When Cameron Crowe shot "Singles," the members of Pearl Jam were sufficiently unknown to appear in the movie as extras. (Matt Dillon, the movie's moody leader of a garage grunge band called Citizen Dick, stereotyped their kind.) But by the time the band played the premiere party at the Plaza Hotel in September, they were rock stars.
Back in Seattle, a backlash is brewing. "All things grunge are treated with the utmost cyncism and amusement," said Mr. Poneman of Sub Pop. "Because the whole thing is a fabricated movement and always has been." The still-unfamous Seattle band Mudhoney even wrote a song about it: Everybody loves us Everybody loves our town That's why I'm Thinking of leaving it Don't believe in it now . . . It's so overblown.