April 07, 2009 06:00 PM
A Sad Day For Music - Kurt Cobain April 5, 1994
I don't think there is much to add that hasn't been written or spoken about in the past fifteen years regarding Kurt Cobain. It doesn't seem that long ago - almost yesterday. The shock and loss are endless, and the "might've beens" and "could've beens" will stretch as far as the eye will ever see.
So, it's just the moment here, the event. The shock in the voice and the awkward forming of words, bringing news to the stunned.
The reports here are all from April 8th, the day the body was discovered. It had been determined that the actual suicide took place on April 5th.
Pick either day, the sadness is the same.
and not the preprocessed garbage we have today. Kurt didn't like what The Machine was doing. A sad end, who knows what he could have done if he was here today.
NOBODY 2012
out there.
but it doesn't get the attention, airplay and sales it deserves. I can't listen to the radio anymore because they play the same 6 songs ever damn hour. And they wonder why people download.
NOBODY 2012
15 years already.....
Yeah I remeber that night Drinking a Beer to his memory. I was 17:)
I see the years go by but I do not feel them. Not yet thankfully. But it seems like forever since 9/11, the years seem to go so fast, I wish I lived in the world without the "war on terror" and all that bullshit again. Sure it was a manufacturing jobs holocaust in the 90's but at least I didn't orwellian things on TV everynight.
(correction)
I didn't see orwellian things on TV everynight.
Joy Division kicked Nirvana's butt up and down the stares. Ian Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen BEFORE the machine could get to him. When he died was his face plastered all over creation? Nope.
Nirvana, in my not very humble and extremely informed opinion, was OK. No great shakes, but not sucky, either. They were every well marketed and I agree with the idea that they represented the essence of the "intensification phase" of rock music as a cultural commodity. Rock is now in its dissapation phase as its demographic dies off.
Kurt was a moderate talent sitting on a mountain of money with a complete idiot for a wife. In many ways he represents what was and is wrong with the music industry: the hype machine, the mainstreaming of the periphery, the drugs, the errant stupidity.
I'm sorry he found a permanent cure for his temporary problems. That was a suboptimal choice. I think it would be interesting to see what he would have made as he aged. I wonder if he would have ended up in Vegas with the rest of them...
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
...is like comparing apples to oranges. (sorry, couldn't come up with anything more creative :D)
I like 'em both, and they both wrote songs about the same things, but their influences were different. Joy Division sounded like punk disco (and what did Curtis' mates become after the vocalist's suicide), while Nirvana were a logical extension of The Stooges, filtered through Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Pnk disco? some of their tunes, but hardly a majority. Joy Division had a much more wide ranging palette - from danceable material like "Love Will Tear Us apart" to sombre hell tracks like "the Eternal" or "atmosphere" or the mid tempo roaring endictment of "Dead Souls" to the punk aggression of "Incubation".
New Order did go to a more pop sound, but listen to the first New Order album, Movement. It sounds like Joy Division, because basically IT WAS. The songs "The Him" and "Doubts Even Here" dive deeply into places Nirvana couldn't possibly go, and that was New Order - much lighter than Joy Division.
Here's the lyrics for "Doubts Even Here":
Those steps which seem to take a lifetime
When eyes just turn and stare
The day begins, collapsing without warning
You fade from sight, there's nothing there.
No hope allowed, calls are answered daily
Questions are on your side
Deeply moved, beyond all consolation
You felt the pulse, now hear the cry.
In my mind, thoughts are becoming clearer
I'm watching every move you make
Counting time spent in observation
A single blow a false mistake.
Then you revealed to me
All that I need to know... now?
(The close went down to times
too, too much behind us)
Then please don't turn away,
Why can't I talk to you... now?
(The number of forgotten years
Where my honor isn't deepest
Grows the deepest feeling and it
Grieved for safety and despair)
There's nowhere left to go
Where is this taking her and how?
(The torish threats forevermore
Over our natural favor
And us and he's and I'll fall
Far in it, and it sees enough
In our failures and it's not time.)
There's nothing more I want
To know beyond your trust...now...
(I missed his promised time again
For my friend)
Don't throw our joy away
Why must you just you leave... now?
(Has God forgotten to approach us?
Has He remembered to not despise us?)
Memories are all that's left
I need you near to me... now...
(There, now, now, don't come to mind my deeds
And call out in defiance of times gone by)
-- -- --
Stunning. Simply Stunning. Brutal and stunning.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
I didn't know I was supposed to keep score.
Different music means different things to different people. I'l be the first to admit that there's music that I love that nearly everyone else hates: Ever listen to the Shaggs, or Ornette Coleman's double quartet album?
A long time ago I met The Big Boys, a funk-hardcore band from Austin, Texas. They had a great song called "Fun, Fun, Fun" that was written because people were telling them what they should and shouldn't like:
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
New Order
Great post, Tweakerbelle. You sum up quite nicely so many of my own thoughts and opinions of Kurt and Nirvana.
I've always thought that if Rod Stewart had died right after he released "Every Picture Tells a Story" he would be as revered as Cobain, instead of the pathetic laughing stock he is today.
If a drone kills a child in Kandahar, do the crying parents make a sound?
Great post, Tweakerbelle. You sum up quite nicely so many of my own thoughts and opinions of Kurt and Nirvana.
I've always thought that if Rod Stewart had died right after he released "Every Picture Tells a Story" he would be as revered as Cobain, instead of the pathetic laughing stock he is today.
----------------------------------------------
Thanks. you got my point. Even look at Cobain's wife. She went from hardcore to freak in seconds flat - she outlived her musical usefulness ages ago.
There's nothing wrong with aging, but there is something about actively working against one's ideals I find irritating. An example would be Genesis. They started out w/ Gabriel as something awesome - and even the first record or two after Gabriel left were pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. After that they turned into poo.
And this is best illustrated by counter examples:
Pere Ubu, Red Krayola, King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator, Univers Zero, :zoviet*france:, Boards of Canada, Espers, Jane Siberry/Issa, etc. are all groups who never compromised their music, for the sake of the almighty dollar, because All These People Had Was Their Music, and the Music Came First.
I got the impression that this was also so for Cobain, but his Muse wasn't as communicative as hoe would have liked, and he clouded the conversation with drugs, and when faced with where he knew he had to go, and the responsibilities he had riding on his shoulders, I think he did the math and found it lacking.
The *SMART* thing to do is to get into production, and carve a direction in the business itself, but he had this "artiste" sensibility which was amplified by his drug habit. so again, with a few fat fingers on the scale, the math came up lacking and suicide became a very rational option.
Ian Curtis offed himself, from what I could gather, for other reasons - one being he knew the band was about to break big and didn't want to deal with the responsibilities of being a real leader, and two: his epilepsy was getting REALLY bad, and three: between the stresses of a collapsing marriage (love... love will tear us apart... again...), having grand mal seizures on a regular and ongoing basis, and then the daunting prospect of a USA tour with a burgeoning band - his math came up WAY positive, too positive - and so the rational thing to do was to check out. He had too much to do. Cobain's problem was the opposite: he was running on empty...
Note: Rational and Reasonable are two different things.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
I always prefered Hole to Nirvana.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
several times when I was in a hole.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Shouldn't hit that bouncer in the head with his guitar though.
is that the pixies were never properly thanked.
Smells Like Teen Spirit opened the doors for a lot of bands, the Pixies amongst 'em. And The Pixies made a little bit of dough before they broke up (and if you're going to bring up The Pixies, you've got to give a nod to bands like Pere Ubu, Wire and The Minutemen who made scratchy, arty songs before Frank got his band together).
There are bands that never did get the proper credit that influenced Nirvana: as I mentioned above, Sonic Youth, and then there were bands like The Replacements, Big Black (BB's Steve Albini produced Nirvana's In Utero), Black Flag, Killdozer...That was my scene in the '80's, and we were happy for Nirvana, and the bands that got more attention because of them, but some of the bands that deserved attention in the days before Nirvana broke big were never heard by most people.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Kobain himself said of smells like teen spirit: "I was just trying to rip off the pixies." and worked with Albini because he was a fan of the Surfer Rosa album (1988).
I didn't mind Kobain... I just never saw him as the alt rock messiah everyone else did.
Big Black, now that was a band.
oh and Frank Black was a husker du devotee so maybe we should blame all this on Bob Mould
and a hundred years at the same time.
Being honest I was not a fan of Nirvana at their peak. Not in the least. About 3 years ago I decided to give a good listen to their work, and let me tell you was I WAY wrong. I think Cobain was a GENIUS. It surprises many that I admire Cobain and Nirvana so much at 53 years old. But there you go.
The $$$$ Baby
The dollar baby grown up
was considered in genious territory completely evaded me at the time.
I now see it.
would've... could've?? He became such a sensation because he killed himself... ok that's a bit harsh, their music was good, but not even half the people who know about him today would have if he hadn't killed himself.
I don't know, I find it hard to have sympathy for someone who had the world at his disposal and still thought the only way out was through killing himself... very hard to feel sorry for that.
He and his band sold a shitload of records before he did the mortal coil shuffle. They were HUGE. I don't think there's a person who was working in the recording industry or as a radio programmer who wouldn't admit that Cobain and Nirvana forced them to start signing and giving airplay to bands they would have shrugged off before them.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
His wife gets justice one day. Oh, yeah, she's white, so she couldn't have pulled an O.J.
what? yeah nobody ever thinks white people kill people... ???????
That was totally hilarious. Thanks for the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psvCUWzecGo
Wasn't Kurt murdered?
I'm no consipracy theorist, but I thought it was pretty obvious that he was.
Not sure which is worse, suicide or murder.
As is always the case, bands like The Minutemen and Joy Division remain largely unknown while their offspring bloom - and in this case, die.
the evidence does suggest foul play. The problem is the police rushed to judgment calling it a suicide and then they do what all law enforcement( or any institution for that matter) does...they cover their ass.
I was flying down a dirt road going home from school. I was so excited because they just kept playing Nirvana songs - and then it hit me, something was very very wrong. The DJ broke in and relayed the news, it was heartbreaking. I don't think I was surprised by it, because everyone knew he was troubled - it was just so sad. I felt for his little girl. I was a fan of their music (more of a Pearl Jam girl), but it was more the general Seattle scene - it was the "it's okay to feel like it's not okay", was a big deal to me anyway.
I hope you have peace now Kurt.
Every song Eddie Vedder sings sounds the same.
I'm not sure I'd want to hear his cover of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
LMAO!
NOBODY 2012
But the guy killed himself. I don't think I listened to Nirvana again after that day.
(Note: this message is not to take away from the impact his death had, or cause insult to those that have been impacted in any way by his death, but only to share how his death impacted my life)
dead men don't pull triggers
I think this song says it best about the impact of his suicide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nateDeHd44w
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Hendrix, Joplin, Bonham, Moon.. sound familiar.
They are remembered for their music and their tragic endings are footnotes by comparison
It seems we X'ers remember Kurt Cobain for his bailing on his family, friends and himself as much or more than the music.
He was a rich, talented, drug addict and killed himself. It should not be morbidly celebrated.
Cobain, Staley, Hoon, Nowell, Wood... talkin bout MY generation. Sad and dumb.
That era was the last time bands had the fire in their bellies, but also symbolic because it was when the major record companies (and record stores) started sliding into oblivion.
I do wish Kurt Cobain was still around. I suppose Nirvana wouldn't have been as mythical as they are now, but the music probably would have been pretty good, not some bullshit dance album with Timbaland (wtf, Chris Cornell?).
Don't get me started on Timbaland. Got a few hours to hear me grumble?
NOBODY 2012
I confess that I never really "got" the popularity of Nirvana. Maybe because I'd been listening to all kinds of rock for a very long time, and nothing they did struck me as particularly new or exceptional.
Plus, it's always irritating to hear people attach some kind of counter-pop-culture status to a band that was selected by MTV to be the 'next big thing'. That's not opinion, but fact. The MTV veejay's of the time have stated that they were told to pimp Nirvana, and the band was put in the once-twice an hour rotation.
But to be fair, who knows what direction the band might have taken if Kurt hadn't offed himself.
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