English
To some of us it seems unbelievable , but twenty years ago, who was going to say that the city of Seattle, conquered the world musically through a series of memorable band whose sound coined a term on its own, “grunge” which also served loosely to describe, or label, a lifestyle which identified all those angry and uprooted youngsters who had been excluded from the promises of the American Dream due to the antisocial policy of the U.S. administration since the election of Ronald Reagan as president.
Coinciding with the arrival to office of Bill Clinton in 1992 and the amazing and huge commercial success of these groups flagged Pearl Jam and, above all, Nirvana, along with the sad and tragic suicide little less than advertised of Nirvan´s lead singer, Kurt Cobain, and the consequent disappearance of the band after just barely five albums that made them one of the great legends of grunge rock a movement which immediately was absorbed and swallowed by the capitalist society of show biz, without a doubt one of the reasons for the suicide of Cobain who saw with astonishment and awe the irreversibility of this process that already begun during his time in the band
Grunge emerged from the margins, the anguish and anger, collecting a brilliant musical heritage that was so isolated from the wasteland of tacky and stifling dominant stadium rock in the eighties when it came to sales success and media coverage. Dissidents Americans like Big Black, Husker Du, Black Flag, REM, Sonic Youth or the Pixies, among others put dirty rock guitars back on the map along with defiantly beautiful and stark heartedly lyrics. But success soon died due to the suffering of a significant cartooning of how the dictatorship of the market and money steals the souls of genuine things and neutralizes the alternative option, quickly becoming a reified commodity. Still, those dark and golden years and left several masterpieces of literature, film, music, theater and art, a cultural heritage hardly negligible.
Many crucial things have happened since then (the Internet boom, new ways of listening to music and the transmission of information, old wars with different costumes, several legal coups, continued attacks on civil liberties within the so-called democratic countries, the financial system crisis affecting everyone, especially the poorest,and not the real culprits …) but the music of Seattle is still there, only it has also changed. Keeping a low profile, some of its best representatives, whilst not abandoning their rock roots, are more inclined to drink musical influences from the rich sources of American folk tradition, a phenomenon that probably is not entirely outside the influence of the fruitful and hybrid stream called “freak-folk” of the last ten years.
Such is the case of Fleet Foxes, who will play in the Halle E MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (http://www.halleneg.at/) next November 15th, whose hypnotic music and highly personal formula shares formidable echoes of Dylan, Neil Young, the Zombies and the Beach Boys among others
They present the great Helplessness Blues, their second album to date. If you rent apartments in Vienna capital of music, around that time you will hardly find a concert as recommended as this one
Translated by: Marc
Contact Me
