In Details' July issue, a member of a band called Firehose wrote a paean to his flannel shirt. In September, the magazine ran an article called "Nirvana-bes: A Bluffer's Guide to the New Indie-Rock Superstars." Entertainment Weekly discovered underground music in August with its "Complete (Idiot's) Guide to the Future of Rock & Roll." Vogue dispatched Steven Meisel to photograph grunge fashion in Northwest noir for its December issue. But none of this would have happened without MTV.
Not long after its debut, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video ran four or five times a day for weeks. In October 1991, Steve Isaacs, MTV's first grunge veejay, was hired and was put into equally heavy rotation. But by last May, Pearl Jam's acoustic jam on the network's "Unplugged" show made Nirvana look like last year's model.
To be Continued: by Rick Marin