Along with the usual suspects like grey hair and a softening midsection, one knows that he has been alive for a little while when the music of his teen years is rediscovered by a new generation, rebranded with the unfortunate and oxymoronic title “classic rock.”

This has apparently happened to the guitar-and-distortion-heavy musical movement from the 1990s that originally answered to “grunge.” This includes cover bands like the Flannel Rebellion, a side project for Wilmington rockers of other stripes, that caters to the howl and growl of Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots, but also to the decade’s poppier side. Luckily, the band is both tight enough and flexible enough to make most of the 1990s work for a live crowd, as they showed listeners Friday night at the Wild Wing Café on Military Cutoff Road.

The Flannel Rebellion is comprised of Great Zeus’ Beard vocalist Steve Mousseau, bassist Chris Cardamone of Pale Rider, Madison Bunting and Brett Waress of the Jason Marks Band on drums and guitar, respectively, and guitarist Derrick Surrett of Swede. Blazing through three-plus hours of songs, the band ranged stylistically from the quasi-punk screams of Nirvana to forays into the power-pop of Weezer. The latter, which seems an odd fit, makes more sense when one realizes that Surret’s regular band is somewhat Weezer-esque.

The range and projection of Moussea’s voice does much of the heavy lifting for the band, and it’s a wonder he can still speak after a half-day at the office. Approximating the baritone croon of Eddie Vedder on Pearl Jam’s “Alive” is one thing, but screaming Alice in Chains numbers like “Them Bones” and “Man in the Box,” along with Stone Temple Pilots growlers like “Vasoline,” would wear on a lesser set of pipes.

But the band is tight all around. Up-tempo, bass-driven songs like the Foo Fighters’ “Monkey Wrench” to slowed-down guitar ballads like Wheezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” all came off with the intended impact and the spirit of the original recordings. Given that this is no one in the band’s main project, it’s nice that they’ve at least taken the practice time to master the material.

The Wild Wing Café is an odd venue that’s first and foremost a restaurant, so the crowd fluctuated throughout the evening with diners coming and going. The band is, predictably, popular with 30-somethings reliving the Lollapalooza tours of their yesteryears, but the kids were eating it up as well. A few boozy college-aged girls even seemed to know the lyrics well enough to sing along.

Cover bands only work as retro, of course, unless they do something artistically new with cover music—like, say, Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails—which isn’t what the Flannel Rebellion is about. They attempt to give younger crowds a chance to see live music they weren’t yet alive for when it came out, or to let older listeners relive the music of their youth. And they do a good job of it, capturing much of the angsty energy that fueled grunge in the first place.

But times have changed. Grunge worked hard for its scuzzy reputation, from Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s suicide to Alice in Chains lead singer Lane Staley’s death from heroin overdose. Nevertheless, a quick survey of the stage Friday night showed more bottled waters and sodas at the feet of band members than beer and whiskey, and the Flannel Rebellion all seem painfully nice. Rather than “still alive,” as Eddie Vedder would have it, the 1990s really are dead.