[Genteel Death]

They never said anything about us as people. It was always about Kurt Cobain's pain and his constant whinging about it. I'm alright with his suicide.

[Severian]

They said everything about is as people, because we're two generations into a civilization where whiny selfish druggies- mostly men raised by women who think the world gives a shit about their pain- represent about 90% of the youth culture around the world.

Kurt was a mirror mirror on the wall fo the "Me" generation, but his life was seen as more of a performance art piece or a theatrical tragedy than a warning, and now most of the creative and artistic geniuses are sniveling fucks. But isn't it the purpose of an antihero to remind us that there are no heroes? No. Or maybe.

[Toilet & Bowels]

Hmm, have no clue about that.


Anyway, as far as their music goes I listed to Nevermind and In Utero this year for the first time in about 10 years and I liked Nevermind waaay more than I remembered and I thought In Utero was disjointed and unfocussed and it sounded like the product of a deeply unhappy person. So there you go.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

dude, this thread is so full of shit. Kurt Cobain is not Morrissey y'all, he was neither pretentious nor self-absorbed. He was just some dude who played kick ass music really loud, could growl and scream in a way unfamiliar to the radio masses, and had a sincerely fun time doing it, or have none of you ever watched any footage of Kurt on tour? The worst part of his suicide is it totally altered the reality of who he really was and why we really liked him. Kurt didn't whine about SHIT! He wasn't some "me" generation spokesman, and I think he'd find it ridiculously funny that people would accuse him of such. meh.

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

Hmm, have no clue about that.


Anyway, as far as their music goes I listed to Nevermind and In Utero this year for the first time in about 10 years and I liked Nevermind waaay more than I remembered and I thought In Utero was disjointed and unfocussed and it sounded like the product of a deeply unhappy person. So there you go.

You're letting the post-suicide image get to you, In Utero was a much more fun record than it gets credit for post-humously. There is a certain sarcasm to that record that got totally lost in translation because of Kurt's death and Courtney Love being totally insane.

 

People, always remember, NIRVANA WAS A FUN BAND, NOT A BUNCH OF EMO KIDS

[ALIEN ANAL]

Thats a pretty horrible thing to say Genteel.

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

dude, this thread is so full of shit. Kurt Cobain is not Morrissey y'all, he was neither pretentious nor self-absorbed. He was just some dude who played kick ass music really loud, could growl and scream in a way unfamiliar to the radio masses, and had a sincerely fun time doing it, or have none of you ever watched any footage of Kurt on tour? The worst part of his suicide is it totally altered the reality of who he really was and why we really liked him. Kurt didn't whine about SHIT! He wasn't some "me" generation spokesman, and I think he'd find it ridiculously funny that people would accuse him of such. meh.



You're letting the post-suicide image get to you, In Utero was a much more fun record than it gets credit for post-humously. There is a certain sarcasm to that record that got totally lost in translation because of Kurt's death and Courtney Love being totally insane.

 

People, always remember, NIRVANA WAS A FUN BAND, NOT A BUNCH OF EMO KIDS

This is one of the rare times I agree with you. They made some fucking great music, that's it.

[louder]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

dude, this thread is so full of shit. Kurt Cobain is not Morrissey y'all, he was neither pretentious nor self-absorbed. He was just some dude who played kick ass music really loud, could growl and scream in a way unfamiliar to the radio masses, and had a sincerely fun time doing it, or have none of you ever watched any footage of Kurt on tour? The worst part of his suicide is it totally altered the reality of who he really was and why we really liked him. Kurt didn't whine about SHIT! He wasn't some "me" generation spokesman, and I think he'd find it ridiculously funny that people would accuse him of such. meh.



You're letting the post-suicide image get to you, In Utero was a much more fun record than it gets credit for post-humously. There is a certain sarcasm to that record that got totally lost in translation because of Kurt's death and Courtney Love being totally insane.

 

People, always remember, NIRVANA WAS A FUN BAND, NOT A BUNCH OF EMO KIDS

great post, i agree 100%.

[dead_battery]

in utero sounds like a brain damaged man collapsing in exhaustion, addiction and madness.

nevermind sounds like the honeymoon period of floating on addiction, just before the burn out.

bleach sounds like a pop band playing grunge covers.

the early stuff sounds like an art rock band who abandoned their experimentation due to financial pressure and the need to make commercial music.

nirvana epitomised almost everything about rock music they claimed to despise. kurt was the biggest diva junkie hedonist, only he was too self aware and ironic to believe that was what he had actually become. they might have changed the style but the drug taking and squalor remained.

this whole liberal purist attitude - ok you're not racist, sexist or homophobic, great. but you won't committ to any kind of meaning either. kurt wanted to have his cake and eat it too. be an underground punk band but also be the biggest mainstream band on the planet. act like a king chosing who is in the in crowd and who isnt. he championed this kind of puritan liberal revolt in the entertainment industry that has intensified today. im not against it, its just a kind of dead end.

his life ends up looking like the sad quest for meaning in a totally shallow place. the niaeve belief in the power of what is not a particularly great art form ends up looking quite pathetic. theres only so much you can do with punk and it was pretty much done before nirvana even started.

nirvana was a kind of weird post modern punk tribute covers entertainment act. they ripped off and plagiarised so much, and desperately tried to make some sort of grand statement out of it all. but they ended up falling into cliches and coming up with this weird proto emo stuff.

i kind of think nirvana werent so much a punk act as a kind of folk act singing about punk.

i mean, ok - are you really so special and different from some other rockstar because you're a hipster and care for excluded minorities? really? how much of this is just narcissism.

axl didnt exactly turn out to be some sort of homophobic racist. 80's mainstream rock wasnt exactly the primary source of oppression for minorities and women. was it really worth taking that seriously that you'd want to oppose it so ferociously? at least kiss and motley crue never took themselves seriously to fall for their own myth. what did nirvana really bring to the table? the undercurrent of the whole thing is nihilism but kurt never managed to truly face the nihilism, or overcome the massively overstated attachment he had to a certain style of music. he believed in what he was doing and tried to find something transcendental in post punk bands and underground music but there's just not anything there.

if nirvana did anything new it was to express something that hasnt really been expressed in culture before, which is this kind of strange inability to escape contradiction, this mixture of bliss and agony. but kurt didnt develop any other interests than drugs and guns and he ended up hating music. he wasnt able to escape the cliches and traps of life, and didnt seem to be able to make any kind of pact with his misery.

in other respects kurts life was a success, he went from being almost homeless to a millionaire. he managed to spare his daughter the pain of divorce which destroyed him, but by committing suicide. he left her with millions.

really in the end i think it was a classic case of destruction through wealth. happens to working class people who become millionaires. this phenomenon has been studied. you give a poor person way too much money at once they destroy themselves. it doesnt happen in every case but its quite common.

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

nirvana epitomised almost everything about rock music they claimed to despise.

Sure Nevermind sounds as clean as other rock records coming out, but how many bands at their level was or are willing to release an album like In Utero? At the end of the day Nirvana (or Kurt if you will) were great at making pop hooks in punk rock songs.


this whole liberal purist attitude - ok you're not racist, sexist or homophobic, great. but you won't committ to any kind of meaning either.

Their interviews are littered with them standing against sexism et. What more do you want? Millions being given away in support? Benefit concerts galore? Serious looking adverts?

kurt wanted to have his cake and eat it too. be an underground punk band but also be the biggest mainstream band on the planet.

That's the great contradiction about them.

the niaeve belief in the power of what is not a particularly great art form ends up looking quite pathetic

.

I can't tell if yo're saying music isn't a good art form or they didn't do good music.

nirvana was a kind of weird post modern punk tribute covers entertainment act. they ripped off and plagiarised so much, and desperately tried to make some sort of grand statement out of it all.

They were the first to say they borrowed heavily from other bands. And they never made out to be making a grand statement.

i kind of think nirvana werent so much a punk act as a kind of folk act singing about punk.

What does that even mean?

axl didnt exactly turn out to be some sort of homophobic racist.

No, he was just a prick who beat his wife, all the while acting like a macho prick and singing about faggots and immigrants.

80's mainstream rock wasnt exactly the primary source of oppression for minorities and women.

If you can't see the blatant sexism in anything by Kiss, Motley Crue and the rest of that shit then you're blind.

what did nirvana really bring to the table?

For me this was a band that like The Sex Pistols hit against the stupid bullshit that was coming out of the time. Were they the only band? Fuck no, but neither were the Sex Pistols the first nor alone. Henry Rollins said it best "all it takes is for one band to say fuck you then he's called the voice of a generation."

the undercurrent of the whole thing is nihilism but kurt never managed to truly face the nihilism, or overcome the massively overstated attachment he had to a certain style of music. he believed in what he was doing and tried to find something transcendental in post punk bands and underground music but there's just not anything there.

I can't tell if you're really cynical about music. Music for a lot of people can be a transcendental experiance.

but kurt didnt develop any other interests than drugs and guns and he ended up hating music. he wasnt able to escape the cliches and traps of life, and didnt seem to be able to make any kind of pact with his misery.

That's hardly true. He seemed to obsessed with music and art. To make it seem like he was just a redneck with a guitar is silly. And the fact that he wasn't able to avoid the cliches of music is just a sad fact. However, that doesn't get in the way of the music.

[GravitySlips]

Look at all these opinions! Wow!

[dead_battery]

i can see the sexism in nirvana - women as angelic saviours of the emasculated male.

i still don't see what exactly nirvana did apart from repeat some sort of gesture of hedonistic nihilism. everything else is "shit" but they were good, or something. i really don't see what the hell these 'punk' gestures do but reaffirm a commitment to settling for the shittiness of entertainment culture, cos like, everything sucks man! that's why we need our heroin.

and my point wasn't that nirvana didn't do enough charity work. it's more like kurt never resolved the question that obsessed him which was basically what was he doing and what could music mean and be in our culture. you can't say they didn't explore these questions, but i think they knew they were painted themselves as the doomed romantic failures, keepers of the flame of authenticity in a corrupt world, and it's just another part of the posturing that makes up far too much of the story.

the truth about nirvana was that it was a pretty miserable and squalid experience, a lot of people leeched it and made some money off it, but the ugliness and suffering that kurt inflicted on himself is hardly heroic.

in the end, he wasn't prepared to turn his self awareness and sense of irony onto himself, not to the point where he could have just accepted his fate. that nirvana weren't really that important. that the stuff he wrote in his babbling suicide note is just insane, like it was worth dying for. like this immediate and niaeve feeling of connection to his music was really worth shooting himself to preserve. he could hate himself but he doesn't seem to have been able to laugh at himself in a way that wasn't psychotic/masochistic. in fact i think there's something very sick about his attitude, and the attitude of much indie music before and since then. that we can just have this direct emotional connection to the childlike purity and innocence of self expression. and this is what redeems us. i think its a load of shit.

i think buzzo was right and i saw the melvins live, and it was probably the best musical experience i'll ever have. of course it doesn't remotely translate to their recorded material. nirvana was ultimately a pop band. kurt ultimately did not escape the cliches because he was more fooled by them than he thought.

im critiquing them on their own terms. obviously that's not acceptable, since it implies a greater respect than simply saying they weren't "shit".

the quasi religious messianic cult worship some people have for that band is really a testament to everything bad about them. kurt deliberately played to this and he became a kind of post modern christ figure for the entertainment industry. his entire life was made into this romantic drama and the whole thing is a load of fucking bullshit. the stupid stories and mythologisation. it became a whole industry of idiots spouting off about the importance and artistic vision of what was really a very sad man who met a very sad end and had already collapsed intellectually and artistically long before his death.

[dead_battery]

i still like nirvana, they were at times a really amazing band. i just think there is so much wrong with the way they did things and their influence hangs over a lot of people like a bad cloud. and they are also symbolic of a dead end that is still largely with us and that now, they are a part of history. there's nothing left to be squeezed out of the dead corpse of this music, and it's become more and more conservative. the true underground still exists, there are thousands of nirvana like bands. but noone cares because they arent big enough for you to have some nostalgic connection to them from your teenage years. nirvana was popular enough for people to confuse the music with their own lives. the underground that nirvana came from still goes on but only the minority care. the music itself has a limited set of possibilities and the fact is that while it still has a certain kick, it's day is done.

some people really don't want to move on from that and never will.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

i still like nirvana, they were at times a really amazing band. i just think there is so much wrong with the way they did things and their influence hangs over a lot of people like a bad cloud. and they are also symbolic of a dead end that is still largely with us and that now, they are a part of history.

Disagree with this completely, Nirvana's impact, while be no means intentional, was to the the post-1990s what the Beatles were to the post-1960s, a door opener for so many other great bands. For Nirvana, when major labels were out scouting and Nirvana became a symbol of this "underground" wave into the mainstream, it changed entirely the record industry. Previously, major studios and major distributors controlled music and access to music. THEY decided what was distributed, what was profitable, what was marketable. When they stumbled onto Nirvana and the "grunge" movement, it changed things fundamentally. Suddenly indie labels had power, authority, and distribution. Majors were letting indies more or less do their thing because it was making everybody money. By the 2000s the entire structure had changed, major distributors realized that even small volume bands that didn't push a lot of units, still added up to a lot of profit if several of them were distributed. Distributors and major labels changed their business model, away from focusing on hyping mainstream bands on television and radio towards distributing and supporting indie bands and even DIY bands, but in bulk, and making up the difference through a high volume of bands rather than a high volume of records sold through one or two "big" bands. Now? Small labels and underground bands have access and opportunity without inherently having to sell-out. Indie bands and labels have just never had it so good, its the best of both worlds, and its in part due to Nirvana demonstrating effectively that small, indie bands can have enough impact to even knock of all-time greats like Michael Jackson.

As to Nirvana, I will only reiterate once more, Nirvana weren't an overtly political band, there was NO MESSAGE, they were just a band, having fun, making records and playing shows. People get what they get out of it, but the band was not trying to make any statements, not trying to change our society, they were just playing their music, and people happened to really dig it. Much like with Hendrix, it was all the vampires and hanger-ons who destroyed them, not they themselves.

[LifeDistortion]

The other day I was reading an article discussing the Unplugged performance. I guess with each album reaching their 20th anniversary, all these articles are reflecting on the "story" behind how these albums came to be, and how every note and lyric and mannerism by Cobain was some telling of his turmoil. Take away, the fame, take away the music, hell, take away the drugs, from what I know of Cobain, as an outsider, was that he was a man with terrible health issues that he could do little to nothing about. He had severe stomach pain, and apparently back pain. Live with those long enough its not hard to imagine someone contemplating suicide.

[Rob Instigator]

I think the Beatles influence was 100 times bigger in 1967 than anything Nirvana did.

The Beatles forced, through their own creativity, every other big player in rock music at the time to reconsider how they did things, to write their OWN SONGS, instead of releasing cover albums with one or two originals. They forced the Beach boys, the Stones, The Who, etc etc to up their game, their creative game.

Nirvana was nowhere near that level of influence. If anything Nirvana more negatively influenced music than positively. There are hundreds of genius bands that will tell you to a person they owe their existence to having heard/seen the beatles.

Because of Nirvana we got Creed, Nickleback, and watered down metal pretending to be "grunge."

[themawt71]

jjjj

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I think the Beatles influence was 100 times bigger in 1967 than anything Nirvana did.

The Beatles forced, through their own creativity, every other big player in rock music at the time to reconsider how they did things, to write their OWN SONGS, instead of releasing cover albums with one or two originals. They forced the Beach boys, the Stones, The Who, etc etc to up their game, their creative game.

Not that I'd say Nirvana was exactly as influential as the Beatles, but I think they are in the same range. Further, I think you're over selling the "creativity" of those early Beatles records. They were hardly even original, they were a couple of white guys playing "black music" in a white way, no different than what a hundred other bands were doing from 1956-1964. Yes, they wrote their own material, but the instrumentation itself wasn't exactly groundbreaking or original, it sounded like all the other music on the radio.

Further, I don't think that a lot of the great 60s/70s bands who were admittedly and openly influenced by the Beatles were influenced by the Beatles sound and music so much as just influenced by the Beatles. Jerry Garcia always said he was inspired by the Beatles, but not musically, he always said seeing the Beatles doing it inspired the San Francisco scene to say, "Wait, we can do that, our bands should be doing that." They didn't mean sound like the Beatles, they were just implying playing shows and trying to get big like the Beatles. Interestingly, looking at the 1990s I'd dare say there were MORE bands that sounded like Nirvana on the radio/TV than there were band that sounded like the early Beatles in the mid-1960s..

Nirvana was nowhere near that level of influence. If anything Nirvana more negatively influenced music than positively. There are hundreds of genius bands that will tell you to a person they owe their existence to having heard/seen the beatles.

Yes, and again, I don't think it was the instrumentation, and I say this as a musician, I think they were influenced by the image, marketing, and popularity of the Beatles. Perhaps even thought to themselves, "Wait, we're better than these guys! We should be doing this." I don't think the Beatles climbed into any siginificant musical influence until the 1970s when they themselves began to actually get creative and explorative.

Because of Nirvana we got Creed, Nickleback, and watered down metal pretending to be "grunge."

Yes, and because of the Beatles we also got a shitload of crappy surfbands and Smothers Brothers concerts and like Jimi said, "I kinda feel like playing, I'm sick of checkin out these catz with their blue caps."

[Rob Instigator]

No way man. Comparing Beatles to Nirvana is like comparing Picasso to Banksy.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

No way man. Comparing Beatles to Nirvana is like comparing Picasso to Banksy.

The beauty of opinions is they're like assholes, everybody is one ..err has one

Maybe I've been sipping the Nirvana kool-aid too much, maybe you've been sipping the Beatles kool-aid too much, possibly I've just been sipping to much of Ken Kessey's kool-aid, either way, clearly we just disagree.

 

I myself never personally heard the early Beatles "sound" in the 1960s bands. Yeah, there is the Beatles image, and yeah, the Beatles were definitely the door opening pioneers for the rise of more artistically sincere "pop music" than was the corporate slop of the 1950s/early 1960s "big industry" system of music production and distribution.

In MY OPINION, the Beatles didn't musically inspire shit. I just don't hear "the Beatles" in those bands. However they did indeed inspire the rise of scenes and garage bands who were motivated by the Beatles' success to start bands and play shitty clubs themselves. THIS IS HUGE by the way, and I by no means intend to minimize the cultural and musical impact of the Beatles. However, I just don't think they were like Ottis Redding or Chuck Berry actually inspiring the sound of the 1960s, just the scene and image. Bands were motivated to do their thing, and their thing sounded different than the Beatles did. IN FACT, to me this seems all the more obvious by the fact the late 1960s and early 1970s Beatles themselves began to try to emmulate the sound of other bands! The Beatles began to sound like other bands, not bands sounding like the Beatles.

How is Nirvana NOT like this? How many countless bands formed or doubled down their efforts in Nirvana's immense wake? Nirvana is almost parallel to the Beatles in this regard, for the sheer EXPLOSION of garage and club bands who burst out after the fact. In the 1960s the Beatles sparked this wave, in the 1990s clearly it was Nirvana. Further, I dare say that Nirvana is perhaps MORE musically influential than the Beatles in the fact that so many countless bands quite literally sounded like Nirvana. If anything, the entirety of the 1990s IS Nirvana. In the 1960s people wanted too look like the Beatles, in the 1990s people wanted to look like Nirvana. In the 1960s people wanted to have bands like the Beatles (not necessarily sound like the Beatles, just play in bands), in the 1990s people wanted to have bands like Nirvana.

Its seems cut and dry!

[Toilet & Bowels]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

I'd dare say there were MORE bands that sounded like Nirvana on the radio/TV than there were band that sounded like the early Beatles in the mid-1960s..

I think you need to brush up on your rock history.