There’s nothing objective about it, and I dont care about mass appeal. I don’t like his stuff, and think it sucks. That’s not a crime.
Really, it’s okay. It’s not my cup of tea, either. But I respect his musicianship. It’s okay if you disagree.
I don’t own any of their music except a burn of All My Life. I fucking love that song. Listen, Dave Grohl is technically proficient, by any standard measure, in a variety of instruments, production, songwriting, etc. The transition he accomplished is one of a handful - how anyone, even those that really don’t like his music, can look at what he has achieved with anything but respect and appreciation doesn’t get it. Dave Grohl is a fucking brand. How many random, we-needed-yet-another drummers achieve that?
Nirvana kept getting better as they went on, with In Utero being their masterpiece (and perhaps my favorite album by anyone). Particularly the second half reaches perfection.
- Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
- Milk it
- Aneurysm
- Smells Like Teen Spirit
- Drain You
- Very Ape
- Pennyroyal Tea
- Dumb
- Lithium
- Big Long Now
I was lucky enough to see Kurt in Nirvana in '91 or '92 at the Drexel Armory in Philadelphia, and they were phenomenal.
They played all of Nevermind, some punk/grunge covers, and returned to the stage to play ALL of Bleach.
Kurt, being a fantastic lyricist was also a fantastic rhythm guitarist. Glad I saw a historic band, but it sucks they are partly historic for a ridiculous suicide. I think Nevermind is one of the best rock albums I’ve ever heard.
A special 20th anniversary set is coming out on the 24th. I’m definitely picking it up (even though I, of course, already own In Utero).
Same is true of Andrew Lloyd Weber, and I don’t like his stuff either. I just don’t like the brand, despite its success.
Listen, I don’t like ALWebber at all, but I will share that opinion making it very clear that I respect the hell out of what he has accomplished. Saying “boy, his music suxx” comes across as juvenile. Feel free to hate his music and brand, but respect what he’s accomplished.
I was the right age, but never really got into Nirvana or grunge as a scene (except maybe Soundgarden) because Nirvana fans were insufferable. Ditto for the Pearl Jam kids at my high school. They had an extremely narrow appreciation for music, and you couldn’t talk or hang out with them without everything circling back around to the Nirvana Appreciation Hour. And they conversationally referred to the lead singers by first name: “What people like you don’t get about Kurt is that he writes his songs blah blah…”
I spent those formative years ripping off BMGs 9 CDs for the price of one scam (you cancelled and signed up under a different name – debt collectors can’t collect from minors, but they sure did try.) I dove into the catalogs of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Stones where I found the same hard edge paired with musicianship that the grunge acts couldn’t touch – and unlike the older end of Gen X, I didn’t grow up with these tracks, so it was all new to me.
Listen, I don’t like the stuff, and don’t care how much money either has made. Feel free to hate my post.
I’ll stick with a sigh of indifference.
You take a classic like Floyd the Barber, the song is musically quite interesting, then you read the lyrics and they are, not surprisingly, kind of gross, but the subtext is that he was painting a picture of small-town-life, that it has a lot of ick under the surface (Aberdeen is a little bigger than a small town, but only a little). From the standpoint of poetry and literature, Cobain was a Neo-beat genius, or at least a genuine artist.
They were the first band with mass appeal not created by, for or about the “boomer generation”. They effectively railed against the hypocrisy of the boomers openly and wore their contempt on their sleeve. “Nevermind” announced to the world that maybe those self-righteous fucks of the 60’s should finally yield to the self righteous fucks of the 90’s.
Alas, it hasn’t happened even today.
I was 21 years old when Nevermind came out. At the time, I was a typical skate punk and I was into an eclectic punk/metal/alternative mix… Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Fishbone, They Might Be Giants, Metallica, Nuclear Assault, S.O.D., Anthrax, Bosstones, R.E.M., Yngwie Malmsteen, GWAR, and lots of other stuff.
Maybe it was my age, but I absolutely could not stand grunge music. Pearl Jam, STP, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, they all sounded the same to me. Nirvana was different somehow. I never liked them enough to buy any of their CDs, but I never felt compelled to turn them off when I heard them on the radio like I did with other grunge bands. If they had this effect on me, think about what they must have meant to people who actually LIKED grunge music. Nirvana definitely had something different.
Well, to be fair, for those of us who were into indie rock in the '80s, Nirvana was just doing what dozens of other bands had already been doing (better, IMO) for most of that decade. Of course, none of those bands had radio or MTV hits, so if those were the only ways you were exposed to music, I suppose Nirvana sounded fresh and new. But they weren’t, not even remotely. A decent band, and their cultural impact can’t be denied, but I’ll take New Day Rising or You’re Living All Over Me or Daydream Nation or Surfer Rosa or Psychic…Powerless…Another Man’s Sac or Let It Be or Songs About Fucking or Psychocandy or many, many other '80s precursors over Nevermind or In Utero any day.
Yeah, Nirvana were definitely from a different corner of “grunge.” They had more in common with, I dunno, the Ramones and Cheap Trick than Sabbath and Zeppelin. In other words, they seemed to inherit more from punk and power pop, whereas the other grunge bands you mention seemed to come from a darker, more metal and blues-based 70s rock aesthetic. I always considered Nirvana the odd band out in what was slapped down with the “grunge” label in the early 90s, even though they were one of the pioneers of the movement, or whatever you want to call it.
I’ll have to look. I might have it.