ELEVEN — Rainbow's End

JUL 01 1991 · 12:00

ELEVEN — Rainbow's End (1991) Era: Early Alternative Rock Boom (1991) - Coincides with the post-Nevermind surge of LA alternative acts on major and boutique labels, when grunge-adjacent hard rock with psychedelic and pop tendencies competed for mainstream crossover attention. This video is a primary visual document of one of the most critically respected yet commercially underappreciated bands in early-90s LA alternative rock. With Natasha Shneider's death in 2008 ending any possibility of new material, and the band's catalog remaining niche, this 1991 promo represents an irreplaceable window into the group's earliest public-facing visual identity. Its warm, performance-grounded aesthetic contrasts productively with darker contemporaries and merits preservation as a counternarrative to dominant grunge-era visual historiography. Context: Released in 1991 on Morgan Creek Records, 'Rainbow's End' emerged from the Los Angeles alternative rock ecosystem that predated grunge's full commercial takeover but operated in its gravitational field. Eleven occupied a rare cross-genre space: their RHCP-adjacent lineage (via Jack Irons and Alain Johannes's shared prehistory) gave them credibility in the funk-rock world, while their psychedelic pop craftsmanship — evidenced by the warm, optimistic tone of this track — positioned them closer to college-radio melodicism. The video's warm palette and moderate pacing reflect a band and label seeking mainstream accessibility without abandoning artistic personality. The song's lyrical thesis — that the rainbow's end holds not gold but open-heartedness — maps directly onto early-90s alternative rock's tendency to fold sincerity and post-hippie idealism into hard-rock structures. Director notes: The video was produced in 1991 to promote 'Rainbow's End,' a single from Eleven's debut album Awake in a Dream on Morgan Creek Records. IMDB confirms the video exists and lists it as a 1991 music video production. No production company, director, or cinematographer credit has been located in any publicly accessible source as of this annotation.