Whenever it comes time to do another piece for the Legend Series, I find myself facing a bit of writers block. I mean the guys and gals I need to write about are LEGENDS. They are well known on a global level, their songs are revered, what new information can dug up for an article by a no-name blogger? You want the inside scoop on your favorite classics, you turn to “tell all” biographies, or documentaries that have been years in the making. These formats offer inside access. Something I don’t have as I sit on my couch and type this out. What makes getting new info even more difficult to come by with these bands is the members are often dead. Making a long shot interview near impossible. So more often than not I try to dig up a little bio info, give you guys some tunes, and then try to give it a personal twist. Such is the case with this week’s AOTW LEGEND: Nirvana.
Nirvana as most people know them consisted of Kurt Cobain on guitar and vocals, Krist Novoselic on bass, and the baby faced David Grohl on drums. For a period of three years, these men were the most famous band on the planet. Their album Nevermind, changed the game entirely. Up until that point, the arena rock of the 80’s still had a strangle hold on the radio waves. After Smells Like Teen Spirit had it’s first spin, it was all over. Nirvana’s reign at the top was brief. They had three full length studio albums, Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero, accompanied with a record of B-Sides (Incesticide) and finally their live recordings, Live at Reading, From The Muddy Banks of The Wishkah, and Nirvana: MTV Unplugged In New York. It all came crashing down in April of 1994 when Cobain took his own life. He pulled a Jesus. He went out at the top. And he’ll forever be remembered, at the top.
I know this is going to sound a bit curt, but this will conclude the history portion of the article. I’m not going to be able to give 
any astounding facts here that haven’t been printed a thousand times before. What I do have are stories of my experiences with their music. This band was my youth. These albums were my passion. Nirvana’s work, and the work of those in their inner circle influenced nearly everything in my life. I was too young to experience the grunge movement at the time it actually happened, but it hasn’t stopped me from looking back at photos, videos, and interviews, and getting lost in a world that I would never know.
It’s hard to believe that their global hit Nevermind came out over 20 years ago. I scratch my head at that idea regularly. I still listen to that album whenever I get the chance. It is timeless, perfect mix pop hooks and punk angst. Everyone has a story of when they first heard a song that changed their lives. Many of these stories involve this album. The best one I ever heard was from a roommate I had when I first moved out to Los Angeles. His parents were from Bengal, a country just east of India. They were stricter than hell when he was growing up, for the most part sheltering him from the dangers that were American Pop Culture. They were successful until he was in his early teens when his cousin brought over a mixed cassette tape. On it was Nirvana’s Drain You.
I’ll never forget how he described his thoughts after hearing it. He told me, “up until till that point, I didn’t know music could sound like that.” It changed him forever. In a family of doctors from Bengal, he decided to pursue a career fronting his own rock band.
I had a life changing moment with this record too. The first time I heard Nirvana was in the early 90’s. I was very young at the time, maybe in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I can’t remember exactly. But I do remember the exact moment when I first heard Smells Like teen Spirit. I was in movement class.
For those of you asking, “What the hell is movement class?” Let me clarify. When you grow up in the suburbs of Lilywhite Seattle, schools are very adamant about keeping young kids away from the trial and tribulations of sport and competition. Parents and teachers try their best to shield children away from feelings brought on by “losing”. They did this by eliminating PE from the curriculum until you hit the 4th grade. In lieu of PE you took “movement class,” which was more or less an hour out of the day where you are supposed to dance or play hide and seek in a room where there was nothing to hide behind. I have two clear memories from movement class. The first of which was when I was in the 1st grade and had a near panic attack when it was time to leave, I needed to put my shoes back on, and I realized I couldn’t remember how to tie my shoes. The other was when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Our teacher had asked everyone to bring in music from home to be played on the cassette player in class. For the most part the music was bubble gum pop, folk, and anything else kids’ parents had lying around the house. But one kid named Rick had an older sister. Rick’s sister was in the know, so Rick brought in Nevermind. Imagine a room filled with 3rd graders who have just finished listening to some Dan Fogleberg track, and then suddenly Smells Like Teen Spirit kicks on. The room exploded. Running, screaming, bashing into shit, I had gone into Hulk mode and I had no idea why. All I knew was that while this song was playing, I needed to break shit and freak out. And that’s exactly what I did.
Not surprising, that was the last time we were allowed to listen to Nirvana during movement class. Ms. Stewart was a real Nazi like that. That explains why someone was still a Ms. and not a Mrs. well into her 30’s!!! Or she was a lesbian, but I didn’t know that was a thing when I was in the 3rd grade.
Many years would pass before I got a hold of my own copy of Nevermind. When I got, I became a boy obsessed. I wanted to know everything. This was pre-internet mind you, so I was going to the library and trying to use the Dewey Decimal system to find shit on grunge. What I found, I devoured. The best find was the work of photographer Charles Peterson, man who entrenched in the Seattle music scene, capturing each sweat soaked show with his 35mm camera. His works at that time were later published in a book title Touch Me I’m Sick. Check out his stuff. It’s incredible.
 http://www.charlespeterson.
The destruction, the feedback, the plaid, I wanted it all. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to smash a guitar and dive head first into a pit of human beings that were moshing together as if they wanted to tear each other apart. These guys were in their early 20’s, but living out the dreams of adolescent troublemakers, and were being celebrated for it. It was incredible. When they appeared on MTV’s Video awards in 92 and they specifically told Cobain he couldn’t play Rape Me, what did he do? He started playing Rape Me. And then Novoselic tried some bullshit stunt of throwing his bass in the air and catching it, only to knock himself unconscious. They capped off the showing by taunting Axel Rose as fans overtook the stage. Fuck those who came before them. This was their turn. Who wouldn’t want to be them?
My first years with Nirvana put me on a high. I couldn’t get enough of their stuff. It was loud and it was angry. Just like me. Then there was the lull., the quieter moments that I’ve had with their music. They were apart of one of my worst memories from growing up. My family was moving from Seattle to Indiana. I was packing up my room and MTV decided that 2:30PM on a Wednesday was a great time to rerun Nirvana’s Unplugged. I sat in the very room I grew up in, empty of all of my possessions with the acceptation of my TV and watched the whole thing, while “depressed eating” an enormous sub sandwich, periodically stopping to fucking cry. I was pathetic. The only thing that made me feel any better was getting to see Cobain perform Oh Me and Man Who Sold The World.
It was comforting to know that know that the loneliness I was feeling as an acne covered, overweight teenager, was also felt by a man who was considered to be the face of rock and roll. I was leaving Seattle, but I would always have Nirvana.
Fun little factoid about this unplugged session. Apparently the tech working the show tried to put a little reverb on Cobain’s voice, Cobain refused until he explained even John Lennon used it. Good enough for Lennon, Good enough for him apparently.
This Unplugged really separated itself from the others. They didn’t just go acoustic on the hits. They played obscure covers from The Vasalines, The Meat Puppets, David Bowie, and Leadbelly. It’s shows like this that really get my goat with MTV. They used to have music on their channel. Real bands, playing instruments? Wild right? I’m rewatching the set right now. It’s just so damn sad to see a man who is on top of the world look so miserable. Dude had problems. Guess that explains the heroin.
The last story I want to tell about Nirvana happened in 2002. I was living in Indianapolis, hating my entire existence. It was a place where I never felt comfortable. I think that comes from being land locked. If I’m not within 20 minutes of a large body of water then I get really anxious. I think I see the ocean as some sort of escape route. Like, no matter what goes wrong, I could hop in a dingy and bail. I didn’t have that there. I had cornfields, and Colts fans. That sounds kinda crazy, but I am a little crazy.
In 2002, Nirvana’s best of album was released. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to me it was. It was a very big deal. The reason being, the last track that they ever took into the studio, which up until that point had been unreleased, was going to be the first track on the album.
I remember standing in a fucking Target, holding the CD in my hand. I just stood there, starring at it for a long time. It had been nearly ten years since I had heard a new Nirvana song. This was the last new Nirvana song that there was ever going to be. I had come to grips with the fact that there wouldn’t be any new stuff but that was turned on its head by this one song. I almost didn’t want to listen to it. What if it was terrible? What if it changed my entire opinion on the band? Meanwhile, all I had wanted for ten years, was more Nirvana. I waited till I got home to play it. I didn’t feel like listening to it in the car. I drove home in silence thinking about all of this, caught up in my own feelings and teenage angst. To me this was everything. It was the “end all, be all” of my entire music world. I got home, put it into my 3-disc changer, and this is what I heard.
As the second track started to play, I got up and started You Know You’re Right over again. I did this about twenty times before my mom told me to knock it off. I love this song, and it was a fitting song to go out on. I don’t think Cobain would have made it in the world of the rock star. It wasn’t in him. This song kind of makes that point for him. It’s sad that he’s gone, but I hate to think what may have become of him. Revisit Nirvana. You won’t be sorry.
Big Hugs,
Kelly
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