As a style of music, grunge is generally characterised by "dirty" guitar, strong riffs, heavy drumming and angst-filled (if not out-and-out dark) lyrics. It evolved out of the local punk scene, inspired by local punk bands such as The Fartz, The U-Men, and the feedback and distortion intensive The Accused; pop-punksters The Fastbacks; and above all the slow, heavy sound of The Melvins. Besides its punk roots, the grunge movement had strong roots in the Northwest musical culture and the local youth culture. The sonic resemblance to such 1960s Northwest bands as the Wailers and, most particularly, the Sonics, is unmistakable.  

Formed in 1983, Seattle's Green River is believed by most to have created the genre, and were a large inspiration for many grunge bands despite having relatively little commercial success. After the band split up, members of Green River formed Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone, continuing on their style. Green River, who used a harder sound in their performance than many later grunge bands, would inspire other early grunge bands such as Soundgarden and Alice in Chains to use a similarly hard style. However, the sound of the genre became a mix of the earlier grunge style and alternative rock shortly before its mainstream success in the 1990s. This is most often credited to Nirvana's style, which combined the sound of earlier grunge bands with that of the Pixies. Their use of the Pixies' "soft verse, hard chorus" style would popularize this stylistic approach in both grunge and other alternative rock genres.                                                Clothing commonly worn by grunge fans in the Northwest in its early years was a blend of the punk aesthetic with the typical outdoorsy clothing (most notably flannel shirts) of the region. The "fashion" did not evolve out of a conscious attempt to create an appealing fashion, but due to the inexpensiveness of such clothes and the warmth that they provided for the cold climate of the region. This fashion, along with other aspects of the local culture, would end up being given (in the opinions of Seattle grunge fans) excessive importance by the media. In the early 1990s, the fashion industry marketed "grunge fashion" to a widespread audience, charging relatively high prices for clothing that they assumed to be popular in the grunge scene. An interesting case of this superficiality backfiring on the media was the grunge speak hoax, which caused The New York Times to print a fake list of slang terms that supposedly were used in the grunge scene. This was later proven to be a prank by Sub Pop's Megan Jasper. The excesses of this media hype would also be documented in the 1996 documentary Hype!.    IM me at: dontcryemokid69