^ I was definitely not that 'cool' when I was 12. The edgiest thing I did that year was go to see a Harry Blackstone show. Which was, I admit, very entertaining.
Well, in my case, when I was 12 my parents never would have let me go to rock concerts. At 12, the best I could do was slumber parties.
But maybe
thestrangequark went with her parents or older siblings? Being younger, I suppose her parents could have liked grunge. My parents liked...uh....Frank Sinatra.
Ha. Yeah, I was kind of cool. For a 12 year old. I listened to Nirvana and dressed like Blossom!
I grew up in Seattle, and you hit it on the nose: My mother is young and I had a teenaged sister. My parents divorced when I was 8, right when grunge was really kicking off (1991). My mom was 30, newly single, making friends with hippie lesbians and buying fashionable clothes. My dad moved out and took all the fighting and alcoholism with him, and things for a few years were actually pretty awesome. I mostly saw shows with my older sister, but by the time I was 12 I was allowed to go to Bumbershoot and Flolklife with just my friends, and it was at those festivals that I saw the majority of the best bands -- the ones you mentioned, along with other greats like Modest Mouse, The Pixies, etc.
If such a thing were within my capability, I would officially rule your pre-teen years to be the Coolest Puberty Ever Lived.
At age 12, you were doing all the things I was only dreaming of, 2,500 miles to the north of you and a decade and a half older (I am about the same age as many of the guys in those bands...or, at least the ones who are still alive, anyway.
).
The thing about Anchorage is that in many ways we are like a distant suburb of Seattle. It's the closest city of any size, Sea-Tac must be flown thru to 'go anywhere' and many people in Anchorage support the Seattle sports teams, etc. Back in the day, it was even popular to go on long shopping/sports weekends to Seattle (assuming you had the money as the flights are not cheap)...and a good number of Alaskans have family and/or grew up in Seattle/Olympia, etc.
Because of this, we HEARD about everything that was going on down there very quickly...and 'discovered' grunge well before the rest of the country. The news filtered up there that something very cool was happening and we paid attention (one of the few times, incidentally, that Alaska did ANYTHING before the rest of the Lower 48, in terms of 'trend setting'.
)
However, the vast distance kept us from participating directly...which was SOOOOO frustrating for me, even at the time. But especially now, in hindsight, 20 years later when I still LOVE these bands. It's true that I was in my 20's and poor...but if I had known that Kurt would be dead by '94, AIC would be fairly non-functional by that time as well due to Layne's heroin addiction, and Soundgarden was headed for an extremely adversarial breakup, maybe I'd have not eaten for a few weeks, gone down there, and seen some shows.
Meh. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose....
Still, I am
extremely envious. This is probably not the thread for it...but sometime I would like to hear about the shows you saw and your impressions.
