Author Interview: Jim Miller on L.A. Grunge Scene

.  It featured Jim Miller and a bunch of folks who played in key bands from the period.

Echo Park Patch got a chance to spend some extra time with Miller talking about the book and the scene.

Out of Chicago

Miller moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1985.  The L.A. music scene was in flux at that time.  Punk had run its course.

Hair bands were in vogue and there was the most entertaining  drunk and disorderly conduct of bands like the Sea Hags, Junkyard and Tex and the Horseheads.  

Clubs like Jabberjaw, Al's Bar and the Shamrock, however, offered an alternative.

The Early 1990s

Miller's book, Niceness in the Nineties focuses on LA from 1989-1992 and the rise of what would become grunge music.  At the time, Miller was in Black Angel's Death Song.  Like most music movements, you never name it or know it's happening until after the fact.  

Miller explains what it was like at the time. "When you're young, you're just living your life".  You don't plan for the future "it's like, I went there, I did that drug, I played that club" and so on.  

Then, all of a sudden Nirvana hits and the whole scene explodes.  The book is meant to be read in one sitting, the chapters move quickly from a  first person narrative.

So Nice He Wrote It Twice

A curious thing, Miller wrote the book twice.  The first time was ten years ago, while living in Portland Oregon.  He felt that version was too "journalistic".

 A couple of years ago, he decided it should read more like a personal memoir.  Had he patterned his style after any other rock and roll memoir/music history book.  

He paused a moment and his eyes lit up.  It wasn't anything like that, he replied:  "Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Craddle".  Why now?  It's been 20 years since Grunge broke.  As Miller puts it, "There are kids in college who weren't even born when Nirvana's Nevermind album came out."

Check out the photos of Miller in the accompanying gallery.