Nirvana Epiphany

third: poly styrene

not all songs by these various foax live up to the standard set by their throats

Mark, would you marry me?

Repetition = bad? You're just trying to fuck up my Saturday.

These gents may have a bone to pick with you on that point.

http://www.an-irrational-domain.net/images/band83-86/band85sitting1.JPG

"Come As You Are" is one of the best 100 singles of the 90s.

They never made a bad song and I like 'em plenty (obtusely sensitive and profound lyrics sometimes, remarkably evocative voice, great melodies, some clever chord changes, surprisingly abrasive and wide-ranging album in In Utero). But the Beatles obviously had a much more substantial catalogue - more varied and sophisticated songwriting, more emotional variety, greater quantity of work, more interesting arrangements and production. Public Enemy was probably more important.

I recently read Heavier Than Heaven which got me back into Nirvana a bit. Part of the reason they were so big is because Cobain was such an interesting character--so many conflicts & contradictions. It's easy to relate to his weaknesses.

Mark: I'm really not the best person to judge but when I like Eminem and NWA songs it's not primarily because of the production. I never really liked Doggystyle. His other stuff I don't know well.

As for the subject at hand:

Also wish that he wasn't partially responsible for the "lyrics don't matter in the slightest - I'll just mumble" reasoning.

You make this sound like a bad thing!

On a conscious level, maybe.. I've always assumed it was a song about suicide, but then again I think EVERY song is about suicide (except for "Baby One More Time" which is clearly about spousal abuse)

that's actually the title of the box set coming out next year

Wha? How's they do that?

I'd agree 100% with this. Kurt was a very good writer of tunes, but not a great lyricist. However, the fact that he later killed himself makes his words more interesting. It makes Nirvana more interesting as a band. The context is all.

Judged on music, they're still pretty damn good. My favourite is "About a Girl". I never developed a strong attatchment to them, like many of my generation, but I can't argue with the noisy pop songwriting.

This listen actually made me want to buy the new comp. I'd get "You Know You're Right," a few from Bleach, and some of the best from the two Geffen albums. I wish "Aneurysm-live" was on it, though.

"You Know You're Right" is so strong and is so dramatic that it makes me further mourn the loss of a clearly evolving songwriter and make me even more adamant in my refusal to overrate the works he did create.

Snoop is fucking amazing in that song! ("I got a feelin'/Tonight's the night like Betty Wright/And I'm chillin'/Killin'/Not feelin'/no remorse/So let's take it back to tha motherfuckin' source..." okay, so probably not verbatim, but you know, off the top of my head!)

(And, uh, that's all I want to say about that...)

But, none of this changes the amazing love I feel for them now. And I don't think it's nostalgia. It feels new! It gives me a shock whenever I remember that it was 12 years ago that Nevermind came out.

I have no rebuttal.

heavier than heaven is a dud for that line about kathleen hanna and tobi vail "prattling on about sexism." courtney-influenced bullshit.

the Joy Division comparison is apt.and New Order>>>>>Foo Fighters

-- Alex in NYC

Inventive isn't everything.

This is somewhat akin to saying "Indescribably great sex>>>>>>>>>>>>>a nice tunafish sandwhich".

Inventive isn't everything.

True. But for all the praise that Nirvana enjoys, you'd think they'd have brought something a bit more original to the table. They didn't, and let's not all pretend that they did.

They just did what they did (Catchy + Rock = WIN) in a far better, more totally realised way than most of their contemporaries managed. Of course it was hardly a new idea.

I am so not caring about arguing this one further! Nirvana hating nearly always gets tedious beyond belief. Not having a go at you Alex in NYC, but I've seen many of these threads now & generally - zzz.

No, No (I think their influence faded pretty fast, if it wasn't already completely exhausted by the time Silverchair/Bush/Puddle Of Jizzz arrived) and yes, i think Kurt had a LOT to do with it.

I haven't listened to a Nirvana record all the way through in years, but they're still "that" band for me from my late-teens.

It seems so obvious now what with Hüsker Dü, Pixies, Gang of Four, and whoever else it was that came before Cobain & Co., but back then, it was very frustrating to sit in a living room in rural Arkansas on a Saturday night, and the coolest music to be heard was to be found on goddam "Headbangers' Ball". It was pick your poison time, almost literally with Rikki Rocket preferable to anything that Debbie Gibson was doing. My dad used to tell me about how he'd turn on the radio and hear greats like The Beatles, The Stones, Motown, ? and the Mysterians, usually on one radio station. I'd turn on my radio and hear Tiffany, Rick Astley, and Roxette. The "cool" bands like Faster Pussycat weren't even on the radio, though way down deep inside, I knew that those bands weren't even that cool to begin with.

So that night that I was watching MTV and saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was definitely a moment of ephiphany. Turning on the radio station that played the teeny-bopper stuff a month later and hearing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was even more so of a moment. Seeing Anthrax cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at an in-store performance confirmed that something was finally really happening. Many of you Gina Arnold types out there may have been aware of this change for years, but it didn't really hit home for the rest of us until Autumn, 1991, the beginning of my senior year in high school.

Anyway. No one was more disappointed and least surprised when Nirvana ended the way it did. Those radio stations moved on to playing Blues Traveler and Soul Coughing, and I moved on to those aforementioned bands that influenced Cobain in the first place. I grew up, and even went to work for one of those radio stations. By that time, the "it" music came from Limp Bizkit and P.O.D.

Sometime a few years ago, we recieved a promo copy of the unreleased Nirvana song that was going to come out on their box set. I stuck it into the office CD player, and there was my latest, probably my last, moment of epiphany from Nirvana.

After being surrounded by their bastard sons all these years, hearing "You Know You're Right" reconfirmed just how special this band had been. Gavin Rossdale could mimic the vocals, those other bands could mimic the quiet-part-followed-by-the-loud-part thing, but no one could come close to putting it all together like Nirvana. Ten years later, it was almost like hearing it for the first time.

Anyway. I wouldn't call Nirvana the greatest rock band. They're not even really my favorite band. But for what they were, Nirvana was a very important band for me, and I still think about what-could've-been every April.

Do lay off that crack pipe, Alfred. It's rotting your brain.

I think I'm probably cynical about Nirvana because I'm old enough to have hear about ninteen dozen other bands do what they did before them. And do it better.

fuck yeah

Were they better than the Beatles?

nah, that's silly.

Are they the best/most important group of the last 20 years?

not really.

Was Nirvana's magic just Kurt's magic or was it a gestalt thing?

Kurt all the way.

Artist: NIRVANA
Title: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Label: SL0W T0 SP3AK
Format: 12"
Price: $13.00
Catalog #: PRO 157EP
"Next in the continually varied, juxtaposed & repositioned series of high quality 12" reissues compiled by Sl0w To Speak's P@ul N1ck3rs0n & Fr@nc1s 3ngl3h@rdt comes a quintessential release of the prolific and incendiary Nirvana. Both at the time of their popular blooming and their continuing nostalgic re-popularization up to this day, the appeal of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic & Dave Grohl generated a universal fascination and reverence -- across every age bracket, generational gap & genre-specific subjective inclination -- that rocketed the band to a mass-cultural adoration & emblematic importance beyond any of their wildest imaginings could have ever anticipated or foreseen. And certainly, their legacy has grown over the years with pressing & urgent vivacity, seemingly unscathed by the passing trends of popularity's fickle inclination, still drawing enough fascination & obsession with the cult of Cobain's troubled personality to have produced 2 films specifically dedicated to the dissection of his notorious neuroses & troubled self-destructiveness. Yet, far beyond the obsessive gaze on Cobain's wild personality & non-comforming defiance, the real strength of Nirvana's story, of their aggressive, militant punk-rock inspired anti-authoritarianism, their selfless hedonism and Cobain & company's poetic & disarmingly witty analysis of modern day boredom & indifference lies in the formation's miraculous victory over the major labels, over MTV trivialization, Spin & Rolling Stone's oversimplification & misrepresentation: over every popular misconception and attempted undermining that would have painted the group as just another infantile act of teenage revolt. The underlying integrity of Nirvana's aesthetic & theoretical expression simply cannot be laughed at and then forgotten along with the continuing barrage of mediocre and unsubstantial bands of their era or ours, and despite the years since, the band's impact in such a short time has stayed with us to this day, their defiant anti-musicianship and sternly do-it-yourself aesthetic & propagation while riding the financial rainbow of mass stardom reminds us that there is the possibility for a musician or band or producer or whomever it may be to 'cross over,' to win the popular mandate of culture and still retain their artistic integrity. And while it must be said that the romance around Cobain's eventual suicide has created a general nassau among any of those who truly appreciated Cobain & Nirvana's contribution -- from their dismantling of the rigid constraints of major-label acceptability to pushing the limits of the popularly acceptable in music to the limits of absurdity, perversity and subversiveness -- the lasting integrity of Nirvana's project overpowers any attempts at recuperation... at least we must hope." Silkscreened lettering on jacket in silver metallic ink.

and all that in fifteen minutes!

"I'm old enough to have heard about ninteen dozen other bands do what they did before them. And do it better."

I would love to hear these bands. I can only think of:
buzzcocks

selfless hedonism?

re-popularization
fascination
inclination
adoration
inclination
fascination
dissection
formation
trivialization
oversimplification
misrepresentation
misconception
propagation
contribution
recuperation

i just heard that list in sandler's cajun man character.

To borrow a line from "Apocalypse Now," the bullshit piled up so fast in this thread, you needed fuckin' wings to stay above it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A08Gsv5DEBk

OH SO GREAT

he isn't wearing a "hi, how are you" t-shirt under the flannel. therefore: fail.

definite increase in nirvananess recently among my circle of friends. feel like baggy 90s grunge revival is next. or maybe that already happened, i don't know.

i listened to nevermind when it came out and teen spirit was on the radio. think i was 8 or something. my next experience with them was ppl putting on the unplugged stuff while we smoked pot, all i remember from that is kurt going "something in the wayyyyy, uuuhhhhoooohhhh" and that cover of man who stole the world, found it all p annoying back then.

what's the freakiest weirdest shit they did?

ha, *sold the world.

freakiest/weirdest? If I'm understanding the question correctly, that would include Beeswax, Hairspray Queen, Milk It, Endless Nameless, Curmudgeon, Moist Vagina, Mexican Seafood ..

Mexican Seafood is unbeareable. And almost quitissential grunge, if pushed to it's most extremes.

listen to more butthole surfers

I'm sure, somewhere out there on last.fm, they're tagged as grunge but I could never really bring myself to consider a band like theirs - drifting, but somehow tightly organized - as belonging to to the same genre as Kurt's.

"Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip" is a relatively "weird" Nirvana track, definite Big Black influence.

Krist, Dave and Pat are Zionisit/Illuminati scum and you can see in this interview Krist and Pat blatantly promoting the Zionist homosexual agenda Kurt exposes in the video heart shaped box wich he had total creative control over! WAKE UP! Kurt wasn't murdered he was assassinated for outing the Zionist/Illuminati homosexual agenda and 9/11.

"hey, what's that?"

"THAT is my prized possession. An original Nirvana master tape! Cost me almost 4000 dollars."

"Wow, so what is it, unreleased music or one of their albums?"

"It's actually 3 alternate versions of the song Moist Vagina!"

"Uh..."

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Master-reel-to-reel-Tape-NIRVANA-15ips-for-REVOX-AMPEX-AKAI-TEAC-/251261405102?hash=item3a8058c7ae&nma=true&si=HqKGiDVmKjj80ZImgxalKAhIm4k%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

One baby to another says I'm lucky to have met you
I don't care what you think unless it is about me
It is now my duty to completely drain you
I travel through a tube and end up in your infection

Lol that illuminati stuff is spreading from jay z video youtube comments and infecting the whole internet

Novoselic making illuminati power moves like running for clerk of a rural county

MARRAWANNA MARRAWANNA

jam #2 sounds like a jam

From that eBay listing:

can be erased and re-used if you need a blank reel to reel tape

still mad at helgo for recording over an unreleased color me badd song