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Stephen Tow, author of The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge, speaks in the Penn Bookstore on Tuesday.

Credit: Ben Brodie , Ben Brodie

It is time to change the image of that “grunge” costume, flannel and all, according to the Penn Bookstore’s latest guest.

Early Tuesday evening, a small group of 30 and 40-somethings gathered in the corner of the Penn Bookstore Cafe to listen to Stephen Tow, author of The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge.

“I had an evening free, and I thought ‘Why not learn about the birth of grunge music?’ I suppose I had never thought beyond the big names, Nirvana, etc.” local attorney Jack Spangler said. “The interesting story always seems to be lurking behind and beneath the big names, so I hope to get at that story.”

Tow began his discussion clearing up the four myths “of this whole thing.” These myths were that Nirvana invented grunge, that grunge was the only movement happening in Seattle, that bands such as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains were grunge and that “grunge is so serious and these people are so serious.”

“Real grunge happened in the late ’80s,” Tow said in an attempt to clear these myths.

However, many have their own definitions of grunge. Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge shared a different definition. “[Tow] was saying that Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains weren’t grunge, whereas from my book I considered them grunge because they were labeled as grunge by the media or by the establishment,” Yarm said.

With media outlets publicizing the 20th anniversary of the mainstream grunge movement, Tow wanted to set the record straight in terms of what grunge really is outside of the media spectrum.

He said that Seattle has an eclectic music scene and that the people who started this scene are humorous people. He also told anecdotes about the bands such as U-Men and Tad that fill his book.

“People that were there decided that ‘We’re here, we have nothing to lose,’” Tow explained. Their “why-not-break-the-rules” mentality ultimately spurred a lot of creativity in the Seattle area. However, in 1988, the record label Sub Pop showed up to the Seattle music scene and thought, as Tow argued, “let’s brand it and call it grunge.”

“It was also interesting to find out that what I think of as Nirvana was really sort of a construction of Nirvana and grunge and all that,” said Erika Dajeuskis, a nanny currently living in Philadelphia.

“I have to mention the elephant in the room which is Nirvana,” Tow said. Tow believes that the cultural explosion in Seattle occurred when bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana became mainstream. This is what caused kids to rush to Seattle dressed in flannel to get into the music industry.

“By the time we got to the early ’90s, grunge was over.”

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