Musical Monday #32

In 1994, I was 13 years old. What was on my mind at age 16, what was important in my life, what made me happy and what worried me -- all of this is largely forgotten to me now. I guess music was important to me, and girls. So what else is new.

In April of 1994, on the day Kurt Cobain died, I was walking to school with a friend, just like any other day. He told me Cobain was dead, and I didn't know who it was. I'm not cool enough to say that I was a huge fan and had a candle-lit vigil for him. My friend told me Cobain was "the guitarist" for a band called Nirvana. This meant nothing more to me than it had done a few moments before. Had I heard of them? Probably, yes. Had I heard anything by them? Unlikely.

I was 16 when I did.

My friend John and I had formed a band. Just the two of us. We could barely play, but we wanted a drummer. We recruited this obnoxious half-wit called Tim, who had a lot of power and strength but no natural flair or subtlety. What he did bring to the band was Nirvana. He liked them, we didn't know them. Over the summer, he lent John a couple of VHS recordings from MTV, of Nirvana Unplugged and Nirvana, Live and Loud. John also copied a Nirvana album from a cousin he had. A casette copy of a copy of a copy.

I take some music snobbery pride in knowing this album and the first material I ever heard by Nirvana was their debut album, Bleach. It sounded dark and dirty, grunge was the made-up genre used to describe their style, and the word seemed fitting. Detuned guitars and a sound like aural sludge. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard. Gone were the guitar solos of Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses, the theatrics and the pomposity.

We listened to it all, I'd watch Unplugged over breakfast, with my cornflakes.

Bleach was fucked up, Nevermind the difficult second album that the original fans felt was a sell-out, In Utero was my favourite at the time -- with better production than the debut, and less radio-friendly than the follow-up.

At that age, Cobain's untimely death at 27 seemed a world away. I could objectively acknowledge that he had "died young", but at the same time 27 was adult, grown up. He had a wife, and a child, and I won't give any oxygen to the claims of conspiracy and murder, because I don't much care.

Today I turned 28, having outlived Cobain, along with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones -- not mention various others. He doesn't seem so fully grown to me any more.

I have more or less grown out of listening to Nirvana, in time. The rage and angst of their music got a little old, although I still like to dig out their albums from time to time, and still roll my eyes at commercial stations playing the listener-friendly In Bloom, or Smells Like Teen Spirit, the latter being every bit the Pixies rip off that Nirvana said it was.

Heart Shaped Box