The Early 90s Further Bus

I can’t tell you how many times I played “Hunger Strike” on guitar at parties in the early 90s, while drunk and stoned and sometimes tripping friends sang along.  In the early 90s, ‘Grunge’ was a term for more than music – it represented a way of life not unlike the terms deadhead, hippie, beatnik, or hepcat did to generations before us.  For us, the early 90s were our own late 60s renaissance… Generation X-style.  The Grateful Dead were going strong, their followers were keeping our dietary desires well supplemented, festivals like Lollapalooza were peaking, and Raves (a modern form of Ken Keysey’s Acid Test Parties) were all the rave.

Though “Hunger Strike” embodied all that, it was also a place for us to start going back… skipping past hair-metal, 80s electro-pop, disco, and soft singer-songwriter ballads to discover what had made grunge possible:  Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Neil young with Crazy Horse, and all those cats who blended a teenager’s level of angst with expression of a not-so-perfect nature.

Because with the 80s everything had to be perfect.  Guitar solos, hairstyles, fashion, and otherwise.  With grunge it was ok – and often appreciated – when someone was a little messed up (in life, music, or stained flannel shirt).  It reminded us we were human, that we shouldn’t take things so seriously.  A sloppy one-note Neil Young guitar solo sounded – and felt – a dozen times more human than a robotic, albeit scathing, Yingaling Muffschwing (Yngwie Malmsteen) scale at uber-high speed.

Our drunken “Hunger Strike” party moments, with all our blended flaws of voice and guitar and ripped flannel and pillow hair, let us know we were human, flawed, and beautiful for it.