Hype!

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana. I lied down for a nap with the radio on after school one day. When I woke up it was night, but what threw me out of bed, what got me banging my head was "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I never heard anything like it. The noise possessed me. Right then and there I filed away my Poison and Def Leppard tapes; there were new rock stars to worship.

HYPE charts what happened in Seattle to bring forth this defining moment of a generation as well as what happened after. It's a sharp, funny documentary with scads of concert footage of bands both famous (Soundgarden) and not so (Coffin Break). Interspersed are wry observations from the locals who got so fed up with the endless, um, hype, that the only way to stay sane was to make fun of it all.

The movie is put together well, but I do have some complaints. I wish the filmmakers had shown the first live performance of "Teen Spirit" in its entirety. The part they do show is electrifying; maybe it's the combination of the grainy, shaky footage and Nirvana itself, but at that moment it was obvious that Kurt Cobain would be a superstar. This concert was ground zero for the biggest youthquake in my lifetime, so I wish it could have seen and heard the performance from beginning to end.

My second complaint is easier to forgive. For all the talk about Nirvana, not a word is mentioned about Hole. Given Courtney Love's litigious nature when it comes to her and Kurt's music, I presume she did what she had to do to keep her band out of it. It's not the director's fault, but it does harm the movie since Love is arguably the biggest star the era produced. (HYPE hit theatres about six weeks before THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT; I wonder if that was mere coincidence.)

Finally, since there's a clip of the Gits, it would have been right to at least mention lead singer Mia Zapata's 1993 murder. I didn't hear about this until years later, when "Unsolved Mysteries" did a piece on it. I wanted to know more about it, like how her death affected the community and the music. Were the Gits a local favorite? Was Zapata popular? A bitch? Movie doesn't say.

I still have all my grunge CDs. Not just the big acts but many of the wannabees, never-weres and knockoffs too: Sponge, Mad Season, Jawbox, Dink, Seven Mary Three. I don't care how derivative it sounds; this era of music was my college years, the early '90s, the best time of my life. Forgive me for wallowing in it occasionally (I type as the moody Mother Love Bone song on the SINGLES soundtrack resonates around me).

What happened to grunge? Did it die with Kurt, or with Mia, or when Weird Al gave the world his spin, or when Pearl Jam agreed to play at Ticketmaster arenas? It sure was long gone by the time Layne Staley died and the Smashing Pumpkins broke up. HYPE's running time is under ninety minutes, which seems appropriate since grunge was over quickly too. It petered out before its time, and before we knew it Hootie and the Blowfish was the next big thing. And look what pop music is now.

8/10

Oh, and I did eventually buy the Best Of collections from Poison and Def Leppard. Don't we all secretly still like the music we listened to in high school?

It's my hope that future musicians who are trying to make real music as opposed to Spice Girls pap and that ilk will look at this documentary and try not to make the same mistakes, and allow the hype to overwhelm what could have been a real musical revolution. The high points (or low points, depending on your point of view) are the Muzak version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and when the ex-Sub Pop employee made up "grunge" terms that The New York Times printed as gospel. I wish this had acknowledged earlier Seattle musicians like Hendrix and Heart, and tried to answer whether the Nirvana-Pearl Jam feud was real or just part of the hype, but otherwise, this is an important cautionary tale, and it's also fun and informative. Oh yeah, and the music is great too.

This film documents what was is referred to as the "Grunge", or "Seattle scene". It goes into depth exploring the tools the media, and corporations used to exploit and market this scene.

It goes back to the roots of grunge siting such bands as Skin Yard, Green River, and Mudhoney. One great thing about this film is the soundtrack. It's the best soundtrack since "Singles". It features The Gits, Mudhoney, Green River, The Fastbacks, etc.

Watch this film. Watch live performances, interviews with SoundGarden, Pearl Jam, etc.

For anyone who was a fan of the early '90s "grunge" music, Hype! is almost required viewing. Loaded with interviews, live footage, and early demos/recordings, it is an accurate chronology of the early scene.

However, what makes Hype! so good is that it is basically two stories in one. A simple narrative about the Seattle scene is used to illustrate how the American pop-culture machine will jump on the bandwagon. An independent musical scene with a range of different influences gains a little exposure and reputation. Soon the corporate media steps in, and it all becomes wrapped up in the nice little package of "grunge" and is marketed nationwide as a music/clothing/life-style choice. The people in the original scene either play the game and take advantage of it, or they are caught up and exploited, or they are simply left behind. In the end, what was once underground becomes assimilated into the mainstream and homogenized. The cycle is left to repeat itself somewhere else as soon as the next "musical revolution" is discovered.

Hype! could have just as easily been about a different city or musical genre, and the story would have been the same. These same themes have been brought up in numerous other films, but they work a little better in Hype! because it's not simply a satire, but shows it first-hand through real people.

Once again, I think Hype! is a well-made documentary. Even if you're not a fan of "grunge", I still recommend it for its treatment of pop-culture as a whole.

If you were above a certain age when the "Seattle sound" or "grunge rock" became the rage, HYPE! is a good place to catch up. I can't think of a single feature film that has concert performances from so many bands. Most songs are shown as excerpts rather than in full-length, but the clips are lengthy, and the musicians are shown in prolonged shots without the irritating frenetic cuts favored by post-MTV film editors. The concert footage has more the flavor of the 60's than the 90's. Although grunge rock was the signature of Generation X, both older and younger rock music fans will likely enjoy it.

Most of the interview material will be best appreciated by fans of the genre. Other viewers will find that, away from the stage and their instruments, grunge rockers are no wittier or more entertaining than the musicians who preceded them.