Choking On The Ashes Of The Inevitable: 20 Years After The Death Of Kurt Cobain

For 20 years, I knew this day was coming.

It was foreshadowed on April 8, 1994, my "official" date of the death of Kurt Cobain - the day they found his body laying on its back on the second floor in the greenhouse of his 171 Lake Washington Boulevard residence.

This is the day that I recognize the death of Kurt Cobain.

I'm serious. One of the things I remember about that date was how weird it would be revisiting it twenty years later. At that time, it would have been a little over twenty years since the death of Janis, Jim and Jimi. I don't exactly remember those dates, so the only death I could really compare it to was the death of John Lennon as both seemed to provide me with an overwhelming sense of sadness. And while I was despondent over the murder of John Lennon, I clearly remember my sadness being mixed with heavy amounts of anger at the news of Kurt Cobain.

I shit anywhere I please...

I was working in small market radio and having a great time. Part of that happiness was due to Nirvana. They had turned a very formulaic format into infinite possibilities, and it was a great time to be a part of that. For my money, 1991/92 would stand out as one of the high points of the rock and roll timeline, ranking next to such infamous dates as 1967 or 1977. It was our moment, and maybe that's why it's hard to look back on it now.

Cobain had  been missing for several days at this point, and  the rumors of a suicide attempt in Rome were prevalent. I had  purchased a bootleg CD called Roma that documented a live performance from around this time. The music was obviously from a soundboard recording as the fidelity is great and even the performance - recorded on February 22, 1994 - is surprisingly stellar considering he was just a few weeks away from his first suicide attempt and just a few weeks more away from his eventual execution of it.

The packaging of Roma was very professional in appearance, but the content was clearly slopped together. The photo collage is an orgy of Cobain shots, including a disturbing and prophetic band shot with Kurt holding a shotgun to his mouth. Again, this was released just a few weeks prior to his suicide.

An author with a very limited vocabulary penned  a few paragraphs about the band's notorious struggles during the first few months of 1994. "A near fatal accident in Rome has brought our the vultures hungry for a corpse" wrote the uncredited author, before adding a few swipes at  Eddie Vedder and soliciting sympathy for Kurt, Courtney Love and the other members of Nirvana. "It's going to take a lot more than this to knock down Nirvana's wall" continued the brief declaration, unaware that the wall was just about to be demolished with a quick shotgun blast to the head.

A representative from Elektra Records had called me and told me the news. I was in my office, obvious to the events. I went to the news room and began to scour the AP wire for information. "A body has been discovered at  the residence of Kurt Cobain" began the initial results. By the time of the start of my 2:00 pm airshift, the body was confirmed as Cobain's. I started every hour of my airshift with a Nirvana song and dutifully reported the news at any available break.

I heard the afternoon's news person talking to someone in the newsroom. "What an asshole! Committing suicide when there's a baby involved. How selfish!" It was hard to argue, yet hard to accept. This was the first musician of my generation that I explicitly related to, and the first one to explicitly disappoint me. I went into the room off of the station's studio where we kept a shitload of vinyl singles for years past and cried while "All Apologies" played. The news person came in and brought back all of the commercial carts that were used for her top of the hour news broadcast. She noticed that I was crying in the other room and seemed to understand that the words I heard her say moments before were probably left unsaid, given the circumstances.

"Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld"

I had semi-broken up with my girlfriend at the time, as she had taken a job close to the Minnesota border and moved out of our apartment. I moved back into my parent's home for a temporary residence, the entire event serving as an end to the salad days of my radio career, Cobain's suicide then serving as an exclamation point to its finish.

The event served as a clarion call to end any youthful aspirations of music, broadcasting, or anything related to the industry of both. I began to lift myself out of my limited economic resources and fell into a "straight" job where I began to earn a legitimate living, later realizing that the decision came at a price. I put the Nirvana records away and made little attempts to revisit them.

After my airshift that night, I went home to my parent's house. My mother had heard the news and quietly approached me in their sunroom as I watched the live MTV News feed of the suicide. "I'm sorry that the singer of the band you liked died" she offered. "I know you were a big fan."

"I was."

That weekend, I drove the five hours up to my ex-girlfriend's place and we watched the ongoing reports of Cobain's death on MTV. She cried continually and this bothered me as she was initially dismissive of Nirvana and chastised my enthusiastic support of them.

Everyone is entitled to a chance to change, I suppose, so I kept my own callous opinions about what I considered to be her carpetbagging support to myself. We had seen Nirvana perform in a basketball gymnasium just months prior, and now that event would be sealed with his death. I relayed how the phone lines at the radio station lit up when school let out from lots of kids calling in to confirm the news. She began to cry again.

Months later, we went and saw Hole play at First Avenue in Minneapolis. Looking back, it served as our own funeral of sorts for Cobain as well as an end to our relationship. The day after the show was the last time I ever saw her. In another example of my own about-face, I later hooked up with the news reporter that was initially so verbal about her thoughts on Cobain's death. We married a few years later in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator officiating.

Even though my life is light-years away from that moment 20 years ago, I remember the event vividly. Coming into 2014, I was reminded that today would be coming, and I avoided acknowledging the subject until now and the inevitable articles that commemorate the event.

Newly released photographs of the death scene?

Fuck you.

Courtney Love hinting at a potential Hole reunion?

Fuck you, too.

Nirvana being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

"Corporate magazines still suck."

Instead of looking back on this day of Cobain's violent conclusion, I'd like to discuss why no band has been able to tap into the same level of cultural significance as Nirvana did even though two decades have come and gone.

Or maybe Cobain's shotgun ended that notion along with his life as well.

Samuel Locke Ward On Nirvana

If you're like me, you wonder why on Earth Samuel Locke Ward kicked off 2014 with a complete reinterpretation of Nirvana's final studio record, In Utero. Even more curious was why this decision was made after busting ass to release a new album every month in 2013.

Was it the work of a hyper-accelerated work ethic?

Was it an off-the-cuff goof, meant to be heard as nothing more than a underhanded attack of the entire revisiting of Nirvana's brief cannon, setting to culminate with the 20th anniversary of Cobain's suicide in 2014?

Was it the product of Ward's own Cobain worship?

With interest in these questions, I gave S.L.W. a half-dozen questions and got the following response. The answer provided little in terms of the actual questions posed, but in relation to the question "Why?" it is more than generous.

"I recorded In Utero just for fun late at night over a couple evenings in September. I hadn't planned on releasing the record or even recording it. I just kinda started it and kept going while I should have been working on something else.

I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive.

I hadn't listened to the record for a long time and just kinda did it all from memory from learning those songs as teenager. After it was finished I decided to throw it online for free because, why not?  I am proud of how it turned out because it still is generally considered pretty lame to cover Nirvana songs - And I do assume some people thought it was lame.

But I also got some nice feedback from people who said they enjoyed the record. And I feel like its a fun and interesting record to listen to. I really enjoyed all 5 Nirvana records while growing up. But, like a lot of people, I've been burnt out on them for quite awhile just from over exposure and hadn't heard them in a long time. But they are all really great. This was the first time it really occurred to me how messed up all the lyrics on it are."

Samuel Locke Ward - In Utero

We've just passed the weird 20th anniversary of the release of In Utero, weird in the sense that a.) has it really been two decades? and b.) am I really 20 years older?

I don't know how I feel about either one, but I know for certain that I'm not going to enjoy the bundles of articles written about the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide, filled with tons of remberance stories, just in time for Nirvana's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Here we are now, entertain us!

What will be lost in all of this is the same thing that was lost when In Utero was originally released: it's a remarkable record, the album we wanted Cobain to make and the record he needed to make. The suicide messed all of that analysis up in the end, and it will again when we start jerking off to the picture of Kurt's rotting corpse lying stiff on the hardwood floor of his home this coming April.

I have no idea why Samuel Locke Ward decided to release a track-by-track cover of Nirvana's third record. It runs the risk of being viewed as a joke because the songs are complete re-workings of that album, left in a fashion that is easily dismissed while being eerily appropriate.

Keep in mind, the release of this cover comes after SLW released a fucking album a month in 2013, making this the 13th full-length that the Iowa City native has made in as many months, further adding to the notion that all of this may very well be a rush job of inside humor, an ironic statement on the celebrity of our dead rocker.

Personally, I don't believe it. The songs are noticeable only because of the track listing and the jokes are only prevalent if you're coming into the record in the same manner that mouth-breathers did when In Utero was released.

An example of this was when a former girlfriend told me a story of a guy she began dating after we broke up. She told me that he was trying to impress her somewhat advanced music background by telling her that he had just purchased the new Nirvana album, pronoucing it "In-Ute-Tair-Oh."

They didn't have many more dates after that conversation.

To be honest, I haven't heard In Utero in many years. I really don't need to as it's been committed to memory, just like Led Zeppelin IV or Born In The U.S.A. I did toy with obtaining the vinyl version of Steve Albini's 2013 mix of the record before laughing at the idea that Steve Albini even agreed to such a thing.

If anything, Samuel Locke Ward's version has made me want to hear it again, which I suppose is praise.

Another bit of praise: I wanted to hear S.L.W.'s version again too. Out of pleasure, not obligation for this review of it.

The vocals are treated in many cases, turned into goofy Chipmunks range here, distorted megaphone tactics there. There is no percussion and several songs are nothing more than guitar-vocal offerings. It sounds like it was recorded on the cheap, in a bedroom with little sonic opportunities, which is one way of saying that it was recorded using a fucking computer.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, because by changing the entire delivery method of this record, SLW has unwhittingly changed the entire intent of In Utero. If you'll recall, Nirvana's controversary with this record came in the manner in which it sounded. It was rough around the edges, defiantly un-commercial and intentionally alienating. It was made to ween off the more fairweather fans and assure the rest of us that the band understood: There were a lot of meatheads tagging along for the ride that weren't welcome.

So maybe SLW's take is intended to alienate people like me, folks who unfortunately heard In Utero in much more personal terms, thereby making Cobain's suicide in April more devistating. This reinterpretation-whatever the intention behind it-forces listeners to consider In Utero for all that it essentially is: a collection of songs no longer tied to a specific group or generation.

About A Girl

It’s been a long day.

This morning I woke up and learned that an old friend had passed.

Technically, she was more than just an old friend. About twenty years ago, we were in a relationship together. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment for a few years, both of us broke but happy, working at a small market radio station together.

During our time, we discovered new things and we learned more about ourselves. I think that’s what you’re supposed to do, but in the end, the more we learned about ourselves the more we understood that we weren’t meant to be with each other.

I stayed in Iowa and she moved to Minneapolis, thinking that such a move would eventually draw me into the city with her.

She was wrong.

The last time we were together was during the Hole show in Minneapolis, the same year that Cobain killed himself. By the time I drove through Albert Lea heading south, I knew that our relationship was over.

I fell in with one of her best friends back home and she quickly discovered that she wasn’t really one of her best friends for obvious reasons. She fell back into a relationship with the guitarist from a moderately successful hair metal band, the same dude that I was competing with when we had just started dating.

The fact that one of the members was in a relationship with my new girlfriend bugged me a little bit, but their music is what really what made me despise them. They had their success, the grunge movement killed it, and the guitarist suddenly died in an automobile crash a few years after the band’s moment had come and gone.



When my relationship with her former best friend ended, we reconnected. I was finally able to apologize for the way I passively aggressive broke up with her and she was finally able to tell me “Fuck you!” for doing just that.

She also took great delight in psychoanalyzing me, accurately confirming that Yes, I had issues to resolve with my father and that, Yes, I had a pattern of getting into relationships with women that I work with and that, Yes, I always had to be in a relationship with someone, which explained why I was always dating co-workers.

All true, except for the part where she described herself as “a good catch.” I’m not debating this, but I cannot admit that she was the catch for me. That’s why we didn’t stay together.

I’m grateful for the chance to make things right with her, especially now that she’s passed away.

But I’m having a hard time dealing with it, as I do with death in general, because out of all the people I’ve known in my life, she was one of the few that could be counted on to be the most optimistic about it.

We need more people like that.

Knowing this, I struggle with why she was taken.

I began to cry in the shower and the sadness followed me to work. I became worried that my wife would get angry with me for getting so emotional over an old girlfriend. She wasn’t, but you can understand how I would feel awkward about it.

Ironically, most of my grief had nothing to do with our combined experience together, but it had everything to do with losing someone who valued life so much.

After the guitar player died, one of her girl friends died at the hands of the St. Paul Minnesota police department. The murder-and that’s what it was-was quickly cleaned up as justifiable, and the incident became the only time I could hear a bit of negativity creep into her voice.

But with each bereavement, she would handle it with a new bit of appreciation of life.

When her body began to fail her in her 30’s, she arrive home from the hospital with incredible grace and poise, appreciating the little things and finding a reason to stay positive even when her body was in pain.

She had another surgery a week or so ago, and she would post her progress on her Facebook page. She admitted her pain-almost eerily, as I read it now-but then would turn her attention on such seemingly trivial things, like how mild the weather has been here in the Midwest this year, and how blessed we are to experience it.

I speak as if she was a religious person, but that’s not the right word. While she was spiritual, it probably wasn’t in the same realm as I am with traditional Anglican worship. During the time we were together, she tended to favor crystals and other New Age items as her spiritual connection, and I probably teased her about it.

I sincerely hope that it brought her peace as she passed through, because it seemed to provide her with an enormous amount of it during her conscious time on this planet.

The pain in her passing is also fueled by selfish reasons. She was my first “adult” relationship, the first one where you pair up and live together. Like I said previously, we were broke most of the time, but we seemed to get along well with no cash, staying in on the weekends with Saturday Night Live, 120 Minutes (we'd make fun of Dave Kendall), and The Simpsons (when it was good) finding space on the VHS tapes, next to her never-ending recordings of All My Children, which she'd watch every night when she got home from work after midnight.

We’d save up money and go see shows. I can recall looking back at her from the front of a stage as I passed David Yow over the top of me, smiling brightly as this sweaty, drunk man made his way back to the soundboard. She was no dummy: her smile came from watching me bask in the glory that was the Jesus Lizard and from the fact that she had secured a table in the back at a safe distance to watch the entire spectacle. There she was, smiling at me ‘n Mr. Yow while she nursed a soda and took big, dramatic puffs of her Montclair cigarette.

We traveled to Davenport, Iowa and saw Nirvana play in a basketball auditorium. We both noticed that Cobain seemed depressed from our vantage point in the bleachers. The band was incredible, and our location provided us with a unique perspective as we could see the stage, the crowd, and an unrestricted view of the backstage area all at once.

When the set ended, Cobain went backstage-by himself-and sat down in a metal folding chair directly behind his amp and cabinet. We could see him clearly, as he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a Camel Ultra Light cigarette and lit up while the crowd roared on the other side of his stack. He was alone and spoke to no one as he smoked his cigarette with a blank stare until a guitar tech brought a freshly tuned Fender for the encore.

Kurt rose, stomped out his cigarette, let the tech place the guitar strap over his head and obediently went out back on stage for a final song.

He was dead less than six months later.

By that time, she had moved out. It seemed that the band had about the same life span as our relationship. I drove up to Minneapolis to see that aforementioned Hole show with her in First Avenue, but aside from providing some strange closure from Cobain’s death, it didn’t save our relationship.

There was another time when she let me have it, years later right around the time that we reconnected. She had gotten mad at me for writing something on Glam-Racket concerning Nirvana, more specifically the death of Kurt Cobain.

You’ll remember that she was very much into commercial metal, and I was quite harsh on her for listening to it. Most of it was garbage, but I don’t think I ever admitted to her that I actually did like that Skid Row Slave To The Grind album and that first Faster Pussycat album that she played all the time.

I also will publically admit that buying Madonna’s Sex book was a good decision, even though I criticized her for being too expensive.

The Cobain piece bothered her because I brought up the time when I first brought Nevermind home and before a note was played, she offered up some criticism of the band. The inside photo shows Cobain giving the bird and she felt that was a slight of his fans. She was into a very self-righteous phase at that time, suggesting to me that her tastes in music were more worthy than mine because the bands that I liked didn’t seem to give a shit. Meanwhile, her favorite bands seemed to do more for their fans and were, therefore, more friendly to their supporters.

Eventually, she began to like some of the bands that I did, occasionally sending me pictures of her with Kim Deal of the Pixies and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth after we had separated, kind of an early attempt at a visual “fuck you.”

Like, “Fuck you! I’m hanging out with Sonic Youth while you’re stuck in Iowa!” kind of thing.

I know that wasn’t her intent, but envy is a motherfucker.

Anyway, I pointed out in my post that she originally didn’t like Nirvana and that rubbed her the wrong way. She had completely blocked out this incident, but for my own benefit, I confirmed her reaction from another source who was there as a witness.

I considered removing the offending post for her benefit, but then I remembered that this blog is for me. I don’t try to hide my past and it would be disingenuous of me to lie about anything that comes out of these writings. I have been known to simply avoid topics-and believe me: there are things regarding this very topic that I have chosen not to address-but on that particular incident, I felt that the impact of Cobain’s death on me trumped her concerns of harshness on our combined rock and roll history.

Now the impact of her death trumps everything now. She rebounded from those words, probably mad at herself from getting all worked up over someone who had no real power on her current life.

And good thing too: I noticed how fully she lived after we parted, reconnecting with an old flame, scoring good tickets for Madonna shows, and rebuilding relationships with her family. She even expanded that family with her beloved pets, who provided her with even more reasons to live life to the fullest.

In short, she was one of those people who deserved to stay here longer, and her death brings the inevitable amount of cynicism to me in between all of these tears. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it’s not easy imagining this life without her wisdom and positive outlook.

I didn’t think about her all that much the past few years, probably because I shut off her update feed as it was filled with daily affirmations and cute postings of pets, angels, and funny pictures. Every once in a while, I’d check her profile to see if everything was ok.



A few weeks ago, she turned 42. I sent her a birthday message with a video to Concrete Blonde’s “Happy Birthday.” It was an appropriate gesture, I thought, and I’m sure she enjoyed it as she probably remembered all the times I told the story of when I got a phone call from Johnette Napolitano.

She replied back a thank you, and I tucked her away for another season.

But something-was it her spirit?-coaxed me back to her profile today. It was filled with comments of the many people she touched-and there were many-while I read in disbelief.

I struggled to get ready for work. I sheepishly explained to my wife why I was upset, concerned for her reaction. I made my way through work without much of a word except for those who approached, seeing that I was visibly shaken. I thought about what we do here in Iowa: buy flowers. The funeral is tomorrow, but then I remembered what a drag it is clearing out all the plants and flowers after the service is over. I lamented that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the funeral and questioned my place there anyway.

Who wants to see the guy she lived with a few decades ago?

So I’m staying home, trying to find time to adequately bereave while I write about a girl.

Whatever, Nevermind

I dragged my ass writing this piece.

Each attempt ended in some cynical bit that tried to wash over how vital Nevermind was or it ended in some finger-pointing accusation, like it was the album’s fault that modern rock music doesn’t feel like it’s moved much from the record’s birth two decades ago.

And twenty-years ago feels like forever ago-you twenty-something will know this quicker than you think.

Everything seemed so black and white back then. You had those songs that you and your friends liked and then there were those songs that everyone else liked. The two never seemed to cross each other very much.

You heard songs on the radio and you understood that they were designed this way. The “design” was that there had to be some kind of pay-to-play provision to even get these songs on the radio. What else could be the reason why a song like Timmy T’s “One More Try” ended up at the top of the charts.

Surely, no one really bought these singles, did they?

For anyone who was noticing back then, you could see these “rules” change in the weeks following the release of Nevermind, and it’s an even that will probably never happen again in today’s fragmented and insolated musical platforms.

But I remember a time-perhaps naively-when it seemed like we won.

I don’t trust anyone who claims that they knew Nirvana would be huge after hearing Bleach. From what I remember after hearing it was how much more I liked Mudhoney.

I didn’t necessarily hate Bleach when it arrived at our university’s radio station, I just liked a bunch more records instead of it and my playlist during my evening shift at the station reflected it.

A couple of years later, the liberal playlist of the university station was traded for my first real full time job in the industry: a small-market top 40 station A half-year into the gig, I was promoted to the position of Music Director and given a raise of a dime an hour. I was told to mirror the charts of Radio & Records magazine, a trade publication and mirror our playlist of it. The guideline was that 10 of the songs should be from the top 10 of the A.O.R. charts, another 10 should be from the Top 40 charts, and the remaining 10 should come from the adult contemporary charts.

Since I was the station’s Music Director for only a few months, I followed the instructions pretty religiously I was more concerned with keeping that extra dime an hour than trying to lobby for up-and-coming hits that I personally liked.

Besides, there wasn’t a lot of appeal in my choices anyway.

One of the best parts of the position was that I was able to take a bunch of the promotional albums that we didn’t use and I’d trade them in for stuff that I wanted for myself.

About once a month, I’d take a bunch of stuff from the station and drive up to Iowa City to trade them in. I’d buy one disc for the station’s library to make it look legitimate, but make no mistake about it: these trips were designed primarily to fill out my own collection.

“Have you heard the new Nirvana album?” asked the record storeowner during a visit in September 1991.

Thanks to my experience with Bleach, I gave an ambivalent response.

That mood changed he put Nevermind into the store’s cd player. The opening chords-F.B.A.D.-a clever lift of Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.”

By the end of “In Bloom,” my copy had already been secured.

In my excitement, I immediately played Nevermind for my girlfriend. I was disappointed that she didn’t see the brilliance of it immediately out of the shrink-wrap. Instead, her first reaction was to comment on the album artwork.

“That’s not very nice to his fans!” she declared after staring at one of the sleeve photographs.

It was the picture of the band, out of focus, with Kurt giving the lenses a middle finger.

She felt that his pose was a slight to potential fans, an additional “Fuck you!” to the demand “Here we are now, entertain us.”

Personally, I thought it was awesomely appropriate.

I played it for a friend at work and within days he brought his copy to work.

“That hidden track at the end is awesome!” he told me.

“What hidden track?” I asked.

My friend instructed me to wait a few minutes after “Something In The Way” and a hidden track would begin playing.

I did as instructed, but after the last song on my copy played, my cd player stopped.

There was no “secret track” on my disc.

I used a contact in my Rolodex at work to make a quick call to Geffen Records. My promotional representative revealed that about 50,000 copies of Nevermind were initially shipped without the “secret“ song, “Endless, Nameless.”

That meant my copy was one of the initial pressings while my co-worker’s copy was the one released after the first pressing ran out.

Sure, my copy was a little rarer, but I was bummed that I didn’t get “Endless, Nameless.”

My friend was right: it was awesome.

The Geffen contact also advised that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be released to Top 40 the following week.

By this time, MTV had some videos under a “Buzz Bin” distinction. Essentially, it was a select few videos that they began airing outside of their regular rotation, a spotlight of bands and songs starting to gain traction with the mainstream. It seemed that my little discovery was everyone’s little discovery, and most of those listeners who were quite content with what the mainstream was providing them were suddenly getting hip to this awesome anthem for the disenfranchised underground.

It transcended those early supporters, not so much because of the glossy Andy Wallace mix, but on the merits of the song’s power itself. Yet beyond this, I still didn’t think that it would be enough to pull the same audience that our own radio station catered to.

“Wouldn’t it be crazy if we added “Teen Spirit” to our playlist?” my friend suggested one day at work. I’d just gotten the “radio edit” of the song as my promotional guy warned me about.

For whatever reason, I never imagined that “Teen Spirit” would go beyond a Buzz Bin distinction, with a few daring rock stations adding it to their playlist. I thought that the song would be well received in larger markets, and I was envious that we couldn’t be a bit looser with our playlist.

At my station, the question “Will it play in Peoria?” was a legitimate one. And the last time I checked, Warrant just had a sold out show at an arena in Peoria.

The song leaped up the charts with the full-length not far behind in its trajectory.

I now had plenty of ammunition to add “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in case my Program Director questioned my decision. To be safe, I rigged it so that the song only played after 5:00 p.m.

In radio, they called this trick “lunar rotation.”

But we began receiving requests for “Teen Spirit” even during the waking hours, proving once again that the song was speaking more to just kids and young adults. It was turning into one of those generational touchstones, the kind that I’d read about in old Baby Boomer reviews and testimonials.

I was witnessing our generation’s own “Like A Rolling Stone,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand, and “Satisfaction.” There were moments before this when I considered such a modern equivalent existed, but nothing a definitive as Nirvana’s “Teen Spirit” and Nevermind.

Cobain, through one selfish act managed to call that assuredness into question somewhat, but I think now that it merely rattled my faith in rock music than diminished the power that Nevermind has. By questioning the merit of that album, I was-in some weird passive/aggressive manner-trying to distract the admission that I related so much to Nevermind, as did a bunch of people who I probably not share much else in common with.

And by pretending to ignore this record’s importance was in itself a defense mechanism that tried to somehow erase the fact that Cobain’s death profoundly impacted me.

That’s a discussion for another time.

I will admit that, prior to his death, I attempted to collect as much as I could Nirvana related. My faith presented every import and rarity as something I needed to collect.

After his death, those purchases stopped-as did listening to Nirvana’s music. Aside from the occasional radio moments, I haven’t listened to Nirvana in quite some time. If it’s the 20th Anniversary of Nevermind, my guess is that it’s probably been at least 15 years since I listened to the album in its entirety.

I have no plans to acquire the newly minted deluxe editions that are being released in the same manner of major label greed that I’m certain Cobain detested. But that’s my decision, and I have no beef with anyone who wants to pursue this new packaging.

For many years, I wondered about the band’s Madison sessions. I wondered if there was anything to Andy Wallace’s extra sugar, or if it was all some kind of half-hearted attempt by Cobain to shift the blame on why all of those mainstream carpetbaggers suddenly found a connection with mantras like “I swear that I don’t have a gun.”

Yeah, I was curious. But not to the point where I felt that I needed to re-purchase Nevermind to get a glimpse behind the scenes. The was the end result-the same record that I bought twenty years ago this month-that changed my life back then.

I can’t expect that anything in addition to that record will change my mind, and I doubt if a re-issue, or any record for that matter, will be able to replace those original feelings.

Such a task is impossible today. And judging by the gamut of emotions that Nevermind has given me over the past two decades, I’m not so sure that I want a record to impact me in the same way ever again.

Nevermind Nirvana: The 10th Anniversary of The Strokes' Is This It?

To rock and roll scribes, the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind has prompted a whirlwind of musings about the record over the past few months, present company included.

And while many writers reveled in the sheer nostalgia of the event, many of them seem too young to fully grasp the impact that Nevermind had on music upon its original release. It’s not that their thoughts aren’t warranted or worthy of your eyes, it’s just that most generations tend to look for their own cornerstones, and I began thinking about which albums released during their time of influence would be counted as vital documents of a younger cultural shift.

So get off my lawn, you kids, and let me return the favor with my own thoughts on which album you should replace Nevermind with.

One of the first albums that came to mind was Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Jeff Mangum’s frequently acknowledged classic concerning something about Anne Frank. I must confess, however, that I don’t really understand how or why this record has found its way into so many hearts.

While I would be more than willing to grant this album a five-star review based on its original arrangements and provocative attention bestowed on it, I wouldn’t go as far as to admit that it was immediately recognized as a record who’s influence was so great that it managed to change the course of rock music, even a smudge.

Its subject matter was too historic, its words too academic, and its music too obscure to really grab hold for a country of young musicians to follow the path that it laid out. Hell, even the name of the band screams equal parts inside-joke and pretentious word-play.

OK Computer by Radiohead is sited frequently, but at its core the record is another off-shoot of previous records from other artists in rock’s storied history. As much as I love OK Computer, I feel like spinning Wish You Were Here afterwards, simply because its lineage mirrors the very same classic rock albums that I grew up with.

Plus, it was released not very long after Nevermind, so maybe today’s young adults think of Radiohead in the same terms as I thought of Pink Floyd.
If it were up to me, I would choose a record that is also celebrating a notably anniversary this year: The Strokes Is This It?

The caveat I begin with is that in no way am I comparing The Strokes one-and as of this writing, only-masterstroke with Nirvana’s clarion call. As many scribes have correctly pointed out, Nevermind may be the last record that was album to change the course of rock music because it was the last record that was able to utilize the old-school paradigm.

And since radio has become an irrelevant delivery system, dead from the moment it was purchased by Clear Channel and homogenized from a home office thousands of miles away from its city of license.

And since MTV 86’d music content for Snooki, making all of those Teen Spirit cheerleaders that appeared in the video a relic to their generation only.

And since record labels viewed their customers as the enemies and chose to fight for the same level of profit that they’d always gotten from huge mark-ups.

And since all of these events happened, that old school paradigm is no longer gospel, making it impossible for any act to achieve the same kind of success that Nirvana experience, thereby eliminating any possibility for an event like Nevermind to take place again.

But for a moment in 2001, it looked as though The Strokes may be on to something.
A decade later, we’re still waiting for that confirming follow up, and based on the lackluster albums they released since that time, it doesn’t appear that the band is capable of living up to its original promise.

I would contend that, because of this, even the appeal of Is This It? Has suffered somewhat. We no longer view the record with the same enthusiasm as before, but does that make its impact less worthy?

Hardly. Whether your opinion of The Strokes or Is This It? Is enthusiastic or unfavorable, there’s little in denying that-for a brief moment-the band prompted an influx of like-minded bands or blatant rip-offs, all using the Velvet’s “What Goes On” rhythms underneath a bratty vocalist who wants little more than to get to your apartment.

Bratty is how we like our New Yorkers. Plus, we’d heard little from NYC rock unit for the better part of two decades before The Strokes turned their tiny rehearsal space into the archetypal Butch Vig sound of the new millennium.

And yeah, that sound was sorta important because by 2001, you could buy enough software for your laptop to make your own demos sound like they were done at Smart Studios. Is This It? Reminded us that even upper Middle Class brats needed to rehearse, and you can’t feign rock and roll legitimacy on looks alone.

Naysayers, I know you’re gonna tell me “That’s the problem!” that this band was created on hype alone. For me though-as someone who noticed The Strokes because of said hype-I’d suggest that it was authentic-at least in the beginning, because nowadays, I’m not sure if The Strokes have delivered enough to warrant that Spin cover shot, or even the lead review in your favorite mag.

But a decade ago, I can’t tell you how pleased I was with that first single, with the Capital mid-60’s swirl label and-more importantly-the 3 songs featured within short player. It sounded like the torch that the Velvets passed on to Television were finally getting passed on to the new millennium.

Finally! A new guitar rock band from N.Y.C. that I could feel good about while feeling all warm and fuzzy from those familiar guitar tones and Big Apple attitude.

The fact that they couldn’t keep it up with each subsequent release doesn’t make the debut shine less brightly, and the fact that-since we’re feeling all teary-eyed and retrospective this month, let’s not forget The Strokes’ anniversary for an album that briefly hinted that another cultural shift was getting ready to take place.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

I’m going to be perfectly honest and tell you that-aside from the debut-I don’t own any Foo Fighters albums. And does that debut even count as a Foo Fighters record, since it’s essentially a Dave Grohl studio album to begin with?

Everything beyond Foo Fighters just sounds like every other band that was left in Nirvana’s wake, with the main difference being the lineage that Foo had with Seattle’s most famous trio.

Foo Fighters didn’t necessarily release bad albums after the debut; they just seemed to release the same albums over and over. In fact, I’ll be goddamned if Grohl hasn’t been doing the same album since Nevermind, with the difference now being he gets to play the part that Cobain always seemed to shy away from: the frontman.

Grohl’s a likeable guy, and he seems to like the attention of being the guy in the spotlight. That’s a 180 degree difference from Cobain of course, but then again, Grohl’s lyrics have never been on the same depressive level of Kurt’s either, which may be the reason why I didn’t take to the Foos that music.

When I want loud/soft dynamics, I want it to happen because the band is pissed off at the world (Nirvana) or just a bunch of weirdoes who view the bi-polar arrangements as artistic expression (Pixies).

Grohl likes the loud/soft touch because it sounds anthemic. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it gets a bit old after a while. This may be why I prefer Glen Campbell’s version of “Times Like These” more than the original Foo version.

In the recent documentary Back And Forth, Grohl seems intent on reminding himself of what he’s gone through to get to this point with his band, now in existence for a lifetime longer than his time behind the kit with Nirvana. You get the sense that he feels a little bummed about his success that he begins calling calling up former bandmates (Pat Smear and Krist Novelselic-who sounds so awesome that you'll know exactly when he begins playing) and heroes (Bob Mould) just to ground himself enough to ask them "Are you cool with me being a rock star?"

Believe me, I wanted to call bullshit on all of it, but when watching Back And Forth, I began to empathize, and with that I began to listen to what was being recorded. And what I heard was nothing new, it wasn’t as anonymous as everything in between now and that Foo Fighters debut.

To record the nostalgia trip, Grohl rang up none other than Butch Vig. And unlike Nevermind, Vig pushes all of the testosterone to the front of the mix, even the shit that’s blatantly intended for rock radio.

This isn’t to suggest that Foo Fighters have pulled an In Utero with their latest Wasting Light, but they’re certainly comfortable enough to not worry about things like radio friendly unit shifter. It’s not due to the phony angst and self-deprecation that’s going on throughout the eleven songs, it’s because they understand that there simply aren’t any modern-era arena rock bands around today that can compete with them.

And with the competition jockeying for position on the second stage, the band has finally found the freedom to get beyond Grohl’s insecurities and just balls out rock for a change with all of the clichés and mid-life crisis phrasing in plain view.

Wasting Light will be the album that fans point to as a highpoint in ten years when the band begins their annual summer tour of sheds and stadiums-it’ll be the record performed in its entirety, the one where the obligatory biography spends a few extra moments on.

It most certainly won’t change the world and it certainly won’t cause the haters to change their opinion of Foo Fighters. What Wasting Light may due is prove to be the first record from a member of the original grunge movement to acknowledge a commercial desire ahead of hero worship and the folly of underground dogma.

We all knew that Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc. had a stash of the same classic records that everyone else in America was listening to sitting right next to their obscure titles that they name checked in interviews and t-shirts.

With Wasting Light sounds like Grohl’s actually trying to create one of those classic records for his own catalog, free from the shackles of worrying about his underground lineage.

Hey! Wait! I've Got A New Complaint!

So I have to give Kiko Jones credit for pointing out a nearly sacrilegious avatar that's floating around in the new Guitar Hero 5 game.
Evidently, after you unlock a few levels of GH5, you can use Kurt Cobain's likeness to play any instrument in the game. More importantly, you can get Kurt Cobain's likeness to play with any song in the game, no matter how shitty it is.
Actually, the soundtrack to GH5 isn't that bad, but the weirdness of watching Cobain's likeness going through the songs with programmed expressions and body movements is downright creepy.
It immediately got my attention enough to do a quick search to learn that Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic have spoken out against the feature and Courtney Love has turned on to full batshit crazy mode, implying that the gamemaker Activision, the controlling interest party of Cobain's musical legacy, and anyone else that she feels is responsible, is conducting rape, necrophilia, and a number of other reprehensible acts.
The one person she fails to acknowledge who is at fault?
Herself.
Turns out, Courtney Love was part of the Cobain avatar design process. She directed Activision on which likeness to use and provided input on the design (notice the Daniel Johnston t-shirt on the image). She was the one (along with other parties of the Cobain Enterprises LLC, including Dave Grohl) who signed the contracts and agreed on a PRICE to be PAID for this deal. Ultimately, she would have been the one who would have asked "What would Kurt do?"
And we all know the answer to that.
And we all know the answer that we would have given if a similar opportunity was provided to us and we were beholden to the legacy of a fallen musical hero.
Look, I'm not a good person to consult in terms of the impact of Kurt Cobain and/or Nirvana. My heart is too full to give you an accurate idea of how this man impacted my life. I am one of those who has barely listened to a lick of Nirvana's music since he killed himself. I'm what you call a little pissed off at him still and a little tired of the martyrdom that he's been provided. I pulled out From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah on vinyl a few weeks ago and spun the stage banter side for a laugh-but I left the actual music sides alone. My wife has the greatest hits disc and leaves the radio on when a Nirvana song comes on, which in turn, means that I have to listen to it. The songs don't feel the same to me anymore, and there's really no reason why I should even get worked up about a Kurt Cobain avatar today.

But I do. Because I know it's morally corrupt. I know it's wrong and I know that it could have been stopped. Ironically, I have more tolerance for the things that Love rants about on her Twitter site (Cobain lunchboxes, Converse shoes, etc.) but have zero tolerance for this licensing deal and have not forgiven her for the entire Journal fiasco.

Does this latest controversy surprise me? In a way it does. It reeks of opportunity and goes beyond what normal hero worship of his likeness typically does.

I Miss The Comfort In Being Sad

It's snowing here, and the casual Xanax hangover has brought an urge to sleep again. Either that, or the bullshit reality of working once more in a bullshit position doing the same bullshit that I was doing nine years ago. This ain't what Lennon meant when he sang about ""Starting Over" and Jack Douglas isn't producing my life. But then again, he got assassinated shortly after "Double Fantasy," so I must count the proverbial blessings.
Which gets me to thinking about the Nirvana box set, a purchase that I have yet to acquire. It seems like just a few years ago, but in reality was almost a lifetime away, when radio was ripe with mediocrity and a little power-trio from Washington got Killdozer's producer to clean up their Jack Endino garage sounds and make an undisputed classic called "Nevermind." Working at a Top 40 radio station at the time, a co-worker and friend exclaimed "You should add it!" when we discovered that DGC records would be releasing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as a single. The song was incredible, and it was ours. "No fucking way that thing will ever take off." was my honest reply. It did, of course; we added it at the station three weeks later. And the world turned on its hair metal axis....

So glorious a ruckus and so much a "spokesman" for my generation, I related to Kurt but not in a weird Carpenters "Superstar" kind of way. I liked the idea that someone my age from a blue collar small town who wrote honest songs and played guitar poorly got famous. And the lesson of this story is that rock stars with lots of raw talent and a Mosrite guitar end up with a shotgun wound in a seldom used room of their home.
I came to work at the radio station and started my day. The traffic director paged my office phone and said that Tracy from Elektra Records was holding for me on line one. It wasn't an "add day," meaning that I wasn't expecting phone calls from record companies. But Tracy and I had a nice, personal relationship and so I took the call.
"Have you heard the news yet?" She asked, noticeably upset.
"No. What happened?"
"Oh Todd...They found a body at Kurt's place in Seattle and they think it's him."
Kurt had been missing for a few days and the theory was that he was using again. But her demeanor hinted that it was more than simply an overdose, and when pressed she admitted to not knowing much more than a male body and a shotgun found next to it. She was crying. I didn't know what to think. This man was not a relative, and I didn't know why a sense of panic filled me.
"I've got to go see what's going on, Tracy." I said.
"Call me later." she said. "Are you going to be Ok, Todd?"
Nobody had asked me that in a long time, death or otherwise.
I went to the newsroom and had the news director pull all of the automatic A.P. news feeds that were starting to litter his floor. It was there that I read in chronological order the entire events of April 8, 1994. There was no official word on who was found in Seattle that morning, but most of us understood it was him. The violent nature of his action was something that took me entirely off guard.
I did my part. I read the news. I played the songs. I announced the tragedy. I fielded the phone calls. And when I finally was able to put things in perspective, ironically as I played the lies that housed a chorus of "And I swear that I don't have a gun," I began to feel the emotions of that day. I retreated into the music library and starting to cry for a guy who just fronted a band. It was the first time since John Lennon's death that I had done such a thing. These tears were different, because he was supposed to speak for me somehow, and instead, the selfish fuck took the easy way out. I looked out of the music library window and noticed how gray that April afternoon had become. The afternoon news announcer burst into the control room and noticed me crying. She apologized for the interruption and asked if I was ok. What was different from her concern as apposed to Tracy's earlier inquiry was the fact that the news announcer was verbally offering her two cents on how "stupid" Kurt was for killing himself and leaving his child without a father. True, but she didn't seem to understand that part of his allure was his emotional fragility and the loud/soft=Janov/Lennon therapy of his output. Her uneducated comments angered me. She later became my wife, and I always resented her for the actions she displayed on that day.
Afterwards, I went home to my parents house having recently moved home after splitting with my then-girlfriend. She initially had her own opinions about Kurt too, declaring that he didn't appreciate his fans very much because he was flipping the bird in the "Nevermind" insert photo. Two weeks after Kurt's death, she was replaying his memorial for me and silently weeping next to me on the couch. A tad melodramatic for someone who earlier declared him to be such an ungrateful prick. I guess you could say I was resentful about that too.
My Mother could sense that this front man actually meant something to me and treated me with kid gloves when I made it home.
"I'm sorry about what happened with that Kurt Cobain." she offered.
"I heard about it on the news and I know you really liked him."
I went to the back room of my parent's house and watched MTV report on the suicide of Kurt Cobain. Kurt Loder was talking with David Fricke and, for a brief moment, it seemed that MTV actually understood it had an obligation to do something other than make money. Then came the copies of the suicide note filled with tiny writing, sentences sloping downwards, and words scratched out from last minute edits. A perfectionist all the way until the trigger was pulled.
I couldn't listen to Nirvana much after that. It felt wrong and it perhaps was too real for me to take. I always believed what he was writing, but his violent end suddenly made everything bold-type and personal. I continued to purchase the obligatory posthumous releases only to watch them collect dust. There's a part of me that wants to run out and purchase the new Nirvana box set, but there's the bigger part of me that understands it won't be something I play after the initial spin. There's no amount of demo material, home recording, or unreleased track that will make me understand more than I already know or want to be reminded of.