Hype!

This movie establishes two things: 1. Seattle has a great music scene. 2. So does every other large city. 2 and a half. Eventually the media finds you and ruins you.

The events that went down in Seattle are nothing new and nothing old. Left to develop itself any local music scene will mature into something great. Whether or not the press/industry discovers this and shows up to suck the life out of it is up to fate. Hype! is a snapshot of money finding talent. The results range from crappy albums to suicide.

What this film does accomplish is to procure a reaction of artists caught in the overwhelming process of being found. Suddenly you are being offered loads of cash to do the same thing you've been doing for years, or even decades, for next to nothing. This changes your output - you stop playing to the crowd and start playing to the money. The interviewees in Hype! recognize this and speak to it. This is where the movie succeeds. The musicians see what is happening for what it is and call it out. What they fail to do is reject it, but at least they leave a document for the next generation.

At the end of the film there is a warning: Your town is next. Will the next town take the advice?

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?

If you're a fan of grunge, or suffering from an inexplicable bout of 90s nostalgia, then this film will no doubt make fascinating viewing. If, however, you want a film that goes beyond the story that everybody already knows, and delivers something more than a load of concert footage and an unnecessary (because really, who the hell doesn't already know this?) portrait of the cynical and exploitative nature of corporate America when faced with a new, marketable sub-culture, then it might not be worth bothering. Yes, the people from the bands all seem lovely, and there are a few neat moments here and there, but in the end this is really just an excuse for eighty minutes of second-tier, never-was grunge bands rocking. And do you really want to subject yourself to that? Hopefully, someone will eventually make a film about the history of punk rock that manages to be both entertaining and informative, and not just another tedious anti-corporate screed (apparently The Decline of Western Civilisation is such a film. I haven't seen it, but I intend to check it out) padded with footage of everyone's favourite bands from their first year of University.

It's not bad. It's just not that great, either.

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.

An incredible reminder of the intense, passionate, and powerful grunge movement from the late 80s through the mid 90s. A wonderful 1996 surprise for any rock lover, but especially those loyal to the genre itself. The honest and direct interviews, commentaries, and live performances provide inspiration to all open to hear what the fuss (or should I say fuzz?) was all about.