"The REM and Nirvana successes don't mean much to me except as a potential distraction for bands who want to cash in on the trend. Don't try to sound like someone else. REM and Nirvana don't sound like anyone else"
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Ginn is doing the punk elder thing: refusing to clap for the coronation even as the kids he helped empower finally crack the mainstream. On the surface, he’s brushing off REM and Nirvana’s rise as irrelevant to his own compass. Underneath, he’s warning that “success” is less a breakthrough than a weather system that turns independent music into a gold rush.
The key move is the word “distraction.” He’s not attacking those bands; he’s attacking the opportunists who will use their visibility as a shortcut. That’s a very Greg Ginn position, forged in the SST era when “alternative” wasn’t a genre tag but a logistics problem: booking DIY tours, pressing records, staying solvent while resisting the gravitational pull of major-label norms. When REM and Nirvana blow up, the culture doesn’t just make room for more weirdness; it also creates a market incentive to cosplay weirdness.
The line “Don’t try to sound like someone else” reads like a simple artistic maxim, but it’s also a business critique. Chasing a trend is how labels domesticate a scene, how radio formats stabilize, how the unruly becomes a product line. Ginn’s praise - “REM and Nirvana don’t sound like anyone else” - is both compliment and challenge: originality is the only defensible credential, and it’s also the first thing that gets strip-mined once the spotlight hits.
It’s cynicism with a moral center. He’s not gatekeeping fame; he’s guarding the conditions that make a scene worth having.
The key move is the word “distraction.” He’s not attacking those bands; he’s attacking the opportunists who will use their visibility as a shortcut. That’s a very Greg Ginn position, forged in the SST era when “alternative” wasn’t a genre tag but a logistics problem: booking DIY tours, pressing records, staying solvent while resisting the gravitational pull of major-label norms. When REM and Nirvana blow up, the culture doesn’t just make room for more weirdness; it also creates a market incentive to cosplay weirdness.
The line “Don’t try to sound like someone else” reads like a simple artistic maxim, but it’s also a business critique. Chasing a trend is how labels domesticate a scene, how radio formats stabilize, how the unruly becomes a product line. Ginn’s praise - “REM and Nirvana don’t sound like anyone else” - is both compliment and challenge: originality is the only defensible credential, and it’s also the first thing that gets strip-mined once the spotlight hits.
It’s cynicism with a moral center. He’s not gatekeeping fame; he’s guarding the conditions that make a scene worth having.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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