One musician says hold my beer in terms of disrespect for Nirvana and Soundgarden

Nirvana and Soundgarden were two parts of an extremely important subgenre of rock music in the early 1990s. Kurt Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" changed radio and what people would listen to. Out with classic rock and in with the new guys from Seattle.

Was the music of most grunge bands worth the listen? Of course. There was simply too much talent and bands pushing each other for fans and catchy tunes for many of the groups to not be great. There were failures, of course, but bands such as Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and the others of their ilk still seem as vibrant today as they did 30 years ago.

Gits drummer Steve Moriarty might see things a little differently, however. He and his band moved to Seattle in the late 1980s and joined a wave of influential groups. The Gits were swept aside a bit by others, but they still produced some excellent songs. In Moriarty's opinion, his band was a lot more original than Nirvana and Soundgarden, though.

Former Gits drummer calls Nirvana and Soundgarden unoriginal

In other words, Moriarty seems a bit miffed his band did not get the love some other Seattle area bands did. Maybe the Gits simply were not good enough. (That is not a judgment, just an observation based on the Q value of Cobain and mates versus the Gits.)

In a recent interview with Booked on Rock, Moriarty said his band of outsiders from Yellow Springs, Ohio, never quite fit in with bands that were born and raised in the Seattle area. To argue Moriarty's point, one might logically think that bands that had known each other for years would probably be less trusting of groups just moving to the area when grunge was beginning to get some real notice.

Moriarty said on the podcast, "If you just look at...Nirvana, and Soundgarden, they were all from the area. They all knew each other. They all rehearsed, like, in the same rehearsal area. So, they kind of grew up together, basically. Their parents lived there, their parents were also musicians in some cases, and one was an entertainment lawyer."

Fair enough, though the part about the lawyer seems more of an intended slight than a real observation. Moriarty did not stop with the "outsiders" talk, though. He went on to say Nirvana and Soundgarden were unoriginal.

The drummer said, "I'll speak for myself: I thought the bands sounded very derivative. I thought they either sounded like Black Sabbath or Iggy and the Stooges...you got into Soundgarden and even Nirvana and some of those bands, they were like, slow and grungey and kind of melodic, and sounded like Black Sabbath for the most part, tuned down to D oftentimes."

Sadly, Moriarty's band never could get traction due to the sudden passing of vocalist Mia Zapata. One might wonder how well the band would have done had they not been taken about by an awful crime.

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