Review: 'Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s'

I'd always wanted to read a book like Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. The nineties alternative scene is one that hardly gets as much attention as the British Invasion of the sixties, the hard rock scene of the seventies, or the new wave of the eighties, but for a lot of gen x'ers, it was just as important. But most contemporary discussions of nineties rock would lead you to think it was a scene of one, and that one was Nirvana. I loved and love Nirvana, but grunge was largely a dead end of samey sounding records by guys who couldn't write a pop melody if their favorite flannel was being held for ransom. 

Review: Vinyl Edition of Veruca Salt's 'Eight Arms to Hold You'

Producer Brad Wood shot Veruca Salt’s American Thighs through an evocative layer of mid-fi indie gauze, and the result was arguably the strongest debut album since Wood’s production of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville the year before. However, gnarly monsters like “All Hail Me”, “Victrola”, and the definitive hit “Seether” suggested that Veruca Salt might be happier to Rock without the indie part (so did the disc’s AC/DC-referencing title).