Thurston Moore on Cobain and the state of "underground rock" in the NYTimes

Thurston Moore would be the most embarassing father on Earth. I feel for his kids, hopefully he'll shuffle off into retirement before they hit their teens.

I also think it's nice that he kept the focus away from Cobain's personal problems, by and large. It's nice to read a piece about him without hearing what a poor unfortunate tortured soul the guy was. Unfortunately it's pretty obv Moore is no Hemingway. I sorta wonder why Kim (who was the much better journalist--judging from the old Art Threat mags I've seen anyway) didn't write it.

Thurston is obviously REALLY stretching things when he claims that Kurt/Nirvana was "imbued with avant-garde genius(!)"

He also claims that Kurt was "one of the finest rock voices ever heard." This is a platitude. It's like Thurston is talking about a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame type canon!

What is he talking about, one of the 100 finest? One of the 500 finest? One of the 5,000 finest?

This seems correct to me. Even if you don't agree with Moore about any particular scene or players.

We were in a Brooklyn basement full of artists and sound-poets gathered to watch musicians throw down extreme noise improvisation. One performer played records with two customized tone arms on his turntable; the discs broke and scratched, creating shards of hyperfractured beat play. He was followed by a quartet of young women scraping metal files across amplified coils mixed through junk electronics. I was to perform a spontaneous guitar/amp feedback piece with a stand-up bass player on loan from his teaching post at Berklee College of Music and a free jazz percussionist who had traversed through New York's downtown underground in the 60's. Not your typical night of alternative rock.

And I had a feeling this kid was looking for alternative rock. It was the year 2000. Kurt had died six years earlier, and through whatever fleeting friendship I had with him, this ethereal look-alike saw me as some connection.

Before being labeled alternative rock, Sonic Youth, the band I started in 1980 (and continue in still!), was called "post-punk." By the early 90's, we existed as a sort of big brother (and big sister) group to Kurt's generation of underground America. When Nirvana became popular, we were all called alternative rock — a less threatening term than anything with punk in the title (though with Green Day and Blink 182 in the late 90's, punk ultimately became accessible and extremely profitable — at least for the new MTV punks). The original alternative rock bands — Nirvana and Sonic Youth included — never had any allegiance to alternative rock. We all had come too far and through too much for any professional advice toward stylistic adjustment.

Kurt was not enamored with new traditionalism. He was more attached to the avant-garde rock of his hometown pals, the Melvins, who continue to stretch the parameters of what rock music can be. The traditional aspects of Nirvana's music — aspects that lent it accessibility — were expressed through Kurt as if they were experimental gestures. (The Beatles, also grand pop experimentalists, were loudly whispered by Nirvana as a primary influence, something unusual for punk devotees.) These elements were an important part of Nirvana's appeal. But what is transcendent about Kurt's art — what today, 10 years after his death, gives him rock immortality — was his voice and performance ability, both of which exuded otherworldly soulful beauty.

The initial popularity of alternative rock was in conflict with punk culture, which has a history of denouncing commercial success. Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind," along with the success of the Lollapalooza tours, changed the game. Both announced the discovery of an unaccounted-for demographic, cynical and amused by the pop rebellion displayed by new wave (Duran Duran) and hair-metal (Guns N' Roses). This newly discovered audience, one that surged well beyond the punk elite to the greater population of alienated and dislocated youth, was all at once represented by Kurt.

Kurt was aware of his sudden high profile and how it could be perceived as uncool in the punk scene. He made snotty comments about the fresh-minted alternative rock acts being touted by MTV. We all did. At the request of The New York Times, Nirvana's first record label, Seattle's Sub Pop, created a mock lexicon of "grunge" culture. Remarkably, the news media ran with it — to our disbelief and delight.

In the face of success, Kurt seemed to feel the need to maintain this stump position of punk rock credibility. Save the mainstream acceptance of the relatively straight-ahead pop of R.E.M. — which Kurt loved as much as hard-core thrash — there really was no model for such success from our community. He told Flipside, the iconic Los Angeles punk rock fanzine, that he hoped the next Nirvana album would vanquish their affiliation with the "lamestream." He recounted being taken aback by an audience member who grabbed him and advised him to, "Just go for it, man." I remember smiling at this, as it was how most of us felt. We didn't perceive Nirvana's status as lame. It was cool.

Nirvana made a point of touring with challenging groups like the Boredoms, the Butthole Surfers and the Meat Puppets and presenting them to a huge audience — one that was largely unaware of those bands' influence. But only the Meat Puppets would click a little bit. Without MTV or radio support, no one was likely to reach Nirvana's peak.

When Kurt died, a lot of the capitalized froth of alternative rock fizzled. Mainstream rock lost its kingpin group, an unlikely one imbued with avant-garde genius, and contemporary rock became harder and meaner, more aggressive and dumbed down and sexist. Rage and aggression were elements for Kurt to play with as an artist, but he was profoundly gentle and intelligent. He was sincere in his distaste for bullyboy music — always pronouncing his love for queer culture, feminism and the punk rock do-it-yourself ideal. Most people who adapt punk as a lifestyle represent these ideals, but with one of the finest rock voices ever heard, Kurt got to represent them to an attentive world. Whatever contact he made was really his most valued success.

You wouldn't know it now by looking at MTV, with its scorn-metal buffoons and Disney-damaged pop idols, but the underground scene Kurt came from is more creative and exciting than it's ever been. From radical pop to sensorial noise-action to the subterranean forays in drone-folk-psyche-improv, all the music Kurt adored is very much alive and being played by amazing artists he didn't live to see, artists who recognize Kurt as a significant and honorable muse.

The kid who looked like him sat next to me in the basement where we were playing and I knew he was going to ask me about Kurt. This happens a lot. What was Kurt like? Was he a good guy? Simple things. He asked me if I thought Kurt would've liked this total outsider music we were hearing. I laughed, realizing the kid was slightly bewildered by it all, and I answered emphatically, "Yeah, Kurt would have loved this."

Thurston Moore is a member of the band Sonic Youth.

Exactly. It just seems like a reaction to the hype, which for me is very disappointing. I don't listen to Nirvana much anymore but at one time I really thought they were brilliant.

I really can't stand questions which suppose an ILM group-mind about a certain band. If you want to know why a certain person dislikes a band, then ask. And there is plenty of hate/indifference for bands--Beatles, Stones, Nirvana, the Velvets blah blah blah--who are assumed by their fans to be universally loved ("they changed the WORLD, they were IMPORTANT! Remember!") That anyone would be remotely shocked that people don't like Nirvana (on ILM or anywhere) baffles me.

It's like all those damn "live coverage" things the local news does. They screwed up a few times, missed the boat on a big story, some other station or medium got the scoop, and they learned their lesson. Be there if it looks like it might be big.

In my opinion Nirvana was a pretty good band, who had a couple pretty good albums. I enjoy Bleach now and again, but it's nothing special. I just like yelling along in the car sometimes. Nevermind is pretty good, and I think In Utero is up there, like top 500, maybe. I don't blame them for their success or the exploitation of their music or the dual shams of that whole "grunge" thing, and the "Seattle scene". At the same time it's crap to say that Kurt hated being famous. From looking at it now, he fought hard to get there. But either way I could really care less. His compromise was his personality, personal life, etc. not his music.

As for Thurston: he's an idealist. It's funny (cute, sad, whatever) to see a man that old still talking like that, but in some ways I guess I'm kind of proud of him. He still has that excitement that I rarely get anymore.

Pipe down, gramps.

To be huge...but avant-huge.

Does anyone else find this as tasteless as someone singing the praises of cigarette smoking while eulogising someone who died of lung cancer?

also, I think what I meant was more that it's difficult to say something like "Nirvana meant a great, great deal to me when they were around, helped define certain things about myself that I hold dear to this day" because in a lot of ways saying that has become a cliche, and you're supposed to put up a front like, well, it didn't really, it was just a phase or something. I don't agree with the idea that saying that somehow, in any way, negates someone else not feeling the same way. I don't agree with the idea that other viewpoints and/or disinterest in that particular area of culture or music are "irrelevant," either--I think that's been clear in all my time of posting here. but it does bother me when the idea that "my passion for this wasn't mine alone and that's good" is turned around into "well, you're just a sheep like everybody else." (that's a general statement, not one specific to this thread, btw.)

Cigarettes don't kill, lung cancer kills.

Something which causes a cancer of the spirit or cancer of self worth (such as this Outsider-Fetishisation) is going to be as harmful to a person with depressive tendencies as a carcinogen is to a person with genetic predisposition to cancer.

This goes way beyond Nirvana... it is virtually a general law!

My brain's not working today. I don't understand, can you re-phrase?

You may have noticed, I have developed a Thurston Moore obsession after the weekend.

Yeah, I guess I should have known better than to try to live up to that brilliant bon mot of yours. Sorry

access the article instantly via Google News
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&scoring=d&q=cobain+underground+edge+middle

Oh shit, since I wrote that sentence this thread has officially gone off the rails. Oh well.

so just copy and paste you lazy people.

"We were in a Brooklyn basement full of artists and sound-poets gathered to watch musicians throw down extreme noise improvisation. One performer played records with two customized tone arms on his turntable; the discs broke and scratched, creating shards of hyperfractured beat play. He was followed by a quartet of young women scraping metal files across amplified coils mixed through junk electronics. I was to perform a spontaneous guitar/amp feedback piece with a stand-up bass player on loan from his teaching post at Berklee College of Music and a free jazz percussionist who had traversed through New York's downtown underground in the 60's."
Thurston Moore would be the most embarassing father on Earth. I feel for his kids, hopefully he'll shuffle off into retirement before they hit their teens.

-- miloauckerman (suspectdevic...), April 8th, 2004. (later)

yeah JUST WHERE ARE THE SONGS MAN!!!

Or are y'all just referring to kneejerk Nirvana haters from the ILM past?

"We were in a Brooklyn basement full of artists and sound-poets gathered to watch musicians throw down extreme noise improvisation. One performer played records with two customized tone arms on his turntable; the discs broke and scratched, creating shards of hyperfractured beat play. He was followed by a quartet of young women scraping metal files across amplified coils mixed through junk electronics. I was to perform a spontaneous guitar/amp feedback piece with a stand-up bass player on loan from his teaching post at Berklee College of Music and a free jazz percussionist who had traversed through New York's downtown underground in the 60's."

Am I the only one who wants to tweak this paragraph a bit and build a Neal Pollack-esque story around it?

Tim: Nope and yes. "Be coooool."

This may not be defensible, but it also irritates me how Moore lazily uses turntablism as a synecdoche for the groovy collision of "pop" and "avant" -- both in the essay and in a bunch of SY side-projects. It's why it was so hard for me to open to the DJ Olive album, a pity 'cause it's pretty good.

I think Cobain did have a great rock voice (he definitely was one of the best screamers ever) but Lennon's instrument was more supple, more romantic, more *feminine,* even though in real life he could be a sexist pig and worse. There was more Shirelles in Lennon than Raincoats in Cobain, if that makes sense.

Hey JESS, I'll ritalin yr 12 yr old, MOTHERF@!#$%^&!

"(The Beatles, also grand pop experimentalists, were loudly whispered by Nirvana as a primary influence, something unusual for punk devotees.)"

"Unusual" in what way, exactly? Punk bands had been Beatles fans all the way back to the Ramones and Buzzcocks (and probably the Clash, despite a song lyric or two pretending otherwise); Nirvana's big "innovation" was gluing the Replacements/Husker Du powerpop stuff to the noise that bands like Flipper and Scratch Acid and Green River and Die Kreuzen etc. had been making for years -- not that big a deal, given how Squirrel Bait, Dinosaur Jr., Soul Asylum, et al. beat them to it. ALL powerpop (much of which was aligned with punk) was a Beatles homage. So what the hell is Thurston talking about?

Once upon a time Sonic Youth were endorsing Madonna and hiphop. Now Thurston only seems into "radical pop" and free-jazz. He's not obligated to listen to anything, but his description comes off a bit rockist and elitist. Also,was Kurt listening to free jazz? And Thurston makes the case for Kurt being commercial but not "lame" but doesn't seem to suggest that under his standards such a description could apply to anyone today.

"you can tear a building down/but you cant' erase a memory."

they were fun live but they released some of the worst rock albums of all time.

"where is my picket fence?? my tv show?? my tall cool glass of lemonade??"

This is what I was trying to articulate.

Thanks Matos

"I think he had a great voice. I think it' s as good as John Lennon's. Is that a platitude?"

No, but saying that Kurt's was "one of the finest rock voices ever heard" is. Again, what are we talking about, the 694th finest voice ever? The 4,012th finest?

There have been a hell of a lot of rock bands, all over the world, over the last half century!

x-post

i like the stuff that thurston writes in arthur. he's goofy.

who does ?uestlove write for? x

I flipped out when I saw Shadow Of A Doubt. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Thurston can eat a dick. That was the worst.

x-post

This is back when bands on Homestead and SST could afford to slap on a Big Dipper or Meat Puppets video on 120 minutes, because the rates weren't as high. Once the 90s hit, bye bye independent labels, hello bad British accent! (from a Brit no less!).

pheNAM: it was late and I was tired, plus rewriting that post a lot, so sorry it comes off as gobbledygook. I was trying to say that one person's favorite band not being everyone else's doesn't negate that band's presence and/or meaning for others, up to and including my own bugaboos. one thing seeing the EMP conference last year (and reading the book of the first one, which I missed), not to mention a lot of ILM posts past-present-future, has made me try not to do (which I used to do a lot) is dismiss other peoples' fandom. I routinely dismiss musicians' work but that's different.

Ronan: I hope you weren't referring to me, because I know there isn't a "typical ILM poster," and hopefully made that clear upthread. hope so, at least; if not, let me do so here.

Tim Ellison: the latter.

Francis Watlington: "all those times" = a handful of posts (five maybe) on one thread. I very deliberately haven't posted about that topic again, because I said what I wanted to say the first time, and I didn't think I needed to do it again. yet it keeps being brought up like I was Ned/Dan on Justin or something. there's nothing "kneejerk" about it.

Daddino's criticisms are, as always, OTM, though I like the piece a lot better than he did.

Chuck: as a singer/songwriter I'd rank Kurt pretty fucking high, top ten or twenty, which is why I loved Nirvana even though--you're right--they aren't that original. I like the execution more than you do, obviously. but again, your points are well taken.

Thurston can eat a dick. That was the worst.

I mean, jchrist, ddb, what's been eating you lately?

i saw the first video of sonic youth. live with david sandborn. i told don fleming, "Drop B.A.L.L., the kids will never go for this."

lately? i suggest you do a search on all his posts. he is a vegan hate machine.

Vegans are a peculiar breed, forfeiting all animal-related products such as eggs, milk, and even honey, in favor of more expensive, tasteless soy products. Their reasoning for doing so may be health-related, environment-related, or animal rights-related, but peculiar nonetheless. Perhaps not quite as peculiar as the elusive “fruitarians” who only eat fallen fruit, nuts, and seeds that do not kill the original bearer when removed. But, there are so many different varieties of vegetarians that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart without a long list of rules, and the only thing they have in common is that they all avoid meat.

However, meat, to many, is synonymous with “real food”. The centrality of meat to the human diet is proved by how many soy-based meat analogues there are out there, veggie burgers, and meatless ribs to name a few. Basically, eating meat symbolizes the civilization of human beings, when we separated ourselves from the natural world and gained power over it, we became civilized. Meaning, vegans are turning their back on years of progression from herbivores to carnivores. That’s why I considered entitling this article “Why vegans are regressing human nature”, or “why vegans are hindering progress”.

Nick Fiddes, an anthropologist that studies the varieties of vegetarianism, agrees that, “killing, cooking and eating other animals' flesh provides perhaps the ultimate authentification of human superiority over the rest of nature, with the spilling of blood a vibrant motif. It is not only the animal which we so utterly subjugate; consuming its flesh is a statement that we are the unquestioned masters of the world."

That quote may seem a little blackmetal, but you can’t deny its validity. In fact, vegans seem to be drawn to food items that taste like meat, like tofurky, or soy-jerky. Why do they try so hard to simulate meals that they want to avoid? It all seems very futile to me.

sorry ILM...I need some R. Kelly and a beer.

bbbbbbwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhahhhhaaaaaahhaahhhaaaaa.

sorry for that. but i've got nothing to add here as far as the nirvana discussion. i really liked "school" and "serve the servants."

as a singer/songwriter I'd rank Kurt pretty fucking high, top ten or twenty, which is why I loved Nirvana even though--you're right--they aren't that original.

originality and innovation are hugely overrated in all genres of pop music. what matters is a good song and a good sound and that's what nirvana had. you could name a million predecessors or peers who kurt borrowed from or aped or coincidentally sounded like, but what made him better than most is, to borrow from matos again, the execution.

Hey, Matos, chill! I was only kidding, man!

I'm going to silkscreen this image onto a t-shirt and sell it to hordes of eager Japanese kids. Then even that aging trend whore Momus will buy one, I'm certain. Or at the very least write a bad essay on the subject, linking it to architecture, po-mo posters on kiosks, the newest designs from Apple Computer Incorporated, and further ramblings on his old art school days.

Thurston Moore is the mirror image, American Rockist Momus; a pretentious twit who will do absolutely anything to desperately prove that he is hip to whatever nouveau "avant" garbage is allegedly happening. Remember, Mr. Moore is the doofus who will sink as low as to promote the likes of Madonna and Karen Carpenter as the unironic-ironic arbiters of such-and-such a week's hipster's credo. Fuck it all.

I'm also selling off all my GBV stuff, except for that! It's definitely the sole keeper.

What a wonderful life you lead. How do you sleep with the excitement?

x-post: listening to sound poets always seem to do the trck ronan.

Here's mine (excepted):

Nirvana registered because they connected with fans, the public, in a powerful manner. They made a connection, and their acceptance was tacitly underpinned with the assumption that they would at least make an effort to reward that recognition. It may be true that they often erred - their albums seem spotty in retrospect - but they delivered something far more important that music: they gave young rock fans the world over a newly re-ordered set of signs (tropes, signifiers, fashion hints, etc.) to sort out. Any artist(s) that can accomplish this have made an impact....

I could care less if you think my essay fragment is shite, or if Nirvana are fodder for ageing nostalgia brokers, or anything - I just grew tired of all you moaning donkeys. Put up, or shut up.

This pretty much sums up my dislike of Nirvana: Cobain never matured past 14.

That may be the stupidest thing I've evver read on ILM.

But wait, isn't that the "I'm married, buried," one? THAT line made sense (when I was married!). But that crap about "aqua seafoam shame" or whatever is one of the stupidest lyrics in any hit song ever. (And this was, what, the SECOND BEST song on *In Utero*, after that one other hit that Steve Albini didn't fuck up in the studio? Jeezus...)

Chuck, Kurt's big influence was the Pixies!! You hate the Pixies.

Justin, I don't think they HAVE to mean something (REM was my favorite band for a decade), but meaning something is an easy way for a song to have some relevance and value outside of some kind of you-had-to-be-there zeitgeist. Songs can have plenty of emotional meaning without coherency, but I think that those kind of intangible qualities can often prove fleeting.

Don't forget the downward spiral and slipknot!

God, when I think about the bands that were big in '94, I have to wonder if everybody was 15 then.

not to mention drunkenly self-deprecating lyrics like "i'm worse at what i do best." i always thought they had way more replacements than pixies in them.

Duke- i remember thinking at the time that the downward spiral was a pretty fucked up/experimental record considering how big it was. and same with slipknot actually. in some ways. for how loud/noisey their albums are and how big they are.

i also agree about them being more replacements than pixies.

you'd still love it.

i always wait for the solo when i hear the original now, and it does not come. 'cause cobain invented it (on the spot?)

I always found Nirvana's melodies very childlike, very much like common children's songs, but delivered in bundles of spite.

It almost makes too much sense, given the "happy till his parents divorced" bio.

Oh boo fucking hoo. I'm sure that makes Frances Bean feel much better, knowing her dad was happy until his parents split up. (Sorry, but my own biography makes it hard not to react to stuff like this.)

not that it matters, but i don't think cobain invented anything on the spot. he planned everything.

I've always thought -- with no evidence other than my stubborn insistence to hear what *I* want to hear -- that some of Cobain's more bizarre lines sort of functioned as non-accidental "Lady Mondegreens." Sure, the lyric sheet says "aqua seafoam shame," he sings "aqua seafoam shame," and I bet you can find interviews where Cobain explains what "aqua seafoam shame" means (probably some bullshit about birth imagery). Sure, whatever, but it still sounds like "I'll concede the shame" to me, it's just that he chose to sing something that sort of sounded like it instead, maybe to be perverse, or maybe because he actually couldn't bring himself to concede the shame, which makes his non-concession a de facto concession anyway, though he didn't really need to his feelings that way because "All Apologies" already confesses to guilt and shame ("everything is my fault/I'll take all the blame"), albeit in a kind of mocking and ironic way because I guess his pride wouldn't allow for it, maybe because it was too painful to do so and maybe because he was something of an asshole. Ummm...the lyric is about how fucked up he is. Don't ask me to interpret the albino-libido-misquito line, though.

just always seemed like the opposite was the case to me. not like i'm asking you in particular but how come he so apparently couldn't handle what happened to him then?

x-post (of a lot of other posts)

On the other hand, I have to say that I really love everything Michael Daddino says about Nirvana, all through his thread. So maybe he should write more about them somewhere, if he hasn't already.

Every year or so I try to re-read that Greil Marcus "death of rock" piece (which my dad gave me as a kid because he thought I'd like a big article about rock), hoping that this time I can make it all the way through.

Before he died, Kurt made some mumblings about how he wanted to "move beyond" verse-chorus-verse and soft-loud-soft...which, coupled with his desire to piss off his audience and slightly grasping (but not necessarily unlovable) attempts at cred, may mean that Kid B and Insomniac are in the alternate-universe Nirvana discography. Go ahead and feel WHATEVER you want about that.

Didn't he also say he wanted to sound like REM and Stipe was a hero to him? Or something like that.

Yeah and something about organs. Not shooting holes through organs.

Your copy wouldn't happen to be Japanese, would it?

Usually I try to avoid cheap shots, but for some reason other people's suicides bring out the worst in me. This is why I can't write a story about Kurt Cobain for my campus paper.

Well it wasn't a surprise to me. I remember being 11 year old Chris haging out in the woods w/my friends in a tree fort or something talking about his overdose/attempted suicide and we all thought it was a only a matter of time before it actually happened. [additional self-righteous and tasteless-ness deleted]

Looking back now his struggle for authenticity seems bizarre to me even as his legacy is played out on X stations across the country best exemplified by the song of my generation, "She Hates Me" by Puddle of Mudd.

That definitely sounds familiar. That must have been it. Yeah.

not to mention, like, love and rockets and midnight oil and the church and r.e.m. and (again) jane's addiction and living colour and faith no more, plus ugly kid joe and social distortion (punky hits earlier that same year if i remember right) and a zillion other bands. i still don't get the "surprise" thing at all. (well the HUGENESS was maybe suprising, i guess. but that was later.) mtv had been playing alt-rock for ages. to me nirvana seemed like they fit right in! (then again, i'd written in a skin yard/*deep six* review in *creem* in 1987 that in a couple years you'll turn on mtv and they'll tell you that the future of rock is in seattle. so maybe i was just paying attention when other people weren't. i have no idea.)

(holy shit this new montgomery gentry album rocks hard. by the way.)

But to my somewhat oddly-shaped ears at the time, it seemed most of the alt-bands you've mentioned had to cultivate something of a sizable cult audience and get played a lot on WDRE before MTV would even begin to care about them, whereas Nirvana seemed to go from off-hand mentions in Motorbooty and Swellsville to heavy MTV rotation without passing through the cult/WDRE stage. It was like "fuck 'cultivating' a band -- we're MTV, we can do anything we fucking want to."

Good point! Not to mention "Unbelievable" by EMF!! That was 1990, wasn't it? Anyway, I remember hip young rock kids had been talking about Nirvana for a year or more before they hit, but I never really paid much attention. I kept getting them mixed up with some other band, I forget who, whose name I think might have started with "V".

Also keep in mind the year before Nirvana hit big I was stuck with Santa Fe, NM radio at the time...which was great, I LOVED the charts at the time (so didn't I see Nirvana as starting some 'necessary' hair band gotterdammerung) but it also meant I missed hearing the alternative and college rock radio I would've heard at home, and hence my perceptions about their success may be skewed.

1991 -- and I remember reading more than one place at the time that various Top 40 station managers and owners saying things like "We did well with those Jesus Jones/EMF singles and so when Nirvana also got marketed to us as this 'alternative' thing we tested it out, got a good response and added them," etc. In fact Mudhoney specifically credited Jesus Jones for breaking things big in interviews the following year!

That's awesome, though I sort of remember thinking Jesus Jones and EMF were more er uh "ravey" or at least "baggy" and hence not being too too related in my mind to Nirvana's Avalanche of Alt-ness.

I also remember being in college and trying very hard to like the Mudhoney record the ex-junkie asshole who hated my music column let me borrow.

Warrant and Cinderella had bigger hooks, more beauty, more dance, more lively singing, more creative arrangements, more coherent words, and way less fucking self-importance. Poison dressed up as girls in videos without acting like it was "subversive"; they turned it into a party Nirvana were incapable of. So where IS this execution, exactly?? Or like I said, who has written about it without making it sound like the dullest music in the history of the human race (which it's not!)?

I have the first three Cinderella albums (and Get the Knack) and saw Poison live but I just don't think that this is the case. I don't think that any of these bands (including Nirvana) made great dancing music but I also don't think that Nirvana should really be judged by that standard. (FWIW, tangentially, I think lots of music that comes a lot closer to being 'avant-garde' - Amon Tobin or DJ Spooky/Matthew Shipp/William Parker or Nero or Prime Time or Luke Vibert - is way more danceable than any of this stuff.) I simply don't think it's true that Poison's rhythm section was more propulsive or swinging than Grohl's/Novoselic's pounding. I mean, you know Grohl once you hear him. Rikki Rokkett can hold down a generic beat at best. I saw the video for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on the Power Hour a few hours ago and I can barely remember the melody. I think Nirvana songs were more hooky, partly because the melodies were more original and more developed or at least accompanied by weirder harmonies. The "creative arrangements" I don't see at all - at most they might have brought in keyboards or strings to embellish climactic moments in the same ways pop acts had been doing for years. Nirvana wasn't radical with their arrangements but even their cello moves seem more creative than, I dunno, "Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone". If their words made more sense (which is questionable in my view) it's because they relied so heavily on cliches. Also I think there's a difference between glamming it up while still singing about women as sex objects in cheesecakey videos and the way that Cobain wore a dress.

Ultimately I suspect the major issue is that you hear an "okay singer" where many others hear more.

And I'll clarify that I also sure don't think that Nirvana made the most powerful music ever or that they defined my youth or anything like that. But I think there is more to them (and/or less to the bands to whom you're comparing them - I would probably be more open to these claims if you were sticking to Jane's Addiction and Living Colour) than you're giving them credit for. I haven't, and don't really plan to, listened to all that much 80s US indie/punk/whatever but I know that In Utero means more to me than Zen Arcade (which I do really like but this was a band with juvenile lyrics) or Songs About Fucking (which I don't mind) or The First Four Years (which I hated when I heard it - admittedly a long time ago). There has to be something to be said for making the sound relevant to a given time period.

Both of whom were more danceable and probably more experimental.

Is this the real Phil Niblock?

Well, the fact that Robert Plant and John Lydon are singing them, for one thing. But like somebody told Frank Kogan once, if there's a bustle in my hedgerow, I'm getting a shotgun. I never said "Stairway to Heaven" had great words, I don't think. (Don't know if I ever said it about *Second Edition,* either, but the MUSIC there is sure as hell a lot more interesting than Nirvana's.) Not gonna go into Warrant's and Cinderella's arrangements; don't have time right now (though I've done it in the past); Nirvana usually just sound stiff and anemic in comparison to me. The best hair metal rhythms had a sexual throb at the bottom that Dave Grohl (especially in the Foofighters, probably the overrated rock band of the past decade) has rarely if ever touched. Well, maybe in some Queens of the Stone Age tracks, but whatever: I've never understood why people think he's a great or "unmistakable" drummer; the guy in the frigging Spin Doctors (at least in "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong") had more swing in his beats. And if Nirvana ever did as alive a dance song as Cinderella's "Gpysy Road" (which may the best Rolling Stones song of the past 20 years -- the great Cinderella album is *Long Cold Winter,* not the first one or the third one; Kogan says parts of it remind him of Television, except Cinderella rocked and Television didn't) or "Down Boys" (the riff of which has always reminded me of "Sweet Jane"), or a melody as beautiful as "Heaven" or "I Saw Red," I'd really love to hear it. (Or a video as interesting as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "Cry Tough" for that matter.) Jane's Addiction and Living Colour had sticks up their butts compared to most hair metal; they were way less interesting--at best, they had rhythm sections that implied "funk" without ever sounding as remotely funky. Good intentions are not the same as good music. As for avoiding "linear lyric coherency" with words that can mean whatever anybody wants them to, sorry, but that in itself is a bigger rock cliche than anything on Poison's first couple albums. (Which isn't to say that Cobain didn't write lyrics that connect here and there. He obviously did, and I've never really cared that I have no idea what most of "Teen Spirit" is about, and I'm not saying it would be better if I did. But to say avoiding linear words is worthwhile in an of itself is to fall for four decades worth of half-assed songpoetry.) And I like Matthew Shipp and William Parker fine, but if I wanna dance, I'd put Kenny Chesney or Foreigner first, in a heartbeat; dancing in your head is not the same as dancing with actual feet.

Is this an exagerration? I dunno; it might be -- it's not like I've really listened to either band for ages, mainly because both of their singers were so ridiculously horrible. So maybe if they'd had good singers, I'd think differently about their music. Still doubt they ever did anything as funky as "Mississippi Queen" or "Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo" or "Hair of the Dog" or "Walk This Way," though (and yeah, I know, those aren't hair metal songs, but hair metal unlike Replacements/Husker Du was at least operating in the TRADITION of those songs. And some of it -- by Guns N Roses and Kix, for instance -- was just as good. Bottom line, though: Nazareth were a whole lot funkier than Big Star. Or Ronald Shannon Jackson for that matter.)

As for Cinderella's and Warrant's melodies, maybe here, too, it's just that Keifer and Lane SANG prettier than Cobain. Maybe if they'd sung Nirvana's melodies, I'd think Nirvan's melodies were prettier. And maybe "Heaven" would bore me if Cobain sang it. (So, uh, maybe when you say this--"Ultimately I suspect the major issue is that you hear an 'okay singer' where many others hear more"--you're right??)

what confuses me most is the presumption--which seemed to take rather sudden hold after kurt cobain's suicide--that they were at the center of something, that they were crucial to an understanding of the period, etc. i don't remember them being characterized that way in their prime. certainly t hey won kudos and then some, but this pride of place seems--according to my imperfect memory--to have been somewhat missing. it's very possible, even likely, that as a teenager i simply didn't have enough perspective to recognize this fact, but part of me still balks a bit at the consensus that seems to have been reached on this point.

What Amateurist says about Nirvana ("what confuses me most is the presumption--which seemed to take rather sudden hold after kurt cobain's suicide--that they were at the center of something, that they were crucial to an understanding of the period, etc. i don't remember them being characterized that way in their prime") is EXACTLY what I feel about Tupac Shakur, oddly enough!

This is why the better ones stick out i guess. people still talk about what a great drummer chuck biscuits was even now. course, by saying that all hardcore drummers were shitty you are now gonna get everyone's list of great hardcore drummers.

i agree about 2pac also, although since i don't like 2pac i feel a little more comfortable challenging his supposed centrality

http://www.popped.com/articles96-97/talkeddy/eddy5.html

Cobain's brown guitar = working for the clampdown.

Anybody who was "surprised" by Nevermind's sales was living in a different universe. Geffen promoted the hell out of that record, it's not surprising that it did so well.

You said it, chuck. We didn't. You haven't known what you've been talking about in over a decade! ;)

--hstencil

And will the fake one not use my handle? K'thanksbye.

Chuck, if you don't care about intentions, then why does the issue of "[x] is doing [something] and acting like you should be REALLY IMPRESSED with it when [y] has been doing the same thing for years and not making such a big deal of it" always seem to come up?? And isn't it more often the audience/critics rather than the performer who is making a big deal of artist x's concepts? Shit, for all I know, maybe Kix (or L'Trimm's producers) could talk all day about how they insert nursery rhymes and quotes from other songs in their tunes, if anybody bothered to ask them, y'know?

And I suppose I could see the slow-dance value of "I Want to Know What Love Is".

Maybe some more to come in a bit. I think we both agree though that the main issue is that Cobain's voice doesn't really click with you.)

My problem w/thurston is he resorts to Nirvana memes just as much as the idiots on my college radio station's message board who are saying KURT KILT HAIR BANDS and asking WHERE WERE U WHEN KURT DIED? etc. Even if he tries to obscure them by repeatedly invoking THE AVANT GARDE. I don't expect him to be a good writer, but apparently he has shitty ideas as well (I already figured as much from this from listening to his records anyway).

I am going to need to sort out if chuck is just a good/convincing writer or if hair metal is worth my time (I always enjoy the songs I hear incidently except a Cinderella song I strongly disliked whose title I cannot recall and I am trying to find a path, any path, out of indie-hell).

But don't you see the disco-dance value of "Urgent" (feat Jr. Walker) too??? (And you can at least imagine dancing fast to "Round and Round" by Ratt or "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard, I hope...) (Actually, "Dirty White Boy" and "Headknocker" might be even better dance songs than "Urgent," though; I'll go back and check sometime.)

Patrick actually asks a pretty good question in his post above. If I had more time and energy, I'd probably formulate some long convoluted explanation about how "acting like you should be REALLY IMPRESSED" is shorthand for stuff bands DO, not for stuff they INTEND (and I'd say I usually outline said "do" specifics when I use that formulation anyway -- I mean, I'm talking about a Nirvana VIDEO, not a Nirvana INTERVIEW; I'm talking about the difference between looking labored and looking easy), but for all I know he's right to call me on what might be an internal contradiction & tick that balonifies my writing.

funny how these metal bands (or quasi metal bands) always seem to "come up" no matter the context

the video for "teen spirit" always seemed badly-shot and pointless to me, in some ways it marks the moment where my grand indifference to the tastes of my generation took root

Because "Home Sweet Home" is the least catchy power ballad in the history of the human race? Actually, that might not be true; I forget what it sounds like. But anyway, it's kinda the same as my Judas Priest problem, maybe: They just seem WISHY WASHY to me. Pop but not TOO pop, heavy but not TOO heavy, fun but not TOO fun, bouncy but not TOO bouncy, pretty but not TOO pretty. I just hear caution there that bugs me, I think. Don't connect with their early stuff at all, though I know lots of people with otherwise great taste who totally disagree with me about it. I actually prefer *Girls Girls Girls* and *Dr. Feelgood*, oddly enough. (I own *Decade of Decadence,* but it's a bit of a chore to get through.) At least they improved with time I guess.

Hm, I was sorta thinking along the lines of how you might find them too macho for glam (pace yer Poison comments, ie they weren't glam enough -- but then again you like Kiss, so I dunno, cause they pretty much WERE a chronological connection between Kiss and Poison).

Actually, thinking of Poison, Arthur and I spotted Rikki Rocket at the Sparks show the other night.

something about being "the most candyass cover ever recorded" or something?

Well "too macho for glam" IS kinda what I meant by not being pop or pretty enough, so I think you're right!!! And I DON'T like Kiss very much, at least beyond their first (as in only great) album and a few random singles here and there. They were too macho for glam, too! Thanks Ned! I will steal your answer the next time anybody asks me!!!

that's 'cause not even a nostalgic posturing reassessment strategy will get you past the fact that acts like foreigner and the eagles were in fact egregious perpetrators of the most horrid traxx ever. it might feel good to reify the banal, but it don't sound good, do it?

what, exactly, does this idiotic phrase have to do with anything that anybody has written or said on this thread (or anywhere else)?

yeah, isn't the Eagles greatest hits the best sellling album of all time in america?

MOP likes foreigner too...

Say something charitable about the Eagles.

eekies,
m.

Oh, and Chuck if you read this: The version of The Man Who Sold The World that Bowie did with Lulu in the 70's was pretty good. glammy, sleazebowie sax sound, etc.

Something else that hit me like a brick today was realizing that Boney M's "Nightflight To Venus" is just a re-working of Cozy Powell's "Dance With The Devil". I can't believe that passed me by. I'm really slow sometimes. Chuck-maybe you told me this or wrote about it before i can't remember. It felt like a revelation this morning for some reason.

I like all the versions of this song, but this one is probably my favorite.

i also don't like the guy's voice. and, i worry that some may slice and dice me for this, the lyrics--with the whole lazy extended metaphor thing--sort of embarrass me.

can't find a good place to put this, so this thread'll have to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qe427Kcz8E

context: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/04/see_sonic_youths_thurston_moor.html

awesome

Hope everyone that pays for their kids to attend Partners & Spade’s Avant Garde Preschool series is cursed with their kids making noise racket through amplifiers day and night.

Seriously, little kids are the one group that does not need to be taught how to make noise -- they do it quite naturally!

Moore played a few noise pieces on his boombox (which he said he’d bought on Delancey Street thirty years ago) and implored kids to buy their own cassette decks. Listening to an iPod, he said, is like “listening to a cassette that has been left to bake in the sun.” My son loved the story about the days in New York when people were walking around and riding the subways with their boomboxes, sharing music and ideas.

LOL. This stuff belongs in the 'quiddities' thread. Aging hipsters with kids and money to burn.

http://www.hallockhill.net/post/513966489/moorepreschool

haha, this is some rose-tinted glasses shit here
riding the subways with their boomboxes, sharing music and ideas.

Im sure the 6-year-olds in attendance are really inspired by that.

http://www.tdbimg.com/files/2009/06/10/img-hp-main--conn-subway_14290063606.jpg
sharing music and ideas and then stabbing one another

lol yeah exactly

Moore read passages from Whittaker Chambers' Witness (which he said he’d bought on the Upper East Side thirty years ago) and implored kids to buy their own cassette decks. Listening to Barack Obama, he said, is like “listening to a cassette that has been left to bake in the sun.” My son loved the story about the days in New York when people were walking around and riding the subways with copies of The National Review, soaking in conservatism regnant.

hey kids, here's your first taste of Tinnitus

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

The more parents try to show their kids how cool noise is, the more the kid is just gonna want to listen to Paul McCartney and Abba records when they get to be teens.

I'm sure Geir's totally on-board with that strategy

the singing was really weak.

i'd suggest to them try out something new, try out a different singer for once.

they are horrible. and dumb.

in all likelihood, they were not forced to listen to the entire song, which is the real tragedy here. would've loved to hear their opinion of the last three fourths of the song

or give them the extended version from The Destroyed Room, which was, what, 25 minutes long?

rufus and cyrus dig the noize

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i3FrnAASFk

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

peanut butter! oh man, so great Scott

"now that was experimental music and we have no idea what it was called"

awwwww so cute

Listening to Barack Obama, he said, is like “listening to a cassette that has been left to bake in the sun.”

That is so profound.

lol that is so cute/awesome

I must bow down before the awesome that is Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth.....

they're the real fuckin deal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI7pcrA52QI