No they weren't. Both peaked in the '80s and weren't integral to anything that happened in the '90s. For most SY fans their 1990 major label debut "Goo" was the sign of their downfall. Great alt pop album, but nothing groundbreaking to alternative/punk/experimental music like Sister, Bad Moon or Daydream had been.

Thanks for taking the time to read my article. I'm always curious what things people take from my work.

And while I usually hate arguing semantics, I'm afraid I'm going have to have to grab my dictionary and pummel you with it.

According to the Oxford dictionary the definition of integral is a "necessary and important as a part of, or contained within, a whole". Since the history of grunge in general and the band Nirvana specifically has already been written, I find it very hard to believe that anyone would argue that Sonic Youth and the Meat Puppets were not necessary and important parts of that story. I even provided two very specific pieces of evidence in the piece just in case anyone still questions what should have been obvious at the time.

As for your comment regarding "most SY fans" you might want to check out one of the sold out shows on this current tour. Most SY fans these days didn't have any opinions about Goo when it came out. That's because they were either in diapers or their Mom's womb at the time.

PS - I checked out your web-site and I think it's great.

If you were around in the music scene here then you'd know that link was barely there... only because bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney tended to open up for bands like the Butthole Surfers and Sonic Youth. With the Meat Puppets I don't see a connection at all. You can't rewrite that history just because they showed up in the same movie and played some shows together. The biggest out of town connection to what was going on here at the time were the bands Amphetamine Reptile were putting out. Shit like Helmet, Lubricated Goat, The Cows, Jesus Lizard, Cosmic Psychos, Chokebore, The Crows, God Bullies, Hammerhead, Melvins, Surgery, Tar, Unsane, etc. Every time and Am Rep band played the Off Ramp, Mark Arm and Steve Turner were up front with the rest of us sipping Texas-sized margaritas and rockin' out.

In an equation like say 4+5+1=10 - all the integers are necessary to the overall equation. Even though 5 is a bigger number than 1 both are needed and therefore integral to the equation.

Whether or not the folks from Sonic Youth and the Meat Puppets hung out in Seattle, it is a fairly well known fact that Sonic Youth pushed for Nirvana to sign with Geffen who then put them with Butch Vig who then produced the CD that pushed Michael Jackson out of the top spot on the Billboard charts. I would say that's a pretty integral part of the Nirvana story no matter how you cut it.

As far as the Meat Puppets there are many statements from Kurt Cobain himself regarding their influence, they spent much of the last nine months of his life on the road together and were in fact the band that was on the road with Nirvana when Kurt made his first suicide attempt in Italy.

Eddie Vedder was a surfer boy in LA and San Diego when Green River and Soundgarden were playing gigs around Seattle at small clubs, but I doubt that anyone would say he wasn't part of the Seattle led Grunge movement.

By the way, I loved the Cows. Whatever happened to them?