pubs
I’ve mostly avoided Nirvana, out of that associative thing. It was never “my” music; it always belonged to people I didn’t like. Or if I did like them, they clung to it too tightly. So I didn’t really have a part in that relationship.
What makes it a little stranger is I think Nirvana was the first contemporary pop act I was made aware of. That was 1993-1994, my sophomore year of high school. I listened to a couple of songs off of In Utero, and thought, well, this is different. Although the origin of this awareness was a gaggle of individuals whom I would hesitate to trust alone with a cat and a can of lighter fluid, I was willing to accept their own interest as coincidence. Then, of course, the moment I began to pay attention, Kurt went and killed himself. All the noise and deification caused me to shrug and walk away.
Years later, when I was trying in earnest to figure out this music thing, I picked up Muddy Banks of the Wishkah — there was a little hype around its release, and I figured I’d give the band another shot. And… er. It sounded like it was recorded from within a cardboard box placed outside the security doors of the theater in which the band was playing. And it wasn’t exactly the most rounded selection of material. And it was overlong. Again, I could tell there was something there, but. Well, whatever.
Later, an ex-girlfriend had one of those creepy fetishistic things for Kurt Cobain. As people do. Which again bade me hold the band at arm’s distance.
Now, here we are. The last ten months I’ve been trying hard to become myself; to break all these ties and expectations. Make my own context.
So. Six albums, I guess, are the “canon”: the three real albums, Incesticide, and the live ones. I’m starting with Mtv Unplugged, because I’m not in the mood for heavy guitars right now.
And yeah. This is legitimate.
I kind of feel like I’m claiming something that was cheated from me. Like I’m filling in a blank in my life.
All the reasons you ran away were the reasons I checked them out. Nirvana worked because they were a ‘cross over’ band. They were on the surface loud and yet they captured the spirit of kids growing up in the early 90′s. As a kid caught up in that feeling they were pretty amazing. I mostly got into them post shotgun blast myself.
As for the kid who might burn a cat, I knew a lot of kids like that skater and surfer kids. Their music tastes were sort of a gut feeling, gut reaction. You can fault them for being unsophisticated but their unsophistication keeps them honest.
Your perspective is one I’ve always valued but never understood. The rhythms with which you communicate never fail to take me by surprise; the things you place value in are similarly startling. We like different things, but that isn’t itself surprising or unusual: what catches my interest is the way your patterns of attention seem to resemble my own, only (say) rotated 90 degrees. Our interests share common borders but seldom overlap. Yet reading your ideas feels familiar in a remarkably foreign way.
One of these guys was a doofus who looped me into a scheme that I slowly realized was a clumsy attempt at date rape of some girl he’d just met.
That fell apart right about the time I realized what was going on, leaving me out in the middle of the woods with a can of sterno. The rest of the night was pretty all-right.
It may not surprise you that I don’t know what you’re looking at!
Thanks, I think?
I don’t really know what kids do with themselves. I always sat with the teachers at lunch.
I wonder why it is that we associate music so strongly with ownership. When finding some new music that you like, it’s so natural to say, “This is my band, I’m so glad I discovered them,” and it’s so easy to attribute ownership of a band or a genre of music or whatever to someone else and strongly associate your feelings about that person or group with the music.
actual kurt cobain quote
“At this point I have a request for our fans. if any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us – leace us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.
Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song “Polly.” I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience. Sorry to be so anally P.C. but that’s the way I feel.”
My mother claims I was a Nirvana fan in the early Nineties. I’m not sure what she’s talking about–probably I mentioned at some point that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was kind of a good song. But, you know, nothing like the level of fandom I have for TMBG or Talking Heads or even the Beatles; it’s not really my kind of music.
Lately on my drive to and from work I’ve been listening to WERS, the Emerson College radio station. Turns out it’s a really good station. Turns out I probably should have known this 15 years ago, though for some reason I did not. And I’m listening to a bunch of modern indie-rockish stuff that is out there, and a surprising amount of it is good. I so rarely reconnect.
I suppose some of it is that any creative work espouses a perspective — which means that bonding with a work is sort of like making a friend. One often judges people by the friends they keep; likewise, one judges the perspective of a work by the other living perspectives it attracts.
There are probably other factors, too.
I think maybe college radio has the best chance outside of public radio at remaining legitimate, with the way the airwaves are governed these days.