Nirvana C/D

Classic, really.

Actually, Screaming Trees wrote some pretty great stuff towards the end but no one likes them.

True, but I was thinking more of Superjudge when I wrote that post. Best album of 1993.

I'd like to steal that. That's how I feel about a lot of music (especially stuff I was listening to in high school).

Nirvana's CDs were interesting, and sounded so different from what was out at the time. Black girls rarely heard this type of music in suburbia. Tis a pity Cobain couldn't deal. Who knows whether the mania around them would have lasted one more year? So, there's my long answer:

Classic.

And then I think that summer I started listening to a lot of Arabic music, but I still think Nirvana were pretty good, better than average, if nothing else. Also, since I was already in my mid-20's at the time, I already had a lot of familiarity with the general punk/indie background they were coming from.

On a thread about the Stooges' Funhouse I talked about how I rarely play the record because to truly experience it and enjoy it meant (for me) to connect with powerful primal emotions that I don't always want to access. Maybe something similar is at work with Nirvana. To get all there is to get out of those records means being willing to feel a certain degree of pain (although Cobain project more than that one emotion), as well as maybe feeling how it felt when those records came out; where you were, what you were going through, etc. Maybe I have enough to deal with in my own life, maybe I've been through enough shit recently, but as powerful and exciting as those records are, I guess I just don't wanna go there. I will at some point, though.

i guess they are given added gravitas because of what happened to kurt later. His words were never particularly interesting or cleverly written - but they become fascinating because of his suicide.

Post-Chad Channing: undeniably classic.

Yeah, I loved Bleach, was just discovering SST/Sub Pop type stuff and really getting into Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, Nirvana. They just slotted in as another one of those great new guitar bands coming up with cool riffs and rhythms, as far as I was concerned. Saw them at a small club in Ann Arbor in 1989 with Tad. Good show.

I differ w/ BBT in that I was kind of disappointed by Nevermind. I liked it and all, but the production was too shiny for my tastes, Dave Grohl sounded too "pro". I liked Chad Channing! I thought "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was just cloying (that verse melody! ugh) and bad. I wanted more "Floyd the Barber"s and "Blew"s and "Dive"s and "Negative Creep"s.

In Utero however, was a stone classic. back to the abrasive sound I loved. Cobain writing the best lyrics of his life.

They were and remain classic, even if I rarely listen to the records.

Your Nirvana was my Led Zeppelin. Now I know how Zeppelin fans must have felt in 1988.

"Even in His Youth" is crap, but "Son of a Gun" and their cover of "Molly's Lips" are alright.

I remember quite liking "Breed" and "Territorial Pissings". It is a fine album.....it ain't the fuckn' Rosetta Stone, but it's a fine album.

And by that, I didn't mean to imply these hapless clowns....

http://www.rosetta-stone.org.uk/gallery/fullsize/stone1.jpg

haha I'm 15 and I didn't even know who they were until, like, three years ago

Another important thing that doesn't get talked about enough here it seems is the social aspect of it. A big part of what Nirvana means/t to me has to do with performing arrangements of some of their songs with friends in a music class project (laugh if you want to; even we thought it was kind of funny at the time) or in other gatherings and seeing other people playing their songs on guitars all the time in hallways or parties or on the street; hearing Unplugged repeatedly when people got together; hearing "Lithium" on the PA (they played a song every morning) and seeing people nod heads or hum along; this sense of identifying closely with the sound and emotion in somethng and sharing that with hordes of other people (which was probably really alienating for people who didn't get into their music).

What Justyn said is pretty OTM (Smells Like Teen Spirit totally changed my life too), though my problem with Nirvana isn't so much that they sound forlorn, but that if I start to think about their hype and myth the songs can sound very stick-in-the-mud. Granted, most of their Seattle peers and the modern day plodders sound stick-in-the-mud even without thinking about their aesthetic. And the songs that are coming to mind here at work I'm really enjoying.

It's funny how half of Nirvana's hype and actions was GREAT, EARNED and affected lots of people and how the other half is so reprehensible that it's thoroughly tempting to ignore the good stuff. Though Nirvana is easily more important and better, sometimes I think I prefer obvious imitators Local H, whose angst and energy is much more coherent and truly anthemic (since they don't talk in code, Local H doesn't depend on hype, nostalgia and zeitgeist to connect). The two singles the Vines put out remind of what first grabbed me about Nirvana too: Beatles getting electrocuted.

I hate so much about what they represent, but when I think about songs like "Negative Creep," "Aneurysm," "Sliver"...there's just no question they're classic.

In an alternate universe somewhere, Bob Mould actually took the production job for Nevermind and popular music history went an entirely different way...

OTM.

No, you go fuck YOURself, moppett!

Fuck Teh Hatas, anti-Nirvanaism is for wankers.

OTM = ON THE MONEY, ON THE MARK, etc.

*stomps out door to smoke cigarette*

Well, considering Killing Joke were making amazing, influential music when Kurt was only twelve years old, I'd say they're already in the fuckin' canon.

The anti-(mainstream) canon thing I'm referring to is a stupid, conformist herd-like mentality thing and it needs to stop at some point in the near future. It's a ridiculously pretentious conceit dreamed up by so-called hipsters that makes no sense. Replacing mainstream touchstones with cult "hipster" touchstones is absolutely meaningless.
It goes a little something like this:

THE BEATLES? FUCK THAT SHIT! THE VELVET UNDERGROUND!
LED ZEPPELIN? FUCK THAT SHIT! THE STOOGES!
NIRVANA? FUCK THAT SHIT! MUDHONEY!
and so on...sorry if I'm getting a little lazy with "cult" examples but you get the idea.

You can like all of the above mentioned bands, you know. I do. It's not against the law, they're not gonna revoke your fucking Wire subscription or anything. It doesn't prove anything to anybody with a mind of their own.

(Sorry, I don't usually pontificate like this, but that shit just ticks me off.)

Well, I think the problem with this equation is context. The Velvet Underground came from totally different place/environment/perspective than the Beatles. Likewise, the Stooges came from a different place/headspace/mentality than Led Zeppelelin.

Mudhoney and Nirvana, meanwhile, were so damn similar they actually shared members. Nirvana were not a reaction against Mudhoney (in the way that the Velvets were a reacion against flower power or that the Sex Pistols were a reaction against Pink Floyd, etc.)

They define the sound of Grunge.

....I'd say: POPPYCOCK! Soundgarden and the Melvins defined the sound of Grunge.

Forks, consider it done. I'll get on it as soon as I have time and post the result.

I, like a lot of other curious youngsters at the time, purchased a copy of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge shortly after getting into Nevermind.
It is not a comparable record in any way - songwriting, accessibility whathaveyou.
If Mudhoney were the ones on DGC at the time receiving the label push and Nirvana were still on Sub Pop, Nevermind wouldn't have been as big as it was obviously, but there's no way in hell EGBDF would have gotten as big as Nevermind in reality did. That kind of nonsense thinking is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

What I'm getting at is that this "If circumstances were different, if THIS (beloved cult band) band had the big push that THIS (huge mainstream juggernaut band) things shoulda coulda woulda".....stuff is BUNK. That didn't happen, get over it. Nirvana were the ones that got huge, period. This is magic fairytale thinking stuff (god, I sound like LeBrainBoy).
Anyways, trying to justify the success or non-success of a band like this is pointless.
What happened happened. End of story. It does not change the content of these records.
Thriller, for example, is not more or less better a record than the day it was finished for selling 26 million copies or 50,000.

Nirvana only left us with a paltry THREE studio albums. Regardless of the merit of the music, there's simply no way to compare them with the Beatles. Did Nirvana make a big impact? Sure, but just not on the scale as the Beatles. And I'm not even that much of a Beatle fan. Media perceptions, it should also be remembered, have changed. Today's media operate in a totally different manner than the media of the mid-to-late 60's. It's simply a different world.

Relative to their decade, they were as big as the Beatles in the mind of the rock press.

I'm not REFUTING that. I'm merely pointing out that Nirvana are NOT PRACTICALLY COMPARABLE to the Beatles due to the fact that they don't have enough material to COMPETE with them. Nirvana's fame is based pretty exclusively on Nevermind (the other releases were nice, yeah, but had there been no Nevermind, they wouldn't have made much of a difference). The Beatles, meanwhile, re-wrote the rule book itself a couple of times and debates continue TO THIS DAY as to which of their several "important" albums is the greatest. Compared to the Beatles, Nirvana are basically just a one-hit-wonder. That's my point.

See:
In the public (read: mainstream media) perception of things, Killing Joke are a small cult thing compared to The Beatles and Nirvana.

The fact that they were no where near as original or important as the Beatles makes no difference. I'm talking about media perceptions and subjective hipster reactions to them here.

I'm not talking about REALITY. I'm talking about MEDIA.

Which can finally bring me back to my main point. The media DOES have influence in the sense that I believe a hipster Nirvana backlash would not exist if not for the constant media necrophila of Kurt Cobain and his little grunge band. They're still good records if you can truly say "Fuck the Media" and get all that nonsense about them out of your head.

Well, the media arguably fuels the imaginations of the young and impressionable (i.e. 'graveside groupies' who lap up the mythologizing), but I don't think it's solely the media's fault.

If you still believe that, what conceivable reasons for a backlash are there besides the media hype and their ensuing continued popularity?

None of this was meant as a personal attack, Aaron, I was just drunk at the wheel and thinking out loud. I do think it's disingenuous to deny that some of Nirvana's influence is based on the glamour of suicide. Same with Joy Division, The Doors, whoever. Of course that doesn't detract from their relative merits as bands, but it is a factor in the way they are treated by some people. I don't think it's patronising to say that it tends to be those who come to the band after they've stopped...a kind of distance lending enchantment to the view.

As for the canon, well, knee-jerk hipsterism is a silly game to play, but has it occurred to you that not everybody thinks, say, The Beatles or Nirvana are that interesting? And I think people tend to react exaggeratedly against things that they're told they must agree are important or good. I've seen people on ILM make strong and interesting cases for the reassessment of just about every band I've ever loved, hated or been indifferent to. It's not a question of right and wrong answers, it's a question of the skill of the argument.

The point of canons is to keep chipping away at them, isn't it?

I thought this was the point...

http://www.nps.gov/hafe/jpeg/cannon-fire.jpg

but has it occurred to you that not everybody thinks, say, The Beatles or Nirvana are that interesting?
NO

some of Nirvana's influence is based on the glamour of suicide
YES

that doesn't detract from their relative merits as bands, but it is a factor in the way they are treated by some people.
YES

knee-jerk hipsterism is a silly game to play
YES

The point of canons is to keep chipping away at them, isn't it?
NO

It's not a question of right and wrong answers, it's a question of the skill of the argument.
NO

'It's not a question of right and wrong answers, it's a question of the skill of the argument.'
Why is it not that?

:::sigh::::

On Mudhoney: "Touch Me I'm Sick" was a good song. That's all I can say about them.

Awfully big of ya.

Because it makes not a lick of difference to the history of popular music if some pudwapper on ILM makes a strong and interesting cases for the reassessment of the Beatles, Nirvana etc. NONE ZERO ZILCH NADA.

True, that.

I assume you enjoy the company of pudwappers, Aaron, else why bother coming here?

History isn't a series of established facts, it's a series of changing responses to stuff that mightn't've happened the way people want to remember it.

Also, "people just pretend to not like the same things as me cos they think it makes them cool" isn't really a strong or interesting argument about anything, is it?

If you think I'm about to have the same debate I had with Alex last night with you, you're crazy. Read that discussion again. I'm not gonna deal with this again.

but has it occurred to you that not everybody thinks, say, The Beatles or Nirvana are that interesting?

The Beatles and Nirvana changed ideas about popular music in their respective decades. If that at the very least is not interesting to you, what are you doing following pop music in the first place??????

Listening to stuff I like.

And wapping my pud to it.

x-post

Once AGAIN: I'm talking about media perceptions and subjective hipster (READ: KNEEJERK) reactions to them here.

This is not about you, but it will be if you keep pushing it...
Fuck it, give me 5 non-media/success overexposure related reasons you actually like Mudhoney better than Nirvana. I'm seriously interested in knowing why. Be sure to be strong and interesting about it.

Oh for cryin' out loud. NIRVANA DIDN'T "CHANGE IDEAS ABOUT POPULAR MUSIC". They merely co-opted someone else's formula and went to the bank with it. They did it well, yes, but in NO WAY IMAGINABLE was their impact comparable to the Beatles'.

:::sigh:::

Aaron, you've got to be more careful, then, as your generalizations certainly create that impression.

Hey, let's just agree that we're all full of shit, eh?

The Beatles were genuinely trailblazing, though, whereas Nirvana were merely staying within an already formally established style. Again, there's no real comparison here.

the nightspirit will come, bringing cold, black northern darkness to the lands

But yeah just to make it clear for Alex's generalization concerns. I just thought anyone who knows their stuff would assume I was referring to the "British Invasion" thing and the "Alterna-revolution thing" when making Beatles/Nirvana comparisons. I never meant to imply Nirvana was anywhere near as big or that the Alterna-nonsense was as influential as the British Invasion. However, the Alterna-nonsense's influence HAS already carried on into the next decade, albeit in the form of stale boring MOR faux-grunge bullshit like Nickelback.

The British Invasion obviously bore a greater fruit to anyone paying attention.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), September 30th, 2004.

well yeah but IN THE CONTEXT OF 90'S MAINSTREAM POP/ROCK (which is what Aaron was talking about), their success turned people on to that sort of music who never would have been into it otherwise. that is why nirvana are considered "important". Obviously they never revolutionized rock and roll itself, that wasn't the argument. And yeah sure some people might believe that but some people think Star Wars is the pinnacle of cinema.

That was a fuckin' retarded thing I said.

"I've heard a track from a new band called Nirvana."

Man is this interesting (and I'm not that big of a Nirvana fan!). I didn't even know there was an Internet back in 1992. I sure didn't have one!!

To fully understand the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" you should catch the
video on MTV. It has them playing a scungy dance in a school gym with an
audience straight from hell, or Seattle, where the band is from. The song
makes blatent fun of the people who listen to it, so pay attention, they
may mean you. At least if you are banging your head. ;)

Jon

This should go on the front ILXor.com page.

the baby on Nevermind is now 17:

http://www.paxtonland.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/baby-on-nevermind-album-cover.JPG

I see a slight Dave Grohl resemblance, hmmm...

I was 18 and Bleach was the bomb. Coming after Mudhoney & Tad but so gutsy, urgent and nervous it was different, above the pack. It kept unexpectedly switching gears in the most surprising, yet natural ways. I still rate it higher than any other release of theirs. Actually when Nevermind blew up I couldn't understand why Nirvana provoked/deserved the big break, although I liked that record a lot, it didn't bring anything new to the game in the way the first album did. I guess it made them slicker and more palatable.

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but seeing the video of Smells Like Teen Spirit on a hotel TV in a remote mexican town during a long cross-country trip was an unbelievable experience. I had taped the record to bring it along, a gem I shared with very few people. Or so I thought.

"I've heard a track from a new band called Nirvana."

love this

Yeah, that was amazing to read those reactions.

Anyway, I'm listening to that Singles box set and it's pretty classic all by itself. Okay, it has "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which we're all so very tired of, but it also contains "Even In His Youth," "Aneurysm," "Come As You Are," "Endless, Nameless," "School," "Drain You," "Sliver," "Polly," "Been A Son," (the previous five songs being live recordings), "In Bloom," "Lithium," "Curmudgeon," "Heart-Shaped Box," "Milk It," "Marigold," "All Apologies," "Rape Me" and (yes, it's here) "Moist Vagina." All in all not a bad introduction to them, and leaning way more toward Classic than Dud.

(Man, after all this time "Heart-Shaped Box" still sounds incredible.)

Classic! "The Story Of Simon Simopath" and "All Of Us" were both excellent albums! ;)

That kid looks like Ch1oe Sevigny.

I think it's interesting that those messages were dated January 1992. The album had been out for three whole months and still nobody had heard of them. No wonder Spin magazine chose Bandwagonesque over Nevermind for Best Album of 1991.

I feel bad for that poor kid. How would you like to go through life with that claim to fame? "Yep. That's my peener."

I remember seeing the "SLTS" vid on 120 Minutes, it was first time I'd heard Nirvana. I hated it, I was thinking "put this shit on Headbanger's Ball and show me 'Senses Working Overtime'".

I honestly don't remember the first time I heard SLTS, but I remember when I bought it at Camelot Records, I bought Deee-Lite's World Clique on the same day.

I probably said this on another thread, but I was working in an adolescent group home when I first heard "SLTS", and I'm serious, almost overnight, those kids in government care (all hurting in some way, obv) threw out their GN'R CDs and replaced them with Nevermind. Its impact (at least on that demographic) was that noticeable.

Ha ha, that sounds like they all traded up Gn'R for Nirvana because I heard "SLTS". You know what I mean.

Kurt's whining about Guns N' Roses, and his steadfast refusal to believe that anyone could like both bands, is an excellent capsule of just what a fraudulent prick he was. He even went so far as to say that there were rival groups of GNR and Nirvana fans at high schools, with the poor little Nirvana fans being picked on. All this from a guy who stole a chord progression from a Boston song.

In Utero's great, though.

a fucking sweet ass boston song, though.

One of those bands that is an overall "dud" with the exception of a song or two.

rival groups of GNR and Nirvana fans at high schools, with the poor little Nirvana fans being picked on.

I never saw that quote but the Nirvana and Gn'R fans at my school were either cool with each other or one and the same...it was the Pantera fans that were bullies.

"I never saw that quote but the Nirvana and Gn'R fans at my school were either cool with each other or one and the same...it was the Pantera fans that were bullies."

I'm sure it was just something that Kurt desperately wanted to believe -- cool Nirvana fans vs. thuggish GNR fans.

"a fucking sweet ass boston song, though."

Indeed.

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

guys I'm pretty sure I've ranted on ILM before about how the SLTS chord progression is not the "More Than a Feeling" chord progression. Even Kurt Cobain disagrees with me, but they're not the same. (The rhythms are kinda similar though)

"More Than a Feeling" = I - IV - vi - V
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" = I - IV - bIII - bVI

So their at least both Roman.

they're

yeah

and SLTS is in a minor key, MTAF in major

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

I call bullshit, and the first Boston album is one of my all-time favorites ferreal.

no, the tonic is major in SLTS but they use the borrowed chords (bIII and bVI)

x-post

o rly? he uses power chords, it's hard to tell.

Can we not pretend that Smells Like Teen Spirit is a Boston rip off.

play it on a guitar with a minor tonic chord and it will sound very wrong, curtis.

"Siamese Dream" is a Boston rip-off way more than Nirvana ever thought about being

I think that's because he doesn't play a third at all, he plays a power chord, and adding a minor third to a power chord is more noticeable than adding a major third

xpost

but I'm not gonna argue with you, I don't want to turn this thread into that sort of thing!

The baffled king composing hallelujah? x

hahahaha where's Glodberg when you need him

I'm not that desperate!!

ok, i just listened to part of it and i think you're right! if you're going to play the third, the major third does work way better, though. the melody is all minor diatonic, though, so it's probably justifiable to say it's in a minor key. still, i can't help hearing that tonic chord as being major like, you know, the tonic chord in "Iron Man" and stuff.

I was listening to an old c90 compilation of Redd Kross single, b-sides etc and for the umpteenth time wondering why their big marketing push in the UK was spearheaded by probably their worst song - "Trance". Today it finally dawned on me that some joker at the record company probably noted the similar riff as "Teen Spirit" and figured that was going to make them famous. Result: Redd Kross sink like a stone, which is kinda sad as they would have made wonderful stars.

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

I call bullshit, and the first Boston album is one of my all-time favorites ferreal.

kenan

I'm not denying that Nirvana are classic. I just like that first Boston album better than anything Nirvana did. As far as proper Nirvana releases go, I've always liked In Utero better than Nevermind.

Nirvana borrowed more from the Pixies than Boston.

well, i relent, because the Nirvana vs Boston thing seemed rooted in music theory, not casual listening. So I can't argue about that. I think Nirvana is a great, great band, better than Boston for sure, but that first Boston album is a-fucking-mazing.

But the sentiments in the lyrics are kind of almost the same. Kurt was just more pissed about it.

I understand about indecision
But I dont care if I get behind
People livin in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind

But how else to compare than to listen? I don't relent, but I think we can all agree that Pixies / Sonic / Muses was the blueprint for Nirvana more than Boston, yes.

"Teen Spirit" is no more a rip off of "MTAF" than it is of The Pixies' "U-Mass." That is to say, it's neither.

Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

Destroy. Search Boston though.

So people just revive this thread and make the same two posts, huh?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

They're going to be doing stories on that Spencer Elden guy until he's dead.

Nirvana and Boston are both awesome. Boston is awesome music for rides at the state fair. Nirvana is awesome music to smoke cigarettes outside the mall to.

They're going to be doing stories on that Spencer Elden guy until he's dead.

him, the bee girl from the Blind Melon video and the girl from the Violent Femmes s/t album cover should form a band

http://www.recordexchange.com.au/lists/cds/images/1720f.jpg

For some reason this thread reminds me of Kundera's shpiel about the value of "lightness". My introduction to Nirvana, apart from the odd song here and there, was really through the odds & sods collection Incesticide, which was peppered with gimmicky songs that aped Aerosmith, the Pistols, Beefheart, and the Vaselines. It was kind of a jokey collection, but IIRC it ended with the visceral thump of Aneurysm, which left you with a sense of the band's power.

Two things struck me about the band at the time: first, that at their core most of their songs contained melodies that would not be out of place in a preschool sing-along; second, that there was something very satisfying about the texture of the vocals and the guitars, it was like the sound of an ancient sea-floor being dredged, and there was something purgative about it, like when Chihiro unplugs the stink spirit in Spirited Away. But that dredging of the psyche was delivered, as I said, in that slapdash curatorial style that was Incesticide, with its way of quoting diverse influences. So the ultimate effect was one of lightness: the band didn't make overbearing claims on your psyche. That changed at some point, of course, and changed definitively with Kurt's death. The music and the band accrued too much weight at that point, which made the band really hard to listen to, for many people, because that weight was overbearing, suffocating, it didn't allow the traces of lightness within the music (whether it's the kindergarten melodies or the skewed humor) to breathe. The whole thing collapses under that weight, and I find that only Bleach somehow escapes that fate, maybe its brand of pre-fame heaviness (which sounds unselfconscious) is innoculated against this suffocation somehow, I'm not sure.

OK, where are these kids?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Gentlemen.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/SmashingPumpkins-SiameseDream.jpghttp://getsomenoise.com/albumimages/52_Alice%20In%20Chains_Jar%20of%20Flies.jpg

Hahah, the Pumpkins actually put out a bulletin asking people if they knew where they were/who they were!

Here's a few more (including the Violent Femmes girl):

http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1567095&pid=2561378

http://www.gittermangallery.com/publish/worksimages/1465web_LG.jpg
Priscilla, 1969 by Joseph Szabo

The girl in the photo is a mystery and will ever remain so. One day as I was photographing at Jones Beach I saw "Priscilla" in front of me and my immediate reaction was to make a photo(s) before the moment changed. I took a few photos, looked down to rewind the film, and put in another roll. When I looked up she was gone! ...but I had the photo and it is my most sought after image.

That Violent Femmes girl looks pretty young for being, what, at least 32 now?

Boston is awesome music for rides at the state fair. Nirvana is awesome music to smoke cigarettes outside the mall to.

This depends on what year it was the first time you smoked a cigarette outside the mall, and what music was playing at the state fair when your parents used to take you there.

xp I forgot to link the actual news story accompanying the photos. She's 28 now.

Bee Girl's MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/35345566

i thought this was the Nirvana thread not the google people on album covers thread

You thought wrong, jerkface.

xxxp: I don't think the Boston thing is subjective. I've heard that shit time and time again. The Nirvana/mall/cigarettes thing is wholly tainted by nostalgia.

What does Nirvana make you wanna do J0hn?

You thought wrong, jerkface.

lol

It's hard for me to talk or even think straight about Nirvana at this point. There's too much garbage in the way. The music is too fully digested -- for want of an even half-decent word -- both in me and in the world around me. By which I mean not only that it's been too thoroughly disassembled in search of meaning, but also too piled up with secondary crap, weird expectations and judgements and counter-judgements. I can't just hear it, anymore. This became true within months of Nevermind's release. Everything after that only intensified the alienation. Whenever I listen to Nirvana or even let them enter my mind, I get to feeling like I'm in a particularly horrible shopping mall. And all I want to do is leave.

But the other day, I was riding around in with a friend of mine, and he was playing that Australian "Hard to Believe" Kiss covers comp. Only thing I remembered from it was God of Thunder, by the Melvins (which rules, of course). I knew Nirvana had something on it, too, but couldn't remember what. Turns out it's "Do You Love Me", and while it's half a pisstake, it's at least half phenomenal. The shitty recording gives the guitar & rhythm section this high-school cover band quality, half muscle-shirt 70s Camaro rock, half snot-nose punk. And that's what Nirvana were always about, but it suddenly made sense to me. I could hear the music as music, without all the bullshit baggage. When Curt's tossed-off vocals rose to a ragged shriek on the chorus (like they always do), I got chills. For a minute there, I remembered what it was like to hear Bleach for the first time, and I half understood what every high-school kid in America must have heard in Smells Like Teen Spirit. I'm not saying that the Kiss cover is particularly great, cuz it isn't, but somehow it hit me the right way at the right time.

Fucking classic.

contenderizer so OTM. I'm not sure why I even own any Nirvana anymore. I guess Bleach might be fun to listen to now and again.

half muscle-shirt 70s Camaro rock,

I was too young for a Camaro, but Nirvana was a permanent fixture in my garage for wrenchin' on the BMX.

best interview i've seen, now or then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nrZLCrYkdI&feature=related

"peddle the ass God gave you"

Turns out it's "Do You Love Me", and while it's half a pisstake, it's at least half phenomenal. The shitty recording gives the guitar & rhythm section this high-school cover band quality, half muscle-shirt 70s Camaro rock, half snot-nose punk. And that's what Nirvana were always about, but it suddenly made sense to me. I could hear the music as music, without all the bullshit baggage. When Curt's tossed-off vocals rose to a ragged shriek on the chorus (like they always do), I got chills.

This is basically what happened to me the first time I heard "Spank Thru" from Sliver. Also I lmao every time I listen to the "Heartbreaker" cover and Kurt's off-mic at the beginning going "I don't know how to play this song!!"

in that interview we witness the exact moment Krist got into politics.

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/kurt-cobain-versatile-front-man/1669/

Giant Bomb User of the Minute skrutop posted this video of Guitar Hero 5 on the boards this morning. It's a bunch of footage of Virtual Kurt Cobain doing a bunch of stuff that Real Kurt Cobain would have probably needed two shotguns to cope with.

On one level, this is kind of hilarious, and it's definitely a testament to the graphical quality of Guitar Hero 5 that seeing V-Cobain sing a Bon Jovi song, or seeing him make rap poses while mouthing Flavor Flav's words seems so absolutely wrong on so many different levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UuAoEW5MbI&feature=player_embedded

I think kurt cobain would find this funny

You're right. The band's sense of humor isn't normally recalled. All people remember is the angst.

Live! Tonight! Sold Out! is like jokes n jokes n jokes..

kurt's little known comedy record

http://i29.tinypic.com/20hobnp.jpg

Might as well post this press release I got here:

NIRVANA’S LEGENDARY NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED 1992 READING CONCERT SET TO DEBUT IN NOVEMBER

Nirvana Live At Reading Features Performances of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Lithium,” “Aneurysm” And More

“Nirvana headlining at Reading in 1992 was something you had to see, and if you didn’t see it then it was something you pretended you saw.” -- Kerrang (October 2003)

“The staggering energy and intensity radiating from the stage never let up...Cobain’s ravaged pop songs coming off like some dream marriage of the Sex Pistols and the Beatles, borne on bracing waves of distorted guitar noise.” -- Rolling Stone (October 29, 1992)

For the first time, fans will be able to experience on video one of the most acclaimed concerts in rock history--Nirvana’s 1992 headlining performance at the Reading Festival--with the November release of Nirvana Live At Reading (DGC/Geffen/UMe). Ranked #1 in Kerrang’s “100 Gigs That Shook The World” list and voted as the band’s #1 greatest moment by fans in a 2008 NME poll, the August 30, 1992 U.K. concert is the most bootlegged in the band’s history. Nirvana Live At Reading will be issued in a limited edition CD+DVD Deluxe Edition on November 3, 2009, followed by DVD only, CD only and 2LP versions on November 24, 2009. Unlike these past bootlegs, this is the only version that is under the band’s supervision, The DVD has been sourced from the original, multi-track masters and is mixed in 5.1 surround sound.

At the time, three unrecorded songs, “Tourette’s, “All Apologies,” and “Dumb” were performed at Reading and appeared on the band’s final studio album In Utero. Of the 25 songs, all but two have ever been previously released. Reading also marked the first public performance of “Tourette’s.”

To fans, the Reading performance is legendary for being the concert where Kurt Cobain was rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair and played the entire show wearing a white hospital gown and has since become one of Nirvana’s most sought-after, unreleased concerts. The career-spanning concert reached back to the band’s SubPop debut album, 1989’s Bleach, for “Blew,” “About A Girl,” “School,” “Negative Creep” and their first single, Shocking Blue’s “Love Buzz,” and even further back to the mid-‘80s for “Spank Thru.” Other songs would appear on the Incesticide compilation later in the year: “Aneurysm,” “Been A Son” and “Sliver.” Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl also laid down a cover of “The Money Will Roll Right In,” a song by the punk band Fang.

Yet the centerpiece was a performance of nearly the entire Nevermind tracklist: the anthemic “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “In Bloom,” “Come As You Are,” “Breed,” “Lithium,” “Polly,” “Territorial Pissings,” “Drain You,” “Lounge Act,” “Stay Away” and “On A Plain” (only “Something In The Way” was not reprised).

With Nirvana Live At Reading, the world finally sees and hears the concert that shook the world.

Nirvana Live At Reading DVD:

1. Breed
2. Drain You
3. Aneurysm
4. School
5. Sliver
6. In Bloom
7. Come As You Are
8. Lithium
9. About A Girl
10. Tourette's
11. Polly
12. Lounge Act
13. Smells Like Teen Spirit
14. On A Plain
15. Negative Creep
16. Been A Son
17. All Apologies
18. Blew
19. Dumb
20. Stay Away
21. Spank Thru
22. Love Buzz
23. The Money Will Roll Right In
24. D-7
25. Territorial Pissing

Nirvana Live At Reading CD:

1. Breed
2. Drain You
3. Aneurysm
4. School
5. Sliver
6. In Bloom
7. Come As You Are
8. Lithium
9. About A Girl
10. Tourette's
11. Polly
12. Lounge Act
13. Smells Like Teen Spirit
14. On A Plain
15. Negative Creep
16. Been A Son
17. All Apologies
18. Blew
19. Dumb
20. Stay Away
21. Spank Thru
22. The Money Will Roll Right In
23. D-7
24. Territorial Pissing

I want to see the Fang cover.

I'd like to believe they put on a good show in '92 because the 3rd and final time I saw them was in '91 and I was convinced they'd lost the fire.

I guess I'll call this a good choice for the annual Nirvana product that's normally released every November.. It's definitely better than Muddy Banks. Kids will buy it because it contains 11 of the 12 songs on Nevermind.. and it's not a complete bore because it contains 3 of their best covers, and because some random dude jumps around on stage for the entire thing. I wish more modern bands would invite random dudes to jump around.

I wonder why Love Buzz was left off the DVD?

good call.. it's left off the CD version probably so it can be under 80 mins.

oh wait.. i figured out why that song was cut... half the song he's tuned incorrectly.. hahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADvgIO78zTY

ome random dude jumps around on stage for the entire thing

that's tony, the drummer from bivouac...

cd/DVD is fantastic. particularly the DVD, its easy to forget how affecting they were visually as performers. also remarkable, given the kind of overload live videos or broadcasts of festivals enjoy today, how unadorned and unflashy the DVD is - minimal light show, no video screens, and yet still an entirely riveting performance.

Just saw someone post this. Kind of neat to think about someone having that bill and thinking "should I go or not go? I won't go. I'm going to play a round of mini-golf that day instead...but I guess I'll hold on to the announcement" and then, three months later, feeling really shitty about that decision.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leyzlpKdRD1qaqjy1o1_500.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4KYaOvul8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynqft1hDTyA

Classic but I know that they are a polarizing figure in these here parts.

good band.

I <3 Nirvana still

thread made me put on in utero actually. i almost never listen to this band but they always make me happy.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/music/4693497/Sir-Paul-McCartney-replacing-Kurt-Cobain-in-Nirvana.html

um. i don't *think it's april 1st...

what
the
fuck

and they wrote a new song together!

i can tell, this is going to be really, really good

paul should try to use the singing style that he used on "get back"

*vomits*

crossing my fingers for "Freedom 2"

The Sun? That's the British version of The Onion, right?

I just saw this on the Guardian page:

Ned Raggett recommended Paul McCartney to replace Kurt Cobain in Nirvana reunion. · 56 minutes ago

http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/music/2012/dec/12/paul-mccartney-kurt-cobain-nirvana

Heart of the Courtney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XLGaK6p3GY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-qQMyKm96I&playnext=1&list=PL52603F176EC44864

ok, this is Britain's "National Enquirer", right? Like Batboy and Elvis is living in my basement type of shit?

Well, it was also in The Guardian, and even The Sun is more about having 'weird perspective' than 'totally made up bol'

Wow. This is a really weird story.

so they're not playing any Nirvana songs?

will they play "More Than A Feeling"? I think that would sound great.

all the talk is about them playing a new song, it'd be weird if they only did one though. a Beatles song seems 500 times more likely than a Nirvana song, though. or Wings! the Foo Fighters have covered "Band On The Run."

please be smells like teen spirit, pleeeeeeease

would be rad if mccartney and novoselic both came out with basses and just did a crazy free bass jam.

mother nature's son is a whore

please upvote joan jett over mccartney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juuUU7F5AOA

As someone tweeted today, they should do Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Shaped Box.

lol

They apparently have a 30 minute time slot, so who knows what's going down.

http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2012/12/rumor-mill-schedule-for-tonights-121212.html

That was awesome. Smear has a Germs sticker on his guitar. That was punk as fuck.

As someone who saw and loved Nirvana in 1990, I think that was legit and affecting.

Yeah that song ruled.

i am ashamed to say that it made me tear up a little

i fking dug the hell out of that

yeah that Alicia Keys is something huh

I sure hope Nirvana and Paul put out an Mp3 of their "American Woman" cover

where can I see this?

here

wow Sir Paul has had some work done huh

us lot in the u.k. don't get to see this beyond brief news snips of the stones!

The whole concert is on Sky Arts 1 tonight.

That was awesome. Smear has a Germs sticker on his guitar. That was punk as fuck.

As someone who saw and loved Nirvana in 1990, I think that was legit and affecting.

― Nate Carson, Thursday, December 13, 2012 1:12 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

I sure hope Nirvana and Paul put out an Mp3 of their "American Woman" cover

― da croupier, Thursday, December 13, 2012 1:25 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Thanks Shakes!

although I don't see it on the schedule.

(mostly old RStones docs)

I think it's a last minute schedule thing - they Tweeted yesterday:
"Want to see the Boss, Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi and Eddie Vedder all in one star studded concert? You can tomorrow night at 10pm on @SkyArts"

righto, 10pm, Sky Arts 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ma8nDZaFp4k#!

Right, Sky Arts 1 has it from 10:00 to midnight, 2 hours

then Sky Arts 2 has it from midnight to 2:30 am.

And Virgin (tivo) hasn't updated it yet...

Good spot, hadn't spotted the second half on Sky Arts 2, will set that to record immediately.

It was about 6 hours total, so keep an eye out for a third channel airing it.

The channel I was watching it on last night bailed out about 5 minutes before McCartney played to show WWE and I had to frantically search for an online stream of the rest of it.

I guess there's a fair bit of 'snipping out' gaps between performances.

are they doing a nickelback song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1svF1Yyhnc

I wonder how Courtney feels about this

i could only watch about 30 seconds... oof.

xpost wonder not,Shakey, tmz granted yr wish

Courtney Love On Paul McCartney & Nirvana Performing Together: 'Not Amused'
Posted: 12/12/2012 7:29 pm EST | Updated: 12/12/2012 7:45 pm EST

When Nirvana reunites tonight in NYC -- with Sir Paul McCartney replacing Kurt Cobain on vocals -- Courtney Love won't be cheering ... she'll be yelling obscenities, because she's pissed about the gig.
Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic are playing at the 12-12-12 benefit concert at Madison Square Garden -- their first show together in 20 years -- but Cobain's widow tells TMZ she is "not amused" about Paul's involvement.
Courtney is clearly more of a Lennon fan, than McCartney because she added ... "Look, if John were alive it would be cool."
Love is also upset at Krist and Dave for calling tonight's show a Nirvana reunion because she says Kurt was the heart and soul of the legendary band.
For the record ... Sir Paul and the guys will be playing a brand new song they wrote together. It's unclear if they will cover classic Nirvana songs.

*eyeroll*

still hoping that nirvana's rock'n'roll hall of fame induction will feature the sole performance of love/novoselic/grohl

lol I def remember a Rolling Stone interview where Courtney says she was the huge Paul stan in the marriage

Courtney keeps it real

The 12.12.12 show was playing on MTV on Sky as we were channel hopping earlier - Michael Stipe and Chris Martin doing "Losing my religion".

that was toward the end

the thing was so damn long

I was completely unaware of this show til Ira mentioned it onstage at YLT last night... Thought the Paul thing was a joke.

courtney has a point, as she often does.

Kurt was the soul of Nirvana.

that@said, it was awes

Fuck, if that song last night is what Nickelback sounds like now, maybe I need to quit ignoring them.

can Ringo replace Grohl in the Foo Fighters?

there was a recent Seattle doc that laid into the 'new fake grunge' bands, that basically said "You hate Nickelback? You ever seen 'em live? Do so, then report back / decide"

(me? Don't hate 'em, don't need 'em)

Paul has often written 'Rock' songs, but he's never had a 'rock' band doing them ..

(I exclude 'Helter Skelter' and the Let It Be album, obv)

I've seen Nickelback live. They were terrible.

I'll always remember Nickelback not for their songs, but the way a Portuguese audience once made their feelings towards them known...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeDV3ERyc0k

I was there when the shit hit the fan at Nickelback.

Anyway, as a person both partial to Paul McCartney AND Nirvana, I quite enjoyed the performance. I'm also enjoying the fact that it seems to have wound a fair few people up.

I saw it all go down.

"YOU GUYS WANNA SEE SOME RRROCK AND ROLL, OR YOU WANNA GO HOME!?"

doing a new song seems like a smart idea -- I mean, by and large most musicians would rather play something new than a song they played a hundred times, also lots of emotion with a reunion minus kurt makes it just weird to have a guest singer on a 'beloved' track...and the way they all play together automatically sounds like nirvana by default because that's the muscle they're using...it was a great tribute, in my opinion. And it still left that space where Cobain was relatively untouched.

idk, all I know is it felt p rockin to me

and complemented the rocked out kinda singing/playing that Macca has done in the past vis Helter etc.

i dug it

the end.

lol why did those portugese ppl go to the nickelback concert if they hated them?

They were probably the opener for someone else.

i guess that must be the case. they seem like too popular a band to be the opener, but maybe that video was from a long time ago.

festival

Why would anyone name their band "Nickleback"?

lol why did those portugese ppl go to the nickelback concert if they hated them?

― sadkdsajkldaskjdsajklasdkl (Pat Finn), Thursday, December 13, 2012 2:47 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/cu3Sq.png

And now, Avis Rent-A-Car is proud to present the second best band in America. Will you welcome Garfunkel, Messina, Oates, and Lisa singing their number two hit, "Born to Runner-up!"
[Audience boos]

should we poll which is the better lead singer of Nirvana

I'm sure Dead Kurt genuinely appreciates the absurdity of being replaced with a Beatle playing electric slide ukelele, but the song was shitty old man Casino-circuit bar band dreck. The whole point of Nirvana was to ridicule any and all bands that sang songs with lyrics like "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now!"

But whatever, it was the perfect Nirvana reunion for Pearl Jam fans, and at the very least it annoyed Courtney, which is always a good thing.

Oh yeah also the hurricane relief thing. That's good, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPUQRQMDEm0

del griffith otm

The whole point of Nirvana was to ridicule any and all bands that sang songs with lyrics like "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now!"

Disagree that this was the whole point of Nirvana.

yeah that's a little absurd

it was definitely part of them tho

The whole point of Nirvana was to ridicule any and all bands that sang songs with lyrics like "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now!"

That explains why Kurt was such an unabashed Led Zeppelin fan, and had Meet The Beatles! and Get The Knack in his top 50 albums list.

but the song was shitty old man Casino-circuit bar band dreck

Yeah, lyrically, completely disagree musically.

the song was shitty old man Casino-circuit bar band dreck.
― del griffith, Thursday, December 13, 2012 8:28 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it was way noisier and messier than that kind of music ever is

I'm mystified at the idea of a band having a "point."

should we poll which is the better lead singer of Nirvana

― too many encores (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, December 13, 2012 3:17 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/78313608/The+Point+Harry+Nilsson.png

the new song was fine imo but honestly it would've been more fun if they'd rocked out "Helter Skelter" together instead of doing a "HS" knockoff a few minutes after Paul and his band ran through the original

the song was shitty old man Casino-circuit bar band dreck.
― del griffith, Thursday, December 13, 2012 8:28 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it was way noisier and messier than that kind of music ever is

― Matt Armstrong, Thursday, December 13, 2012 3:47 PM (2 minutes ago)

Exactly, if you swapped out the lyrics for something abstract or darker and swapped out the players for people you may think are "cooler" and changed nothing else about how it sounded I'd be surprised if anyone here still had a problem with it.

That explains why Kurt was such an unabashed Led Zeppelin fan, and had Meet The Beatles! and Get The Knack in his top 50 albums list.

― Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Thursday, December 13, 2012 8:42 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^

i kinda dug the mccartney/nirvana jam

Yeah I was expecting them to help out on Helter Skelter.

I have a feeling people who didn't like it were prepared not to before it started.

there weren't enough Kaoscillators hanging from gold chains, these guys are clearly behind the times

still really impressed by the Helter Skelter/Blackbird/I've Got A Feeling/Let Me Roll It setlist picks, though, Paul secretly has good taste in his own shit

for the Quincy Jones tribute at the HOF I hope Trey Songz joins him for a rousing "The Girl is Mine."

Paul secretly has good taste in his own shit

^^^

was a pretty interesting set

Kanye was so boring

I'm just glad we didn't have to do Hey Jude for the millionth time

that new "Nirvana" song sounds has a Led Zep vibe, which Nircana never had. and it's good.

there really was a part of me that wanted to see old Macca go out there and tear through "Scentless Apprentice"

that new "Nirvana" song sounds has a Led Zep vibe, which Nircana never had. and it's good.

― nostormo, Thursday, December 13, 2012 2:02 PM (9 minutes ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwYzzN1AIqw

Grohl is like Bonham without the jazz

yeah he's pretty great

lol

Man, people have some weird ideas about and conceptions of Nirvana, that's for sure. I don't really think the dude who covered a song whose lyrics were "Up, up, up and down/turn, turn, turn around/round, round, round about and over again" would really be that put out by "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now," let alone make it "the whole point" of his band.

if there was any point, it was 'i listen to all these different types of music, how about I combine all the things I like about them into songs'

yknow, like bands do

dudes wanted to rock imo

Man, people have some weird ideas about and conceptions of Nirvana, that's for sure. I don't really think the dude who covered a song whose lyrics were "Up, up, up and down/turn, turn, turn around/round, round, round about and over again" would really be that put out by "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now," let alone make it "the whole point" of his band.

it seems to me that his love for the Vaselines had to do with honesty, sincerity, and authenticity, which I suppose the chest-beating machismo inherent in "whoaaaa yeah mama, set me free, come on now" is at least theoretically antithetical to.

what if you sincerely, honestly wanted that mama to set you free?

what if that mama was a children's television show host?

moms can do pretty amazing things when you plead, iirc

there was a rolling stone interview where kurt said he found mccartney embarrassing, so maybe nirvana was the ultimate expression of being embarrassed by mccartney. he also had a recipe for pear soup in a grunge cookbook.

I love Macca but he is def embarassing

mccartney's a total "pear" (i think that's a gay sex thing)

"What people don't realize is that the so-called Seattle Grunge scene grew out of several close-knit gourmet supper clubs--we would only pick up guitars to pass the time while our dishes were simmering, baking, boiling, etc."
http://www.soupsong.com/rsquash1.html

i think that's probably a different kurt cobain

actual Kurt only cooked w spoons iirc

http://i.imgur.com/O1PA5.jpg

it seems to me that his love for the Vaselines had to do with honesty, sincerity, and authenticity

I'm not sure Nirvana were about those things except in the most facile way. I mean, didn't Kurt pretty much admit that most of his lyrics were meaningless and were as much or more about the sounds of the words as their meanings?

"It is now my duty to completely drain you," kurt said to the pasta in the colander.

YEAH-EAH-EAH-EAH
YEAH-EAH-EAH-EAHHHHHHH-EAH
YEAH-EAH-EAH-EAH
YEAH-EAH-EAH-EAHHHHHHH-EAH
YEAHHHHHH

Smells Like Dinner's Ready, amirite

Heart Shaped Petit Fours

"This salad's missing something," said Kurt.
"Try my herb garden in the back," said Krist.
Kurt went out with a bowl and came back with the same bowl, still empty.
"Won't you believe it? It's just my luck!" Kurk pouted. "No sweet cress."

Moist Tagine

I'm not sure Nirvana were about those things except in the most facile way. I mean, didn't Kurt pretty much admit that most of his lyrics were meaningless and were as much or more about the sounds of the words as their meanings?

I think that meaningless lyrics could be an honest expression of something. I think he just railed against a certain kind of 'jock' mentality, like using music to score with chicks or get rich, that sort of thing.

wait did he not get rich/get chicks I'm confused

ok, lemme break this down. i think he was referring to using music and posturing as a way of attaining something other than artistic expression, e.g. becoming a musician simply to get rich, score with babes, etc.

not saying he was completely consistent, probably none of us are. except me of course.

I'll grant you that Kurt hated jocks/fratboys/whatever but that's as far as I'll go

using music to score heroin and get scabs

it's a fairly simple (maybe juvenile) concept: "I HATE POSEURS"

Courtney "Scabs" Love?

poseurs = some kinda french soup, iirc

mama set me free / grandma take me home

that song is still about food:
had mashed potatoes/ couldn't chew meat real good

Very Ape is also about food if you are willing to eat other primates.

man i listened to the mccartney/nirvana song from last night again, this shit rules

macca goin' ham on the uke, move or get rolled on bitches

uke or mando?

using music to score heroin and get scabs

lol

kinda loved this tbh, and regardless they get a million points for doing something new instead of 2 Beatles songs + Teen Spirit, or Live & Let Die or something

(okay L&LD would have been awesome tbh but still, love the Fireman/Twin Freaks/Sound Collage side of Paul coming to play, rather than the Flaming Pie/Memory Half Full side)

now release Carnival Of Light mf

man can you imagine if he had Nirvana kick out the jams on something from Kisses On The Bottom

"Say Say Say" with hologram MJ

lol at anyone defending Nirmacca's "American Woman" rewrite on any grounds related to kurt cobain

surely this shit is what he shot his face off to defend

if you dig classic rock and this was the wings/foo groovin' you've dreamed of, great. but leave the dead alt aesthetic icon out of it.

come on, if Cobain wasn't all about dead all-star charity Beatles jams what was he hang on back in a minute

I prefer Macvana tbh

whether or not you're protective of the whole "punk goes broke" fantasy, the only reasonable reaction to the former members of Nirvana joining paul mccartney for an off-the-cuff bit of hey lawdy mama is "lol" and/or that dance homer did to bachman-turner overdrive

i dunno i though macca ripped it up on his weird little cigar box thingy

i said you could do the homer dance

hi 5 bro!

I prefer Macvana tbh

Paul McCartnirvana

My whole feeling was that, along with Sir Paul, Dave Grohl has reached the level of that kind of... celebrity concert mass entertainer thing. I couldn't imagine being shocked or aggrieved if Grohl autotuned with Kanye, or Bono rapped with Two Chains, or Metallica did some thing with Gaga, or Rihanna with Lou Reed.

Sure you'd get Metallica or Rihanna fans on forums crying foul, but at this point, the old fashioned tribe-ish youth culture thing has pretty much been smoothed into celebrity status. I think the only people that find the idea of this being a "right" or "wrong" Nirvana "reunion" are old. Reminds me of when I was a kid and people worried that Roy Orbison was dominating the traveling wilburys.

lol seeing "Two Chains" typed out looks so weird

don't think yr really reading what was said

xpostulate

da croupier tell me again about the american woman thing, I missed it the first hundred times you said it

Classic rock is awesome, in particular I recommend Bad Company if you haven't heard them

i don't own one Bad Company album. i own every Free album though. and every Back Street Crawler album AND every Crawler album (R.I.P. Sir. Paul Kossoff). in summation, i don't think i've ever recommended Bad Company to anyone. or Nirvana. except for the other Nirvana. them i have recommended to people. i would recommend mccartney II and band on the run if anyone asked me.

I have recommended Press to Play to everyone I know

i don't own one Bad Company album.

gtfo w/this what are you even doin w/your life man!!

yeah jeez scott, lift yr game

don't you know that u r a shooting star

they bug me. Free are like one of the most beautiful things i have ever heard in my life and bad company are not. this bugs me for some reason. its not like some savoy brown into foghat situation its something more blasphemous than that.

(don't get me wrong i love foghat just saying that they are a different beast than savoy.)

but but, what about mama! with a teardrop in her eye!

however I will say that feel like makin' love is the ultimate 'sad-case dancing alone in front of the jukebox' song

and is gross and I hate it

but "can't get enough" is the ultimate 'awesome christopher walken dancing in wayne's world 2' song

it interests me how Bad Company sold like a million times as many records in the US as they did in the UK, they're like the Bush of the '70s

Free are holy to me. i take that band very VERY seriously. Nirvana are silly in comparison to a band like Free. kid's stuff. and they were way younger than Nirvana too, speaking of kid's stuff. Paul Kossoff was like ten when he was in Free. and he died younger than kurdt too. they touched the clouds in that band. what those dudes did after in bad company, its just not in the same universe. and so it bugs me. not their fault. they got paid. whatever.

now i'm dreaming of Nirvana + Paul Rodgers

foghat too, some dude! way bigger in the u.s. than in the u.k. the u.k. had status quo they didn't need foghat.

da croupier tell me again about the american woman thing, I missed it the first hundred times you said it

http://www.xoxol.org/ed/gwh-images/gwh-02919-detail.jpg

Why didn't I know there was a connection between Savoy Brown and Foghat??

This is fucking me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd6PJqbPj6M

did they use genuine foghat or foghat soundalike for this? I swear I hear both sometimes.

If I'm understanding you right, croup, I think you're really understating how openly indebted Seattle grunge was to 70s hard rock in the first place.

lol croup <3

just because chris cornell resembled a '70s throwback doesn't mean i can't laugh when chris cornell shows up on a santana covers album

i wonder if dave grohl was called for this and knew he could chase bigger game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Heaven:_The_Greatest_Guitar_Classics_of_All_Time

http://razor.servicestack.net/stars/dead/cobain/splash.jpg

don't forsake me cuz I love you, scott

macca goin' ham on the uke, move or get rolled on bitches

― Andrew WKRP (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 13, 2012 7:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^otm btw, McCartney was sounding like Antenna Jimmy Semens after about six rails...

"Fortunate Son" (featuring Scott Stapp)

literally teared up a little when I read this

like many people I was thinking "WTF??" when I heard about this and was expecting something horrible but I was alright. the song itself is unremarkable but the performance was low key and cool. As someone said upthread, I don't think Macca's played with a harder band before. reminded me that I really liked grohl's drumming at the time. he's got a very distinct and powerful style.

"it was alright"

Yeah this was not good or necessary but it was way less shitty than I thought it would be, and I'm speaking here as a McCartney fan. The only thing that might have been slightly better is if they'd like picked out some song by a third band that they all agreed would be fun to cover - There's plenty of melodic pop-rock in the Nirvana playbook after all. I think the Foghat angle is not totally off the wall here, although probably it would be hard to get Paul McCartney to deign to cover anything originally recorded after about 1963 or so. He tore it up on Run Devil Run with a bunch of Fifties tunes but I don't see that as so much Dave Grohl's home turf.

Given the many ways Nirvana and specifically Kurt's life has been sold and marketed since his demise, I think Kurt would be pretty fine w a Beatle playing with his old band.

It would be fun if they enjoyed it so much they decided to keep working together and make an album/tour.
something like lou reed/metallica...
it could be a disaster, of course !

that would be a good ILX musical project, actually...

i'm totally judging this song on the generous scale of "is it better than 'Freedom'?"

better: Metallica, playing Beatles songs! They could call it, I dunno... the Meatles... Metallicartney...y'know, something like that.

Oddly, McCartney's involvement seemed a relatively minor offence. Although Love thought Cobain would have preferred John Lennon, Paul is her favourite mop top. "We [used to] get into Paul and John fights," she revealed. "I'm a Paul person (Helter Skelter) … [He] was one of the best [bassists]."

Most of all, Love seemed relieved that McCartney-Nirvana were steering clear of Nirvana's classics. "If they don't do songs they didnt write (nirvana songs they dont own) i dont care," she said. The song they ended up performing was an original: Cut Me Some Slack was recorded for Dave Grohl's forthcoming documentary, Sound City.

Nirvana nanana... hey jude !

Hey jude! I've got a new complaint

I think you’ll find it is spelled Meatls.

ILX creates the McCartney/Nirvana album...

this whole thing is really fucking annoy, just the idea three men who are friends and musicians (pat smear, dave grohl, and kris noveselic) are required to try to guess what the ghost of their dead friend theoretically would have thought about them jamming with paul mccartney before they decide it might be good laugh and help raise some money for charity in the process

and i really enjoy the fact that they DID just decide to fuck off and jam out instead of some kind of hamfisted attempt for a "meaningful" version of some beatles or nirvana song

yeah, definitely. that's what I found cool and laid back about the whole thing.

Oh well whatever yesterday

this whole thing is really fucking annoy, just the idea three men who are friends and musicians (pat smear, dave grohl, and kris noveselic) are required to try to guess what the ghost of their dead friend theoretically would have thought about them jamming with paul mccartney before they decide it might be good laugh and help raise some money for charity in the process

― Andrew WKRP (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, December 14, 2012 11:39 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

they didn't jam on stage. they wrote a new song that will be available for purchase, promoting grohl's new documentary. they just let us know it was derived from a tossed-off jam.

i know

also paul called out the nirvana connection on stage, it's not like they were coy about making the association

He did decide better of it about saying "I'm Kurt"

Also, "Having a Nirvana Reunion" is not the same as "being Nirvana", they could have a Nirvana reunion at the bar and a curry, etc..

also paul called out the nirvana connection on stage, it's not like they were coy about making the association

― da croupier, Friday, December 14, 2012 10:49 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so what? i mean the three can't get together without being seen as nirvana, everyone knows that. that doesn't mean they are obligated to not do something without "checking" with kurdt via ouija board.

i just think you're overstating this whole "hey sucks three dudes who just happened to be in a band can't do a chill jam with this legend at madison square garden without everyone getting all cranky"

Am in meltdown with all those negatives in that last part of the sentence.

xpost

i just think you're overstating this whole "hey sucks three dudes who just happened to be in a band can't do a chill jam with this legend at madison square garden without everyone getting all cranky"

― da croupier, Friday, December 14, 2012 10:52 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really don't get your point, like at all

my head hurts

sorry, I mean hurdts

ums, you resent the fact that the back-up musicians to a '90s icon are expected to check with their legacy before promoting a new hey lawdy mama song with a '60s icon. i'm just saying tough shit for them, even if they're letting us know how little effort went into it.

ok courtney

It would be easier to take that kind of talk seriously in a world without "Last Days", the publishing of Kurt's Diary, or digital Cobain playing Bon Jovi in Guitar Hero 5.

digital Cobain playing Bon Jovi in Guitar Hero 5.

goddamn i had somehow blocked that out

Like on a list of ways KC's legacy has been tarnished a charity jam with one of his heroes is probably pretty far down the list, even if you think Paul is a sellout.

again why am i not allowed to lol just because there have been even bigger lols

guys i think getting mad about this is just as stupid as earnestly defending it, don't get it twisted

upper mississippi sh@kedown consistently OTM.

again why am i not allowed to lol just because there have been even bigger lols
you're allowed! remember the song? FREEDOM
http://www.classic45s.com/images/paulmccartney15.jpg

Big Boys Bickering... fucking it up for everyone!

we need an intermission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_3yeQeBOAI

or maybe this is more inkeeping with theme of the discussion

BTO don't sound bad for a buncha old whitehairs, lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEAEl_qQtyk

Woulda been cool/awful if they'd done "Big Boys Bickering." Actually it'd be great if it'd come out that Kurt's favorite Paul song was some really indefensible, forgotten solo number and they just had to go along with it. Ladies and gentlemen, this next one's called..."Ode To A Koala Bear!"

mccartney's jam with jimmy fallon doing food-based version of yesterday was pretty charming.
the nirvana equivalent would have to be backing weird al (in the same way that dire straits guy insisted on playing guitar on the "money for nothing" parody)

mccartney's jam with jimmy fallon doing food-based version of yesterday was pretty charming.

yeah this was great, especially because the whole thing was based on the trivia that paul's working title for the tune was "scrambled eggs"

Studio Version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNx1i8Gx3hM

Also the tracklisting for the Sound City soundtrack which this is featured on:

01 Dave Grohl, Peter Hayes, and Robert Levon Been: "Heaven and All"
02 Brad Wilk, Chris Goss, Dave Grohl, and Tim Commerford: "Time Slowing Down"
03 Dave Grohl, Rami Jaffee, Stevie Nicks, and Taylor Hawkins: "You Can't Fix This"
04 Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Rick Springfield, and Taylor Hawkins: "The Man That Never Was"
04 Alain Johannes, Dave Grohl, Lee Ving, Pat Smear, and Taylor Hawkins: "Your Wife Is Calling"
06 Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, Rick Nielsen, and Scott Reeder: "From Can to Can’t"
07 Alain Johannes, Chris Goss, Dave Grohl, and Joshua Homme: "Centipede"
08 Alain Johannes, Dave Grohl, and Joshua Homme: "A Trick With No Sleeve"
09 Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear: "Cut Me Some Slack"
10 Dave Grohl, Jessy Greene, Jim Keltner, and Rami Jaffee: "Once Upon a Time… The End"
11 Dave Grohl, Joshua Homme, and Trent Reznor: "Mantra"

Whoops. Wrong link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBd9330h9kI

Those are some really, really dull song titles.

Great Suburbs song!

guys i think getting mad about this is just as stupid as earnestly defending it, don't get it twisted
i'm defending my indifference. i don't care that this happened. IMO they fucked up not getting ringo involved in some capacity.

haha Foo Fighters + Rick Springfield is def my most anticipated collab on that album

Least appealing song on "Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur "
Least appealing song on "Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin"
Least Appealing Song Title On Lou Reed's Ecstasy (or Worst Song On Lou Reed Ecstasy, if you've heard it)
Which of these songs from a mid-90s "Britpop covers The Smiths" CD from some French rock magazine sounds least appealing?
Least appealing track title on this two CD compilation of routines from some schmuck Italian immigrant comedian my dad likes and thus I got him for xmas

So here's an interesting tale -- the story behind the creation of the Bleach cover. On FB:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151489937318873&set=a.313476963872.144857.608898872&type=1

lisa orth herself is in the comments section complaining about inaccuracies.

That's even better!

I think art chantry has also deleted a lot of stories from the gig posters board as well

that whole account sounds like it will probably get deleted so I'm going to c/p it for posterity:

http://i.imgur.com/rMPVGsd.jpg

Art Chantry
yup, this is how the original version of Nirvana's BLEACH lp looked (thanks to joseph kyle for posting). now, don't all you collectors go trying to find a copy of it, because none were ever printed. this is how lisa orth originally pasted up the cover back in the back room (the production room) of The Rocket magazine where she and i both worked. it obviously had one more step to go before it got printed and became sub pop records all-time best selling release (they have no idea how many they've sold. they didn't keep track.)

you see, lisa was doing it as a "blow-off". nirvana was a totally unknown band to us at that point (outside of it being 'little curt's band' - a friend of mudhoney and buzz). sub pop , however, was an old old cohort of The Rocket. that's where we all hooked up with bruce pavitt.

bruce pavitt (one of the two founders of sub pop) wrote a monthly column in the rocket magazine called "sub pop usa" where he reviewed all the little weird indie releases we didn't have room to review in the regular pages of the magazine. bruce used to be a dj at the community sponsored KCMU (he's the only radio dj i've ever heard continuously YAWN on-air!). before that he worked at bombshelter records. before that he was a student at evergreen state college putting out his own little zine called "subterranean pop" (it lasted 4 or 5 issues before he gave it up).

because bruce (and his partner jonathan poneman, who also occasionally did record reviews for The Rocket) were "family", the entire seattle underground community helped them out. part of the rules of survival in a marginalized outsider subculture is "helping community is helping yourself". so, everybody helped sub pop because it was (in essence) the seattle underground community's record label. but it turned out that helping sub pop was very expensive. grant alden used to say, "these guys did EVERYTHING wrong, and it still worked."

by the time lisa orth accepted this particular record cover project from sub pop, they'd already burned their way through several other designers (me, dale yarger, linda owens, dana higgins) and even more contractors like printers (i saw them put one print shop out of business with unpaid bills). lisa met bruce when she was the art director of The Rocket and continued working with him after she quit (we always let former employees use the facilities at the rocket. community first, ya know.)

by the time lisa did this design, she was owed a HUGE amount of money (by our standards back then - thousands). we all lived like rats, so unpaid bills killed us all, but were extremely common. everybody was broke - especially sub pop. sub pop (like so many others) used contractors until the bills got too big (and the contractor was getting uptight) and then jumped ship to another contractor. it was a cruel business tactic - especially among supportive community. but, it was also survival.

lisa was AFRAID to say "no" to this project for this little band for her friends at sub pop. she was afraid that is she said 'no', they walk away and she'd never ever get paid (i'm not sure if she ever did, actually). at this point, she talked to her friends and co-workers at the rocket about it and everybody encouraged her to stand up to them and say 'no', not until she got some money up front. but, lisa is a quiet (even shy) person and did the classic seattle passive/aggressive move - she did the cover, but added snark to the design.

she whipped this cover together in about ten minutes. type/photo/type. nothing. the back cover was just type - set centered int he middle of the panel. the typesetting was done by the editor (and typesetter) at the rocket - grant alden. i was standing there talking to grant when lisa came up and said, "grant will you set this type for me? it's that record cover for bruce.". grant replied,"oh, geez. i thought you weren't going to do this." she replied, "yeah, well...."

grant then asked "ok, what typeface you want to use?" lisa (in classic snark style) said, "i don't care. what you got on the machine?", grant said "onyx." (i believe. or it may have been bodoni bold condensed. very similar. there is some discussion as to which it was).

so, grant slammed it out in a few minutes - set the whole thing in the same typeface, same size. grant handed it to lisa and said "you own me $15". lisa took the type into the production room and enlarged the words she needed on our photostat ("stat") camera. she took the photo that bruce supplied (typically a 35mm photo print to fit on a square format album cover. "make it work".) she slapped it all down in a few minutes. DONE! and this is what it looked like (this image).

everybody laughed and said that will not fly. she'd never get away with it. it needed something more to spark it up. so, she took the whole paste-up and stuck it on the stat camera and did what we called back then a "reverse-out" (today computer nerds have renamed that process as "inverse". that meant "upside-down" back in our day). so, the photo became a hi-contrast halftone NEGATIVE of the original photo. that added the 'spark' (also the 'snark).

that infamous quote on the back cover about the record costing $600 to record at jack endino's was initially a snide remark about how cheap these guys were - added by lisa orth. it was a put-down that became part of popular "DIY" mythology. what was a slap at sub pop was taken as a compliment and they RAN away with it. nice try.

bruce liked it, used it, it became a 'hit' for sub pop (initial release sales over 5,000 copies - nothing compared to major label standards). did lisa ever get paid? i dunno. she only charged like $150 to do it. i know that sub pop subsequently went through near bankruptcy at least 2 more times after that. we even wrote about their financial trouble in a cover story in the rocket (much to their anger). then mudhoney saved them from disaster by GIVING them 'every good boy deserves fudge" (probably their best LP). then Nirvana's "nevermind" came out and changed the world (sub pop had points in that release worth millions.)

subsequently, BLEACH became a huge catalog seller as well, riding the coat tails of 'nevermind'. sub pop never joined the RIAA (the organization that issues gold records, etc.) because it cost too much. so, there was no need to track actual sales - and they never did. to this day, BLEACH remains the best selling sub pop release. but nobody has any accounting of how many copies have been sold. guestimations put put it well into platinum sales levels.

on a side note, that piece of type that grant alden set for lisa orth to paste into the cover? the word that was set in onyx (or was it bodoni bold condensed?) that says "NIRVANA" (crappy machine letterspacing and all)? well, in true sub pop fashion, they took that word and used it as the "logo" for the band. grant got paid $15 to set it, lisa orth hired him and the typeface was chosen by fate. did lisa get paid? i dunno. but, that logo went on to grace the covers of MILLIONS and MILLIONS (maybe BILLIONS) of records, tshirts, baseball hats, singles, posters, crackpipes, product product product to this day. however, it was NEVER part of the deal. they just took it and ran with it.

it was community helping community, not the marketing genius of a "great man" or business savvy.

and that is where all great design comes from - the culture that produces it.
Like · · Share · 2 hours ago
71 people like this.
26 shares

Art Chantry lisa - untrue? i'm lying? just make corrections here and they'll be fixed. no secrets.
about an hour ago · Edited · Like

Art Chantry my story is not about the details of the second to second events. my story is about how sub pop was a product of the community, not a sole "great man".
about an hour ago · Like · 1

Lisa Orth Actually Art Chantry I'm really surprised about a lot of the untruths regarding my role in this and how things actually went s
about an hour ago · Like

Art Chantry lisa - then please correct me. this is the story as i rmemebr it happening. some of it happened in front of me. please correct me with your memory. no secrets. no offense. if you wish, i'll erase the whole damn thing. it means nothing to me.
about an hour ago · Edited · Like

Lisa Orth Went down. It would have been nice to check your "facts" regarding my part in this before stating things what the history was
about an hour ago · Like

Art Chantry see my above note. if you are pissed off - for whatever reason - let me know and i'll erase it. the longer we wait , the more it gets out.
about an hour ago · Like

Lisa Orth regarding my designing this piece
about an hour ago · Like

Art Chantry this aint; jounralism. it's a n essay. a first draft. fact check it for me.
about an hour ago · Like

Art Chantry hey, correct me, pleez!!
about an hour ago · Like

Art Chantry ok, i'll make the decision here. i'm erasing it. your friendship means more to me than thi sfacebook drek.
about an hour ago · Like · 1

Lisa Orth I will write you with a real account as I remember it.
about an hour ago · Like

Lisa Orth Yeaj
about an hour ago · Like

Lisa Orth damn ipad keyboard. Yeah take it down its not true
about an hour ago · Like

Allen Tompkins Wow. I am actually very curious. This is a serious history of the biggest act out of Seattle. Would be nice to know the events.
about an hour ago via mobile · Like

Lisa Orth You know what is interesting is that there are so many "stories" stating how this album and logo were designed by me and NOT ONE OF THEM ever resulted from someone asking ME, the person who designed them. Only one journalist (from City Arts here in Seattle) ever bothered to fact check a story about it. Amazing.
about an hour ago · Like · 2

Art Chantry lisa - i erase dit. i'm rigth now asking verybody out there to eras eit as well. i'm sorry you feel this way. it's totally my bad. i take full resposnsibility for hurting your feelings. this is the story i remember seeing and discussing and being told. beyond that, you are right, i never asked you about it. i'mnot a journalist. i'm a story teller. my apologies.
58 minutes ago · Like

Allen Tompkins I would like to hear it from you, Lisa. Who better to tell the story.
57 minutes ago via mobile · Like · 2

Art Chantry take you opportunity here. it's as good place as any.
56 minutes ago · Like

Lisa Orth its not about "hurting my feelings", it's about what is true and what isn't. And without asking me you have no way of knowing certain things
56 minutes ago · Like

Art Chantry lisa - you are right the 'hurting your feelings ' comment is VERY poorly chosen and even a little insulting to read. apologize for that,too. as far as "your story" (and it is) - tell it. no harm done. only good will come from it. besides, i've alw...See More
54 minutes ago · Like

Lisa Orth I will tell my story, in my time. Thanks Art Chantry for the chance to bring the inaccuracies of this story to light.
53 minutes ago · Like · 3

Art Chantry totally your call. totally fair. i think your story has never been told and is WAY overdue. i encourage you to do it. we good? i like you and really don't want to lose your friendship over this.
51 minutes ago · Edited · Like

Lisa Orth Art you and I are totally good, I'm glad someone tagged me in this and I got a chance to have my voice be heard.
51 minutes ago · Like · 1

Art Chantry if you ever need a forum to tell your story. you're welcome here. or if i can suggest any connections as a vehicle or process, let me know. at your service.
49 minutes ago · Like · 2

Lisa Orth Thanks man
47 minutes ago · Like · 1

Paul Bagnulo http://www.identifont.com/samples/adobe/Onyx.gif

http://www.identifont.com/samples/adobe/Onyx.gif
www.identifont.com
46 minutes ago · Like

Marcus Lander stories are given life by the person telling them, inaccuaracies are part of that life. You want straight hard facts? Read a telephone book. I got this idea from a Werner Herzog interview with Colbert, I believe it will change my life
25 minutes ago · Like · 1

Art Chantry this aint; jounralism. it's a n essay. a first draft. fact check it for me.
about an hour ago · Like

you don't publish a first draft, art, even if its an essay.

both art chantry and lisa orth drive me nuts in that comments exchange. art - just fucking delete it! you've said like 15 times that you're going to delete it or working on deleting it, or even, once, that you already DID delete it! just press the goddamn delete button, jfc man! and lisa, do you even read the comments that have been posted before you type, or do you just stare out the window in deep thought as you attempt to type on your ipad, gloriously unaware of what anyone else is saying?

lol

that almost made me head explud

was he posting comments from an iPhone, cuz those typos are crazy weird.

internet battles about trivia are regular reminders of what it's like living in the first world

wait, he's been talking about deleting this for two days? wtf. and he asked other people to erase as well? wtf is this his first day on FB

just how skint is Kurt's old mate?

http://www.nme.com/news/nirvana/75832

The items for sale include a set of skis ($80) and a telephone ($55) as well as a video game called Kingman ($25). In the listing, the seller - a former member of the band Gruntruck - writes that he will be selling more of what he says are Cobain's possessions in the future. "i also have a lot more stuff of kurts, like magazine and clothes that i will be selling off soon. thank you for looking,"

the idea of kurt cobain learning how to downhill ski is really weird to me

pretty cheap as far as completely random bullshit goes

Hoax. Those wacky Sub Poppers...

http://www.nme.com/news/nirvana/75860

actully Nirvana is and always will be the best rock band ever. Please, Nirvana means a lot to me as does Kurt. I hate seeing and hearing bad things about him or the band. Thanks. (I'm only 14 so yeah i couldn't listen to them when they came out.) That might be a reason why i like them so much.

― Caitlin O'Neil (kurdtkobain205), Thursday, August 28, 2003 7:17 PM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ I wonder how this person now feels at the age of 24/25?

Very cool:

Nirvana followed their Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction by playing an intimate show at Brooklyn's Saint Vitus, which has a capacity of 230.

As reported by Noisey, the band were joined by a series of guest singers, beginning with Joan Jett, who opened the show with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Breed", "In Bloom" and "Territorial Pissings".

J Mascis joined the band for "Drain You", "Pennyroyal Tea" and "School".

St Vincent's Annie Clark, who, like Jett and Gordon, had also performed with the band at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony, played three songs starting with "Lithium".

Deer Tick's John McCauley fronted the band for three songs, while Kim Gordon closed the show with "Aneurysm", "Negative Creep" and "Moist Vagina".

Nirvana played:

'Smells Like Teen Spirit' (with Joan Jett)
'Breed' (with Joan Jett)
'In Bloom' (with Joan Jett)
'Territorial Pissings' (with Joan Jett)
'Drain You' (with J Mascis)
'Pennyroyal Tea' (with J Mascis)
'School' (with J Mascis)
'Lithium' (with Annie Clark)
'About A Girl' (with Annie Clark)
'Heart-Shaped Box' (with Annie Clark)
'Serve The Servants' (with John McCauley)
'Scentless Apprentice' (with John McCauley)
'tourette's' (with John McCauley)
'Aneurysm' (with Kim Gordon)
'Negative Creep' (with Kim Gordon)
'Moist Vagina' (with Kim Gordon)

From http://www.uncut.co.uk/j-mascis-kim-gordon-and-more-join-nirvana-for-tiny-brooklyn-show-news#r895cvvpthCilGVp.99
A couple of embedded YouTubes on that page (one St. Vincent, one Joan Jett; both sound pretty great). I would love to hear the Mascis versions!!!

'Negative Creep' (with Kim Gordon)

Oh man I need to hear this so bad.

School with J Mascis sounds like heaven

Nirvana without the guy who wrote the songs and sang and played guitar and was the main reason anyone cared about them at all really isn't Nirvana.

No one's saying this is Nirvana

it's Heaven

Nirvana without the guy who wrote the songs and sang and played guitar and was the main reason anyone cared about them at all really isn't Nirvana.

zzzzz

I'm not saying the gig wasn't awesome, but not writing "the remaining members of Nirvana" or similar just feels off to me.

(Yeah I know I'm probably the eight millionth person on the internet to make this point)

this sounds awesome

Deer Tick's John McCauley everyone

(xxp) Oh no, you're dead right there. It suggests they're still an ongoing 'thing', which obviously they're not. I still love seeing Dave and Krist together, though.

Just seeing Dave drum's p cool

No one's saying this is Nirvana

The headline to this review does.

Yeah the music press is throwing the word reunion around all over the place, even though nobody actually considers it a reunion. They did they same thing with Nirvana "reunited" with Paul McCartney, as if history will consider that a true reunion

Fuck Vice

This is more the desperation of a music press grabbing for as many clicks and eyeballs as they can get than anything else tbh

yah

Fuck VICE is a good guiding principle

thanks sonic

Nirvana without the guy who wrote the songs and sang and played guitar and was the main reason anyone cared about them at all really isn't Nirvana.

I saw Morphine tour their final album minus Mark Sandman, and they were awesome. Pretty much as good as they were with him, Forget if they called it Morphine or something else.

Would totally see a touring Nirvana with a rotating cast of guest singers. It'd be fun.

Pretty much as good as they were with him

with all due respect, I find that really hard to believe - not least because Sandman was a singular frontman and storyteller.

Hey, different strokes. I saw them several times with him and this one time without, and it was great. Maybe because it felt like a tribute?

BTW, can I also say how happy I am that Joan Jett has gone back to old school Joan Jett hair?

Maybe I should stress that Morphine minus Sandman was by no means bad or objectionable, which perhaps made it come across better than it could have?

i never heard/saw the Sandman-less Morphine shows but i recall people saying the sax player was eerily good at singing like him, so there's that.

i was mildly annoyed when the RS list Whiney put together ranking all the Nirvana songs included the Paul McCartney thing, but w/e, you put Dave and Krist and Pat in a room together and you can't exactly stop people from saying it.

honestly Dave and Krist have navigated a strange and sad situation pretty admirably for the last 20 years, and if they'd done something like this any sooner it would've come off badly, but i think time has given them some license to loosen up and play these songs again with whoever they want and it's nice to see them be comfortable with it.

I liked the story they told on Fallon, where Krist was looking around in the studio, sees Dave and Pat, and for a moment was so distracted by the fact this was the first time they had played together in in nearly 20 years or whatever that he totally forgot Paul McCartney was playing with them.

Deer Tick's John McCauley everyone

Deer Tick regularly plays gigs as Deervana where they only play Nirvana covers. They're pretty good!

got a bit choked up by courtney's tweet w/her and dave hugging tbh

yeah it's kind of a relief that they left all the HOF drama to Kiss this year

Didn't realize it was the 20th anniversary of Cobain's death until yesterday. So I played the "Teen Spirit" video for my class--I do every year, and I love talking about it. I try to set up the context in which it first appeared, mention that my favourite music writer (Marcus) compared it to Shakespeare, and ask them if they can decipher the last lyric and what he might have meant. Everything, I tell them--I'm a lie, your parents are a lie, your religion's a lie, everything. ("Please understand--that's what he's saying, not me.") Then I say he disproved his own narrow view; he left behind something that affected and inspired many people. Then I play Weird Al's song, which I love. (Normally I get very little out of Weird Al.) They always think that's great. Sometimes I go back to "Teen Spirit," and, the brilliance of the parody notwithstanding, it loses nothing.

stupid question but how old are you students and do you get an idea of how many of them have never heard the song before or don't have more than a vague idea of who the band was?

Grade 6 (12) and Grade 7 (13). Think I showed it to three classes yesterday, and one guy in my own class and two girls in one of my art classes knew about them (plus some of my grade 7 art students who remembered it from when I played it last year). What I really liked was playing the Lorde HOF cover today (preceded by Nirvana's MTV version--I didn't think her cover was that great). I love linking the past to what they listen to.

Do you also ask to see how many of them know who Weird Al Yankovic is?

oh ok, for some reason i imagined older (although again, a current high school student would have no firsthand memory of Nirvana, which is why i was curious). that's a good age to expose kids to Nirvana.

Weird Al is like Mad Magazine, perenially popular with a certain subgroup of the age range

xp

Thought the 20 year thing, events like this aside, has been somewhat muted

disappointed stevie didn't make it onstage to sing w/ nirvana
http://distilleryimage6.ak.instagram.com/45bc3e14c19b11e39dee0002c9c88f72_8.jpg

holding out for the Hole reunion/induction ceremony

Thought the 20 year thing, events like this aside, has been somewhat muted

― Master of Treacle, Friday, April 11, 2014 1:22 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be fair, they already did a lot of stuff to celebrate the Nevermind anniversary 2 and a half years ago (which in itself is just a sad reminder of how short their career was), and this wasn't really an anniversary worth 'celebrating' per se.

today's teens react to nirvana, p cute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGPbHUZQ-VE

It's too bad Kurt killed himself, it's really thrown a wrench into milking his soul for all it's worth $$$$-wise.

Though opportunities for cross-branding have really saved the day.

holding out for the Hole reunion/induction ceremony

i feel like they've handled his estate in a classy way for the most part adam idgi

So the hologram thing is fake?

hoax

though there was the guitar hero thing

when will the Nirvana equivalent of Oliver Stone's Doors movie come out? Who's the Oliver Stone of today?

maybe the jerk who made that Michelle Williams as Marilyn movie

i can't comment on cobain's estate b/c i'm not knowledgeable about it, but i think the 'milking his soul' has come more from the industry? 100,000,000 spin magazine covers w/ kurt on the front. somebody should do a collage

yeah, if the dude hadn't died, but the band had broken up in 1994, a lot of the same stuff probably would've happened? at least in terms of deluxe reissues, box sets, etc.

It's pretty jarring to see photos of this bleary eyed unshaven longhaired alt in the supermarket alongside the magazine covers featuring contemporary celebrities. It really makes the 90s seem far away.

I just can't understand why Eric didn't help pick these

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/09/15-greatest-nirvana-songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=092bFcVqT5s

that ruled, think i'll throw on bleach later

i love mascis

yeah, if the dude hadn't died, but the band had broken up in 1994, a lot of the same stuff probably would've happened? at least in terms of deluxe reissues, box sets, etc.

― tylerw, Friday, 11 April 2014 18:59 (2 hours ago) Permalink

I've always wondered that if they had broken up instead of Cobain committing suicide, Grohl probably would have still formed the Foo Fighters, who would have still gone on to be huge, Cobain would have said many bitter/nasty things about them in the press while making solo records basically cementing the image of Grohl as his generation's McCartney and Cobain as the Lennon.

And then yeah loads of box sets, reissues, etc.

The choosing four female singers for the induction concert seems like a perfectly Nirvana thing to do

Could totally believe Cobain would have went wandering, like Lennon in the '70s. A lost decade in the '90s. Then in the '00s there would be the occasional gig where he popped up at a Foo Fighters show, or he and Krist would have played a Bridge School benefit. And then right about now, yeah, they would have reunited. And then released a pretty good reunion album.

I've always wondered that if they had broken up instead of Cobain committing suicide, Grohl probably would have still formed the Foo Fighters, who would have still gone on to be huge, Cobain would have said many bitter/nasty things about them in the press while making solo records basically cementing the image of Grohl as his generation's McCartney and Cobain as the Lennon.

excellent fan fiction, courtney would approve

although nothing beats the 'if jimi hendrix had lived' piece in some guitar magazine in the '90s in which jimi befriends kurt, who tragically dies after being assassinated by an unknown singer named eddie vedder

ILM talk about Nirvana in 2014 = super fuckin'-rockist…

There being no discussion about 2014 RRHoF on ILM except tangentially here = pretty poptimist, huh?

Very little love for Kiss on ILM, which remains peculiar for me…although it appears to center around how bad Peter Criss is…

as you were!

? Peter Criss is p far down the list of reasons why KISS is shitty, like maybe no. 7 or 8.

Kiss had great singles and lotsa filler.

Boring filler that is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XazY_p71fjs

Man, someone should start a Worst Things about KISS thread.

What's your scenario some dude cuz that sounded pretty reasonable to me. They were already broken up & Kurt was kinda bitchy like lennon

Ilm probably loves Unmasked or something

although nothing beats the 'if jimi hendrix had lived' piece in some guitar magazine in the '90s in which jimi befriends kurt, who tragically dies after being assassinated by an unknown singer named eddie vedder

― some dude, Friday, April 11, 2014 6:31 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haw! I think I remember that. They did up fake album covers for like, Hendrix/Miles Davis wah-wah crossover albums, right?

Jimi/Miles collab slightly more likely than Cobain scenario tbf

Haw! I think I remember that. They did up fake album covers for like, Hendrix/Miles Davis wah-wah crossover albums, right?

― take a piece of mr. baxter's hand (how's life), Friday, April 11, 2014 7:36 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yesss

What's your scenario some dude cuz that sounded pretty reasonable to me. They were already broken up & Kurt was kinda bitchy like lennon

― Juelz Fantano (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 11, 2014 7:30 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean the point is i don't have a scenario for 'if kurt lived' even if some are obviously more plausible than others. i just think it's corny when people use imaginary alive kurt as a mouthpiece for their own opinions about the foo fighters, hole, etc.

Very little love for Kiss on ILM, which remains peculiar for me…although it appears to center around how bad Peter Criss is…

I think this is more yo do with anglocentrism than anything else - attitudes to Kiss are totally different.

Kiss also seems very generational, more than most other big '70s bands, it seems like you really had to be there and be the right age to still care today.

no idea what would have happened to kurt if he hadn't killed himself but i do feel like we'd see nirvana rather differently in general, there was a lot of humor and playfulness there that somehow gets left out of the spin/rolling stone retrospectives.

Kiss's name is Mud here. That is, they're like Mud - 1 or 2 songs on a jukebox, not much else. I doubt most people would know who Gene Simmons is (thankfully).

Very little KISS love on ILM because KISS sucked.

I love how "Dave Grohl forms a decent if somewhat unremarkable alt band and Kurt acts catty about it while making a bunch of weird small stakes solo albums" is so far fetched according to ilm

Kiss sucked so bad we didn't want to follow-up the Eagles listening thread with one for them.

It's good that the UK never liked any terrible bands that the US ignored.

I would say their legacy at this point is pretty much safe but the funny thing for me with Nirvana and their peer group is that, although as a pure pop songwriter was as good if not better than any of them, sonically almost all those other well known bands were sonically more distinctive - Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, Dinosaur, Greg Dullis delusions of grandeur, Pixies, even Corgan and co. Take away his tunes and his voice and in terms of Nirvana as a band? To me its like the Replacements after Bob Stinson - they lost the last good reason not to focus on Westerberg rather than the sound of the actual band.

Also: I remember that Hendrix piece. It ran in Guitar World, and included the detail that Vedder was heard muttering about some kid named "Jeremy" as he was drug from the murder scene.

scott seward said it on the Eagles thread: put KISS against any hard rock band in the seventies and you'll hear KISS fuck up tempos, chord changes. They were fucking leaden and stupid, with exceptions.

what did Don 'n' Glenn think of Nirvana?