With all you've said, I remember the feeling I had just before grunge broke when I was a teenager. My older brother was into some of the glam metal bands. He'd be rehearsing out in the garage, playing keyboards, and many of those bands featured them. The whole MTV rock music scene seemed untouchable, like the gods of Mount Olympus. You had to have years of musical training and the right look, to make it. I even looked through the music magazines, and they featured ads for hair extensions and wigs to get the "rock image". It all seemed very superficial yet enviable.

Then, the fall of 1991 rolls around, and the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit by a little known band out of the Pacific Northwest called Nirvana airs on MTV. A buzz builds around it. It's so far removed from the glam metal in fashion at the time. The music is rudimentary compared to, say, Queensryche. There were only three members in the group. It was rock stripped to its bedrock, much like punk had been fifteen years prior. The video is obviously low budget. The band is clad in cheap jeans, shorts, and T-shirts they probably bought at a thrift store. Everything about it screams: HEY, KIDS! YOU CAN DO THIS, TOO!

I think so many people who never thought they could do music began to form their version of Nirvana then. This never quite seemed possible to my generation, then. Sure, you could form a punk band, but making any kind of living off it was anathema. Nirvana proved that times had changed and it gave hope to kids.