learned a lot about how grunge music became what it is and I loved it.

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A Scholarly Study of Grunge

If you're looking for some sort of pop-journalistic history of your favourite grunge bands, you may be disappointed. This is a serious academic study of grunge as a social movement. Issues such as economics, politics, feminism and the ethics of commercializing angst are the author's/lecturer's focus. I'm glad I listened, for I now have a much deeper understanding of the origins and impact of music that was once often in my ears.

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A great brief overview of Grunge

Pleasant voice to listen to. I learned quite a bit about grunge. I enjoyed learning more about the artists intentions and artistry.

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Homily and history

Knowledgeable historian, but s one of this is just political opinion. Author minimizes justifies drug abuse by not offering any counter argument

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"The Politics of Michael Stewart Foley and Grunge" would be a more apt title

This is not about the *music* of grunge.

This proved to be an uncomfortably myopic series of lectures. While the politics of grunge is interesting and worthy of time, and while viewing grunge through an explicitly Marxist lens could be a valuable use of a lecture, the entire series focuses almost exclusively on these topics.

There was no discussion of the musical traditions being brought together beyond an occasional list of band name-checks. And even then, the bands listed are more likely to be called out in the context of their political views than the music they created and how that musicianship translated and created the feel of the genre.

The political focus becomes particularly tiresome as the lecturure's politics insert themselves more and more into the story. The gloss of the Seattle WTO protests is so misleading that it comes across as both clumsy and deliberate. Likewise the bizarre tangent into the administration of GHWB which, again, seems to offer an idiosyncratic take as if it was received consensus.

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