I was really responding to only a portion of your response:

I don't even like Nirvana much and I still acknowledge that.

So, I was coming at it sideways with a little bit of an ageist dig, with no malice behind it. I've seen a lot of comments in various forums along the lines of, "I don't get why Nirvana is so great, they sound like all the other alternative bands." I suspect that if many of the people posting comments like that had been alive and aware at the time, they would realize that that's only partly true. Yes, Nirvana does sound a lot like other bands that were their contemporaries, whether it's because they were influenced by those bands or they were the influence, but it's clear that many bands after Nirvana were strongly influenced by them.

Also, while Nirvana was huge, they're really more representative of the first half of the decade, before the more polished, radio friendly and pop friendly alternative bands, including that whole ska punk thing out of California, the UK alternative stuff and all the stuff on college radio, started to enter the broader public's awareness.

At least, that's how it seemed to me.