It’s hard to believe (for those of us who lived it, anyway) that it’s been fifteen years since Kurt Cobain committed suicide. On April 5th, 1994, the Seattle native left the world with the same cold-water shock his band Nirvana had on the world when the album Nevermind broke in 1991.

Some people saw Cobain’s death as inevitable; the signs were certainly there: There was the working title for 1994’s In Utero (a.k.a. I Hate Myself and I Want to Die). The lyrics for “All Apologies.” A prophetic MTV Unplugged set list (the caterwaul dénouement in “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” still sends chills up the spine). A near-fatal drug/alcohol overdose in Rome during a European tour. Those Courtney Love divorce rumblings. Quite a hit parade.

But to a larger degree, Cobain’s death has become a coda-like representation in our pop culture vernacular as the beginning of the end for the “grunge” era in Seattle. Greg Prato’s new book Grunge is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music disagrees. The book attempts to set this (and gads of other misnomers perpetuated by “so-called experts, who didn’t show up until the ‘90s, as Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament has said) straight.

Prato’s nearly 500-page digest does what no other documentary on the subject has before—it leaves the reflection to those who lived it, in their own words, without a filter. To that end, this is a truly great oral history. (more…)