Grunge is a music genre and a more commercially successful offshoot of punk rock and hardcore punk in the late, late 1980s and early 1990s. It was bands from Seattle that made grunge popular with a large audience. Many of the more successful bands of the era we're associated with the Sub Pop record label.
Grunge music was a reaction to the long slow movement from hard rock music of the 1970s to soft rock music in the 1980s.
This trend in music came about in the early 1990's known as grunge. In 1991, Jason Frost got his start in rock music while living in Olympia, WA,(near Seattle) where he played coffee houses, small clubs, & parties. Many of the grunge bands like Nirvana, Marcy Playground, etc... started out in this town. He jammed and practiced in warehouse space previously rented to Nirvana, and played in Band Alley where he shared space with some of the biggest names in Rock. Jason turned down his first music deal with Sub-Pop in 1994 following the suicide of Kurt Cobain. (If he had accepted the record deal, he probably would have been a household name by now). The forerunners of this rock genre were primarily Seattle based bands, such as, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, and Soundgarden. Other major contributors were Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains. These bands promoted a raw style of music, that was unlike the eighties hair rock and the heavier stylings of bands like Metallica or Anthrax. The grunge wave took control of the airwaves in both popular and rock stations. It was the ushering in of a totally new mindset about music. It broke the back of what was epitomized as good music in the eighties and changed the entire culture of America's youth.
The grunge period really began with the release of Nirvana's Nevermind in 1991. The album created one of the biggest bands the world has ever seen. The grunge period was resting on their shoulders. When frontman Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994 the group Nirvana and the grunge era died with him.
Prominent bands: