Two brothers. Eight good friends. Three ex-girlfriends. The entire Steve's Pizza crew from 1995. My entire graduating class of 1994. My first boss. My third boss. My fourteen-thru-twenty-year-old self. This is what I risk alienating by posting this. But I can no longer remain silent: Nirvana, you fuckin lick it like you're afraid it's gonna melt.
Now before a bunch of you yahoos stuck in the 90s start posting your bullshit comments or sending me retarded emails accusing me of hating 90s bands, or grunge bands/Seattle bands - stop. Just stop. You couldn't be more wrong. There are Seattle bands I still listen to today. Further, I will reiterate an argument I've made since Kurt Cobain's head still consisted of a single piece: Nirvana is not a grunge band. Absolutely NOT.
Nirvana was a punk band that broke through at the same time grunge bands were breaking through. To further complicate matters, they broke through at the absolute epicenter of Grunge Kingdom (Seattle). Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam? Five-star grunge acts, no doubt about it. But Nirvana was something different.
Both the punk and the grunge movements came about at times when the pendulum that is the public tastes begin to change direction; think of it as a form of musical revolution. We saw this in the 1970s and we saw it again in the early 90s: acts like Soundgarden were every bit a reaction against the 80s hair bands as the Ramones were a reaction against leftover hippies, prog rock, and disco. Both types of music were reactions, in that sense, and thus similar.
But the music itself is dramatically different, and here's how I would explain it if I had to: grunge music in its purest form completely eschews pop sensibilities, whereas punk music maintains pop sensibilities at all costs. In other words, nothing is off the table where grunge music is concerned: odd time signatures, chord progressions that don't make sense, off-putting harmonies, uncomfortable tempos, awkward-sounding key changes, and unusual song structures are the tip of the iceberg. Are you noticing that grunge music has, at least on paper, the capacity to be very complicated? Good.
Punk music, on the other hand, is dramatically different. To say punk music is pop music played on loud, heavy guitars with a screaming vocalist would be an oversimplification, yes, but certainly not much of one. Traditional Western melodies are rigidly observed. Traditional chord progressions - albeit short ones - observed. Traditional song structure - observed. It's meant to be loud, fast, and full of energy - but also to observe traditional rules of pop music.
Now, based on this knowledge I just dropped on yo' ass, how would you categorize, say, Soundgarden? Grunge! Good. Now - Alice in Chains? Grunge! That's good. Now - Nirvana?
That's right. Nirvana is a punk band, through and through. Sorry for the departure, but it's important to get that out of the way. Anyone who calls Nirvana a grunge band doesn't know what the F they're talking about.
Now, why does this matter? Because Nirvana was not a good grunge band, and - as it turns out - they were a pretty shitty punk band as well. What's that? Oh, I'm so glad you asked.
What are the elements we love in our punk acts? Recklessness. Attitude. Disregard for human safety. Lack of interest. Staying hidden. Does any of the sound like Nirvana to you? No. (Well, up until the point where what's-his-balls decided to see if he could fit his big toe into a trigger guard, anyway.) Nirvana may have attempted to appear indifferent but to anyone alive and observing it all unfold...they were media whores. Besides, Cobain named his baby Francis Bean. You wanna know what Sid Vicious would have named his kid? Middle Finger Vicious. You know what I think of that? So awesome I could puke, that's what.
How unfortunate for Great Britain - all they got was Sid & Nancy.
This half-talented bastard blew up so big, so fast, and then selfishly blew his worthless head off that he was propelled to sheer and utter stardom the likes of which the world has rarely seen; we certainly haven't seen it since. We've seen our share of dead celebrities, sure, but nothing like Kurt. This begs the question: why?
Did anyone declare a national disaster when the Ramones started dying off? Did half the world stay grief-stricken for weeks when Joe Strummer or Sid Vicous died? Nope. So why did we care so much when Kurt rode forever out of town on the Double-Barrel Express? Simple - he forced us to care. He forced us to care and then ditched out on us. He showed up wearing ballroom gowns and quirky sunglasses and alternashirts and shoved his face in front of the camera at every given chance because he wanted us to love him. He's basically Barney from How I Met Your Mother. Only instead of slipping out of the apartment while you're showering, he wrapped his lips around the barrel of a gun and turned his skull into a pretty clever impression of Humpty Dumpty. So the Barney analogy completely works.
Here's a way you can convince yourself that I'm right - ask yourself this: was it Kurt we fell in love with, or was it his music? Wait - back up. Could we even understand his lyrics, let alone any message that might have been in there? Think about POLLY. Is there ANY musical value there whatsoever? What about IN BLOOM? I was bored before that song even ended...the first time I heard it. I would maintain that the world loved Kurt, and the music was secondary. And we loved him because he wanted us to.
Thanks asshole - hey I think I hear the sound of a gun barrel that needs tasting.
All this pales in comparison to my biggest complaint about this band of dirtbags: Nirvana did nearly-irreparable harm to the world of music, namely: musicianship. Sure, some listeners simply prefer the simpler songs: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, hold the guitar solo please! ...maybe a bridge and an end or final chorus. However, Kurt Cobain is singlehandedly responsible for the guitar solo - as we had come to know it - being completely outlawed.
Sure, he did his little doodlings once in a great while where he'd play the same two completely distorted notes over and over, or maybe he'd play the melody that he'd just finished singing when verse two ended, but I prefer to think of them as "sonic breaks" instead of guitar solos.
And what happened? What happened when he took a lead money shot and checked out forever? As established, he was propelled to near-Elvis status. This is a guy who couldn't play guitar if you held a gun to his head (ha ha, get it? Kurt + gun jokes still aren't getting old, I'm kinda surprised, it being this late in the post) being hailed as a great musician upon his death. As such, every single non-made player in the world had to doubt his entire arsenal of chops at this point. Even worse, all those chumps who lacked the discipline to develop the chops required to become a professional musician were suddenly given not only a template for a writing style but also some coattails to ride and the confidence they'd need to pull it off!
Subsequently, our local music stores were suddenly filled with idiots chugging away on drop-D guitars rather than a bunch of idiots trying to re-create "Spanish Fly" (and in most cases failing, but still). I know guys - GOOD players - who were suddenly afraid to play any lead work! All because one of one idiot! This leads to some speculation: many of those players who truly loved the instrument for what it was were put into the position where they felt they needed to dumb down their playing.
To this day, the world of guitar playing has yet to fully recover from the damage done by Cobain. Sure, guitar solos are being revived, slowly but surely, but they're still not the same. Are you the kind of discriminating idiot who requires supporting evidence for every point I make? If so (if so, you probably shouldn't be reading my blog, it'll give you heartburn...go somewhere where the research comes from somewhere other than their own memory banks), luckily, I have an example for you. Here we are, the Year of Our Lord 2012, about twenty years after the death of this yo-yo. Go check out the "guitar solo" on "Slo-Mo-Tion" off the new Manson album (Born Villian). I even wrote down what time it starts, in case you're like me and you hate that song: three minutes, fifteen seconds. You're welcome.
Have we had any mainstream guitar gods borne unto us lately? Any guys like Slash or Mick Mars who become household names due solely to their guitar work? No? That's too bad. Well, you can thank this idiot for that.
I could further speculate on how the near-extinction of guitar leads in music left your typical rock-n-roll song structure with a gaping hole (for example - like the hole in Kurt's head) - a hole which the idiots that came in directly after Cobain tried to fill...with hip hop (Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Linkin Park), but nah. I'm sure you guys made that connection already yourselves.
I'm outta here. Hope you liked it, or more accurately - I honestly don't give a shit. I had a rotten time writing it and thinking about all this bullshit.
Piss off forever,
D. Hayabusa
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