Doc Sarvis, I gotta say, I’m impressed. It takes most people a while to find hornets nests to kick open on this board, and here you’re still a guest.
This argument has been kicking around since Nirvana hit it big and almost as many people have been scratching their heads wondering why as there have been people listening and enjoying the band.
I am inclined to believe that it is at least partly fashionable, although the people who comprise this band’s following scoff at anything as commercial as “fashionable.” The fact is, angst sells among a certain demographic. It may not have been Kurt’s intent to do anything more than play his music and scream his pain, which he was always quick to state. I think that may be what makes up the whole Nirvana mystique (gah, I hate that word).
Kurt eschewed what was popular and embraced what he wanted his music to be. A large number of people admired that and at the same time, liked his music enough to buy a boat load of records. Which made it popular. Popular music. Pop. Which all Nirvana fans will go out of their way to argue to their deaths it was not. Except it was. Which drives them nuts. Personally, I don’t like the music. I’ve listened to it, I’ve given it several tries, it just doesn’t reach me. But to say that it was vanguard or original is just silly. It wasn’t.
I checked it out. It has the same riff as in “Come As You Are”, but the sung melodies are different, and it is those that I like so much in the Nirvana song. IMHO.
[QUOTE=Maureen A large number of people admired that and at the same time, liked his music enough to buy a boat load of records. Which made it popular. Popular music. Pop. Which all Nirvana fans will go out of their way to argue to their deaths it was not. [/QUOTE]
I suppose it depends on the Nirvana fan. Kurt Cobain was clearly a pop songwriter. As I’ve been defending Nirvana for this whole thread, I’ve also been emphasizing the point that Kurt’s greatest talent was in his pop music writing.
Of course it wasn’t vanguard and original–it’s hard to be these days. I wouldn’t even lay the claim that U2’s Achtung Baby was truly original, either. Everybody cribs off everybody else. But, to me, only one band sounds like Nirvana, and that’s Nirvana. Only one band sounds like U2, and that’s U2 (no Coldplay jokes here.) I do think that Nirvana had a signature sound and certain songwriting quirks that were, in fact, unique. They obviously borrowed from bands like Black Sabbath, The Melvins, The Pixies, etc., but … Kurt Cobain’s own self-depricating comments aside (I believe he once said he’s stolen everything he knows from the Pixies, or something to that extent) … I sincerely believe they did create something new and fresh. They don’t sound like the Pixies or the Melvins or Sabbath or Cheap Trick or any of their influences.
For me, they were always distinct from the rest of the grunge crowd. The had a very different sound and vibe. If you asked me today who Nirvana sounded like, I really couldn’t tell you. They just sound like Nirvana.
I think what I will always like about Nirvana is that they came along at a time that music was really starting to suck. Hairbands were big (Firehouse beat Nirvana at the Grammys for “Best New Artist”, IIRC), you had the New Kids type bands, the crappy pop singers. And then Seattle grunge came on the scene, and yeah, it was over-hyped, and whiny and pretentious at times.
But still, even if the lyrics suck, the songs sounded a hell of a lot better than the other stuff out there, and I still like most of their songs, if only just because it was the music of my teen years.
Is THIS a joke? Pearl Jam only had 3 songs out of all the dozens that I have heard that are tolerable to me, and even those don’t really do anything differently than all the other music around at the time, just a bit better. Nirvana was not only better but also unique. Pearl Jam has no melodies, no character, and seldom good lyrics. While not as polished as Pearl Jam, Nirvana didn’t have to be, that’s park of the point of their “punk” influence.
Sometimes you can get your point across better with dissonance. I blame Pearl Jam for the rise of pseudo-punk bands that are too afraid to scream, play sloppily, and show their feelings in their music.
Thank you for bringing up Oasis. I think they were far worse than Nivana, and Liam’s crap about how they were the next Beatles made me want to kick him in the nads. Hard. With steel-toed boots.
Tolerable to you is not the end-all criteria for good music.
I really think you should check out an album or two. Maybe I’m just wayyyyyyy out of my mind here, but I don’t think that Nirvana could EVER write any songs even close to as well written, varried, and as full of feeling as Jeremy, Oceans, Porch, Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town, W.M.A., Tremmor Christ, Once, Daughter, and Nothingman, off the top of my head. Pearl Jam’s first album alone has more good songs (and they’re actually all GREAT) than Nirvana wrote in their entire career. I just don’t even see how anyone can compare the two. Pearl Jam is clearly better in every objective way, and if you like Nirvana more, that’s fine, but say “I like Nirvana more than I like Pearl Jam,” not, “Nirvana is better than Pearl Jam.”
No wonder you like Nirvana. If you think sloppy playing with emotional screaming is the ideal music form, I can’t help you. If you listen to punk primarily (which it sounds like you do), I can see why you’d think Nirvana was good, but consider why. It sure as hell wasn’t because they were a good band.
That’s funny, I’ve heard most of those, and most of them make me reach for the dial. I do like Black and Cross-Eyed Mary, though.
Objective way?
Emotional power? Nirvana has it hands down.
Lyrics? Nirvana wins in a photo finish. But country has good lyrics and I hate country: just good lyrics won’t make me buy an album.
Musical ability: This is a tie. Pearl jam plays better, but Nirvana’s music is better written.
Then there’s the less objective measures. I dislike Pearl Jam’s general sound and delivery method, and I also dislike the even-worse followers they created, whose effects are still being felt today. I personally could have gone without ever hearing a Creed or Puddle of Mudd song. If that’s your thing, by all means praise them.
There are bands that are lame, musically, but I like a little anyway, for instance, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. And Nirvana might not even be in my top 20 artist list for the 90’s, but to say that they are so much worse than Pearl Jam as to be stunningly obvious is mind-boggling.
I never said emotional dissonance was the ideal music form, but I do like that sort of music. I also like music that shows intelligence and/or musical sublimnity, such as Pink Floyd and Steely Dan. Pearl Jam is neither. It’s wishy-washy. I despise wishy-washy.
I know music is very subjective, but at least I’ve narrowed down my appreciation of Nirvana to several key adjectives which I then defended. You basically said “Pearl Jam good. Nirvana Bad.”
Anybody who listened to indie (we called it “underground”) rock in the 80s heard about 10,000 bands who “combined the catchy pop melodies with the thunderous dynamics of hard rock and heavy metal” - Husker Du and the Pixies are the most popular examples, but there were scores of others. Maybe it’s because I’d already heard it done by these bands that Nirvana didn’t make that big an impression on me. But I think the dynamics were also a problem, as was the supposed catchiness - dynamically, their sole trick was to go from subdued verse to rock-out chorus, and apart from “Teen Spirit” and a couple other singles, their catchiness quotient was pretty low - not much competition to the Beatles (or even Husker Du or the Pixies, for that matter). I don’t doubt that Cobain was sincere; I also don’t doubt that many groups Nirvana fans have never heard of were just as sincere, and catchier, too.
I have to agree that Nirvana’s popularity, when juxtaposed with the Pixies relative obscurity (though a couple tunes of theirs sorta charted), is one of the more baffling developments of “alternative” music. I personally never found Nirvana as compelling as any of the bands I got hooked on in the late 80’s, but I surely don’t think they sucked.
Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good. Take, for example, Britney Spears, or the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps”, which is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.
I thought “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a good song and the rest of Nirvana’s stuff was OK, but Pearl Jam and especially Soundgarden were much better. I’m not a trained musician, but I could hear the weird keys and time signatures that Soundgarden used and it was really cool.
By the way, Soundgarden didn’t fade away, they broke up pretty much at the height of their popularity. Personally, I blame bassist Ben Shepard. When I saw Soundgarden at Lollapalooza in San Jose, he played with his back to the audience for most of the set.
Man, no love for Alice In Chains? If ever there was a tragic slow burnout, it was Layne Staley’s drug addiction and ultimate death by heroin & coke overdose at 34, so alone nobody even found out until two weeks after he died.
Instead of an abrupt flameout like Cobain, Staley crawled agonizingly to the grave well after the peak of his fame. Almost nobody ever brings it up, but his body was discovered on the 8th anniversary of Cobain’s suicide, and his death is overshadowed by that of his more-lauded Seattle peer.
If Nirvana was good, I thought AIC showed flashes of sheer brilliance, and it’s too bad they never really reached what I think must have been their full potential. I often wonder what the music scene today would be like if either Staley, Cobain, or, even more intriguingly, both, had lived.
Yes I nitpick. Though I like each of the bands you mention to a certain degree, one these things doesn’t blong here. At the time punk came on the scene Rush was a little know hard rock band. Rush didn’t become popular until several years after the punk scene was hailed as the next big thing. Rush didn’t go “prog” until several years after that. No way that the punk was a raction to anything they did.
About Nirvana. I think I am about five years too old to have been effected the band that much. One thing I remember clearly. I was sitting at a heavy metal bar outside of Ft Hood TX drinking a beer and listening to music between sets of the band that was playing. The DJ played Smells Like Teen Spirit. I stopped what I was doing and thought, “damn that s a good song.” No way did I think it was going to explode like it did. I went out and bought the CD right away. I liked it but it’s not like it changed my life. I can’t remember when I last listened to it. Like I said I’m about 5 years too old. To me Seatle music peaked with Queensryche.
I liked those two, but the former was really a very straight cover, and didn’t do much to expand on the original. The latter was from another planet than the original, and certainly seemed intriguing enough. I understand Ledbelly was impressed, anyway. I read someplace Bowie saying he wished he could ask Cobain “Why that song?”. I agree. The choice of MWStW may itself be the most interesting part of the performance. Then again, he could have pulled it out of a hat. Guess we’ll never know.
Nirvana was good for their time and place, but they were a lot less talented (with the exception of Dave Grohl) thn the like of Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam. Alice In Chains is really the group from that era I miss the most, a lot of their music was grunge but with other albums like jar of flies, and acoustic songs they showed they were much more. I’m also glad Cornell from Soundgarden (whose music also crossed through several genres) is still performing in a band as he is an incredibly talented singer.
When I was 16 (back in 2002), I LOVED Nirvana. I was musically sheltered up until around that age, so SLTS blew me away as much as anyone else. I had all their albums and listened to them a lot. I have to say that I don’t that listening to them so much was good for me, as I had a lot of self-hatred issues at the time and they probably were made worse.
I don’t like them as much anymore mostly because I prefer stuff that’s less heavy nowadays. But I think I’ll stop this Jay Farrar cd and listen to them right now.
One thing that I like about Kurt was that he had GREAT taste in music. He was a big fan of bands like Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, The Pixies, The Beatles. pulykamell was correct in calling them a pop band.
I think that Kurt Cobain had severe mental issues and especially during his last few years really wasn’t right in the head. I think his situation is similar in that regard to Syd Barret’s, except they dealt with it in different ways. I’ve never heard anybody complaining about Syd being too whiny.
I think at times the lyrics could actually be quite good. And they weren’t totally serious all the time, they had some fun songs:
Floyd the Barber (funny in a very very dark way)
About a Girl
Sliver
Aneurysm
Breed
Territorial Pissings
Drain You
On A Plain
Tourette’s
And Loopydude, I don’t think their cover of TMWSTW is entirely a straight cover. It has less of that quirky Bowiness. David Bowie personally liked their version so much that he said it was their song more than his. I also like their Meat Puppets covers more than the originals.
