Taking Sides: Jimi Hendrix vs. Nirvana

Jimi

Nirvana are a context band. It's a band that only really matters to us who were there. It's been years since I last heard Nirvana being overplayed anywhere. Their sound is too raw for soundtracks, advertising, even your casual rock pub. The kids don't care about Nirvana. I don't know... maybe they're not pop enough. Nirvana was a cathartic band for generation x. Hard to get a kick out of their music when you don't really identify with their message.

They don't really care about Hendrix either, but... I guess he's got 'rhythm'.

P sure the kids still care about Nirvana. I see plenty of teenage mosher types wearing the hoodies.

Well I also see kids with Misfits or Che Guevara t-shirts but that doesn't mean they really know them.

Well sure, if you mean 'kids don't like Nirvana the way I think they should like them' then yeah. But I don't think Nirvana fans of today see themselves as being all that different from Nirvana fans of yore.

If anything I think that young Nirvana fans today are closer in spirit to what you want, compared with Nirvana fans of 10 years ago. Nirvana are no longer the 'go to angry rock pick for disaffected youth', so are probably liked more by kids who see themselves as the discerning consumer of alt rock (i.e. not my chemical romance or whatever).

Both of these still mean way more to me than I probably should admit...but, Nirvana has a better average, so them...

I'm kidding a little bit there... speaking from my own perspective. In Mexico the teenage mosher types can be seen wearing either 'classic rock' shirts (the doors, guns n roses, led zeppelin...) or any of their current emoish bands that I know nothing about (avenged sevenfold, black dahlia murder...)
In Spain asides those two types I see lots of support for local bands and strangely they seem to have a current crush on psychobilly.

No Nirvana shirts to be seen on the horizon. I think it's pretty much that... there's always a niche band for angst-ridden kids and it feels more right when it's actually a current band, one that feels like your secret. Nirvana isn't a secret. When you're a teen your bands are your personal brand. I get Nirvanan feels like dadrock to them. They've got a respect for the band but they'd rather have their own angsts revealed to them by someone almost as young as them. Plus they can't leave messages on their social networks about getting tickets to see them on concert. As ridiculous as that part sounds it's a pretty big deal.

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

I think Nirvana is still pretty big with the kids; maybe it's been a little bit diminished because of all the bands that have sprouted up in their wake--like it's not only Nirvana, it's also Korn & Deftones & whateve underground emo-alt-death-power metal bands that float their boat--but I mean even kids today, in souther Michigan at least, still see Kurt & co. that brought all that stuff into the mainstream...

as far as kids wearing T-shirts go, Nirvana = Hendrix imo (both of which are cool)

Oh yeah I wouldn't hold anything against a young Nirvana fan. I'd just prefer the Hendrix fan but that's an irrelevant hypothetical situation.

Both are great musical acts that I don't feel like I ever need to hear again, they've been so played out.

thanks John Lennon.

do you ever feel like you've heard too many Beatles songs?

Definitely agree on the social networking point. This is a big factor.

I was a half generation away from Nirvana being current (was 9 in 94), but lots of people were into them through older siblings, plus they were still a reference point for most music writers. Neither of those are probably as true for today's teens.

Anyway, I've never been into Nirvana OR Hendrix so won't vote either way.

(many xposts to moka)

I missed Nirvana (and grunge) by moments (13 when Kurt died), but Nirvana felt absolutely 100% relevant to us as teenagers growing up between 94-99.

yeah I was 13 or 14 too as well

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

Bob Marley ftw

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2599/4011666708_d80f387ef0_o.jpg

Hendrix. Don't care about who wears what shirt.

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

― billstevejim

They were provocative and cynical. It wasn't so much a sense of humor as it was a sense of detachment. They delivered the lols because they were always an underground band at heart, one which didn't mind the money or the fame, giving them a chance to expose the ridicule of the record industry everytime they could.

Either way this was a comment on the fans, not on the bands. The Nirvana fans I've met tend to be more introspective and shady, the Hendrix fans are similar to jazz fans, geeky but easy going and they smile a lot when they're outdoors.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

I don't get this at all.

If anything, Hendrix seemed more a laff/riot to be around.

Actually, temper that..

Hendrix: "You'll never listen to surf music again! ... (wha?).. hmm, sounds like a lie to me!"

Kurt: "What are you tuning, a harp?"

Both had a sense of irony...

My very subjective and probably rather badly referenced point of view hinges on the fact I never really "got" Hendrix.

Sure I like the odd song, but on the whole he seemed like a bore who's since been adopted by other bores who champion his technical ability or the psychedelic imagery around which he's associated. I've always seen him as a necessary cog in the history of music - his influence on rock and metal in the '70s is probably quite important or something. But Jimi suffers in my mind from Jim Morrison syndrome - adulated by a certain category of fan who has bought into Jimi as an all-in-one music credential.

Not saying that all Jimi fans are like this, nor that there's necessarily anything wrong with this attitude for casual music fans. Neither am I saying that Cobain hasn't got his unabashed proscribers either. But listen to Incesticide (the album I go back to the most these days), and I hear a burning passion, wit, experimentation and intense character in the music which I just can't get from Jimi. Hendrix seems detached to me - like he spent so much time smoking dope and learning to be the ultimate guitarist that it's had a detrimental affect on his conviction. Kurt never cared about being able to play brilliantly, but he was a much more intense character on record.

Well, I never sat down and "listened" to Hendrix, but I do think he was so much better and bigger than all the people who thought him a genius, untouchable, etc, then proceeded to pick up their guitars and attempt to 'do' him.

As per all those things, it matters not what you can do, but how you do it. Crosstown Traffic uses his skills to my mind, it does not 'showcase' them over all else.

Actually having a somewhat hard time choosing myself.

My pick ended up being Jimi Hendrix. Sure, I am not fan of the blues, and I feel many of his songs would have benefited from being less bluesy. But his fantastic guitar playing and imaginative psych arrangements means his albums (particularly "Electric Ladyland" are still well worth listening to. Probably benefited from moving to England, having and English producer and taking considerable influence from the English brand of psychedelia.

From my logic, it would make more sense to go for Nirvana, who would often write really strong melodies, and who were heavily influenced by 70s powerpop and even The Beatles. But at the same time, the obvious heavy metal elements and the raunchy production, screaming and the fact that they influenced a lot of rather boring grunge music, that means I go for Jimi Hendrix overall.

Let me add that I take The Postal Service over both. :)

Is that a write-in vote?

hendrix duh

*trying with all my might to understand what the Postal Service has to do with this*

R.I.G.

I'm a little confused by the idea of teenage rock fans NOT liking Nirvana. I suppose it's because I was the right age at the time so they still feel like the absolute gateway drug into rock music and maybe they aren't any more but I'd sort of imagined there'd be 13 year-old rock fans who loved them for as long as 13 year-old rock fans continue to exist.

I thought Geir's random comment had something to do with the Postal Service being a Seattle band or something but Postal service: Tamborello - California, Giddard - Washington. So I guess it was just one of his trademark inflammatory comments.

Seattle is in Washington as well, Moka. Gibbard is from Bremerton, which is a 55-min ferry ride away from Seattle.

I like Nirvana a lot. I love Hendrix.

Neither one means that much to me, but Hendrix especially for some of the more psychedelic stuff. Since I first heard, and like, Nirvana, I've become less tolerant of shouty rock vocals. But they had some good tunes and I like some of the production touches.

I probably underrate Hendrix (he's a guitar God but why do I only hear the bass on his best recordings? Also, his blues jams bore the shit out of me) and I probably overrate Nirvana (see my contribution to the "My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana" thread from several years back) so I'll be consistant and pick... Nirvana.

Hendrix was an original; he actually invented something. Nirvana didn't. Hendrix was also way funkier, a more interesting singer than Cobain, a way more interesting guitar player (and I always thought Cobain was pretty good), and a more interesting (partly because more direct -- well, at least in stuff like "Crosstown Traffic" and "Foxy Lady" anyway) songwriter. And where Nirvana's music could be pretty, Jimi's could be beautiful. I like them both, am not a huge fan of either. Still, I don't see how this is even a fair contest.

Won't say anything about Paul Revere & The Raiders or the Sonics (who were Portland and Tacoma anyway.) Heart, though...

Nirvana didn't (arguable)...

Well, maybe they invented something that Husker Du, the Replacements, Squirrel Bait, Soul Asylum, Scratch Acid, Dinosaur Jr., Die Kreuzen, Green River, and countless other '80s bands had already invented, if that counts. (Or, to be nicer, maybe they invented some new combination of those bands' sounds. But if that's true, then pretty much every band invents something, by synthesizing what previous bands had done before.)

..which is what Hendrix did, took those elements and added a showbiz performance slant, albeit disguised.

I agree Nirvana didn't invent something. But they repackaged things in a way that, unlike The Pixies, The Wipers, Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Husker Du, and Melvins, sold records and had a cultural impact.

Some people (including xhuxk, based on the thread I linked to earlier) dismiss the cultural impact. I disagree with that completely and feel there is evidence that shows it to be incorrect.

Others realize the cultural impact but say that doesn't mean the music is any good. Which I disagree with, but that is a far more subjective thing.

on a base level i like and listen to nirvana more often

but it's kinda hard not to vote hendrix

The thing about Nirvana is that nowadays the collective idea of Nirvana is actually a lot worse than Nirvana themselves.

I succumb to this strange notion that Nirvana were a kind of watered-down punk/metal hybrid obsessed with miserablism and navel-gazing. This is a retcon really - something that's been drummed into us by grunge naysayers of the time ("it sounds like someone mumbling in a corner and then screaming when he's been hit on the head, hur hur") and some of Kurt's post-grunge mimicists (Gavin Rossdale, Puddle Of Mudd etc).

The truth is Nirvana had a thousand times the raw energy of any of the bands that came before or after. I mean, the Pixies etc are great bands, but as far as immediacy is concerned Nirvana beat them hands down.

I honestly think Hendrix is one of the greatest artists in the rock idiom...but I vote Nirvana purely bcz I think Bleach/Nevermind/In Utero is just a better run of albums than Are You Experienced/Axis Bold as Love/Electric Ladyland...

I think that critics nowadays underrate both of these bands (though I think Hendrix is more underrated; one of the things I love most about S. Reynolds is his unabashed Hendrix fandom) but I think the Hendrix cult tends to overrate Jimi somewhat, whereas I think Nirvana is pretty accurately rated by its cult...

also dog latin otm about the raw energy of Nirvana, and yet that's only half the story; tell me two live albums more divergent than Unplugged in NYC & Muddy Banks of Wishkah...

so tempted to post a Red House... Hendrix was a master natural musician and completely effortless in his flow, his style is so amazing because he doesn't play licks or shred scales, but constantly surprises, invents, wails, and sings as if he's got a direct connection to the Muse. this is what astounded his contemporaries - you can tell where Clapton or Page or any other rock guitarists got their steez, but Jimi just opened up and blew like Coltrane in a rock'n'roll band.

and unlike most virtuosos, he was able to pack in all that power into 3-minute pop songs that, like Nirvana, re-defined what rock music was supposed to sound like and be about

ehhhh, Hendrix had his share of licks. But I'd still vote him ahead of Nirvana.

Some of Nirvana's jokes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6bEKuAbssg

the intro of this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_p0pU9jhkc

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

Hendrix might have been unintentionally funny when he was all spaced out but I've never really heard him say anything funny.. He seems pretty serious most of the time.. like he did that song "Machine Gun," which is kind of serious subject matter.. Whereas Nirvana did a song called "Moist Vagina" where he screamed the word "marijuana" over and over again for half of the song...

^agree with the last two posts wholeheartedly

My favorite from the "With The Lights Out" box, wish they had had a chance to record this as a band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3-s0QEXZSk

(on the Neg Creep video, do Everman's stacks say Nirvana on them? how could they afford to get specialized equipment?)

they put a 50 cent bumper sticker over the amp logo?

what?

thread inspires me to listen to Hendrix all day today

man i haven't actually listened to nirvana in ages, this is p fun

― pajamagram sam (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 10 February 2011 16:50 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is always my reaction when I stick on Nirvana. They get too easily dismissed: 'Yeah yeah, I know Nirvana, "Teen Spirit", "Polly wanna cracker", "Leonard Cohen afterworld". I know it, they're pretty good.'

But then you stick In Utero on at volume and 'Serve The Servants' bursts through the wall like a flaming Boeing and you're like "Oh fuck yeah, that's why people like them!!" . It's a really simple formula that so many bands tried to replicate, but never got close to.

"I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad" is an amazing line. The delivery on that song is mind bending.

Electric Ladyland > Axis: Bold As Love > Bleach > In Utero = Are You Experienced > Nevermind

None of these are in any way bad, mind you. Nice tight discographies only muddied by scads of after-death barrel scrapping and sometimes revelatory live recordings (I probably listen to Winterland, Monterey and the BBC recordings more than any of the Hendrix albums, and definitely pull out Unplugged and Reading more than the Nirvana studio albums).

yeah it's a shame Nirvana became such a monolithic iconic thing, because just taken as a band they did do some really neat fun stuff and synthesized a lot of different ideas and influences into something very distinct.

― R. L. Steen's HOOSbumps (some dude), Thursday, February 10, 2011 11:01 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah maybe this is sort of the real thing that unites hendrix and nirvana, like both come with a lot of "baggage" -- like the stuff shakey mo was all het up about and the "guitar center" muso mag stuff wrt hendrix that ppl react against, and obv nirvana and kurt being the last real rock "icons" in a way...

kurt's funny because it's like you get this sense that his ideal for nirvana was to be some late period SST band no one gave a fuck about but he wrote all these anthems in spite of that....also, when i see pix of him i'm always struck with how HANDSOME he was, even with trying to hid behind ratty ass sweaters and greasy hair....both he and hendrix had a lot of natural magnetism, but hendrix embraced his to the fullest and kurt tried to struggle against it, but they both ended up the same as dead rock icons....

Think one of my favourite Nirvanas that doesn't get mentioned much is "Hairspray". It's Incesticide's 'Tourettes' or 'Territorial Pissings' I guess.

always like how Kurt lets his melodic lines bleed into the next measure so the last word hangs around the one (not on the one but slightly ahead), like Been A Son up there or Lithium as prime example.

Hearing 'Killing Floor' off the Winterland album was the thing that sold me on Hendrix when I was a kid. Pretty straightforward song but it just goes for the jugular. xxp

but i think Hendrix's legacy, even at its most stodgy and one-dimensional, celebrates the eccentricity and diversity of his music more than in Nirvana's case -- like it's a given that Hendrix put novelty songs next to epics next to pop masterpieces and incorporated blues and funk and jazz etc. whereas talk about Nirvana tends to gloss over Devo covers and more subtle influences in favor of the larger cultural narrative.

Also, tying into the humour aspect here I guess, there's the idea that Nirvana were a really mopey depressing band. Think this is down to All Apologies and nihilism and Unplugged and Kurt shooting himself, which has kind of eclipsed a whole career of bouncy, hard-rocking stuff with killer riffs.

suicide's a bummer, no doubt

think i posted this elsewhere on ILM, but this hendrix thing is amazing: http://theheatwarps.tumblr.com/post/1129618708/saturday-will-mark-40-years-since-jimi-red-wined
an imagined double LP made up of posthumous material, which works way better than any of the officially released rarities discs I've heard. just some off the hook stuff.

xp to some dude: yeah but that's bcz of the values of the genres/subcultures they were working out of...hippies much bcz of the acid and bcz of the rebellion against American utilitarianist aesthetics that the acid brought about, caused the psychedelic counterculture to embrace stuff as different as pre-Raphaelite artists such as Beardsley (a huge influence on Hapshash, the preeminent British psych poster artist), surrealism, William Blake, Zen Buddhism, avant-garde noise electronics, and on and on and on, all of this being grouped together under the deceptively simple catch-phrase "Far out".
with Nirvana, while there is certainly a strain of postmodernism there, it's more of a sociological thing; not only underground/mainstream, but the concept of youth culture and adolescence itself. What is privileged is angst and authenticity, not creative flourishes and oddball strains that can be heard.

oh yeah you're totally right about why Hendrix's legacy is more colorful and nuanced, i was just lamenting that Nirvana's is less so

think i posted this elsewhere on ILM, but this hendrix thing is amazing: http://theheatwarps.tumblr.com/post/1129618708/saturday-will-mark-40-years-since-jimi-red-wined
an imagined double LP made up of posthumous material, which works way better than any of the officially released rarities discs I've heard. just some off the hook stuff.

― tylerw, Thursday, February 10, 2011 12:31 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

cool, need to come back to this later, i still haven't investigated much after starting this thread: search & destroy: the posthumous Jimi Hendrix catalog

i mean, listening to hendrix (i'm not like a crazy fan or anything even), i get the feeling he was pretty much capable of anything? that link i posted, he blows away everyone who was recording at the time, in terms of pure talent, imagination, fun, whatever.

'"I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad" is an amazing line. The delivery on that song is mind bending.'
really? to me the song (and that lyric in particular) only works as a sarcastic take on 80s-90s therapy-speak, like deliberately ham-fisted.
for example, the line before that is, "as my bones grew they did hurt / they hurt really bad"

listening to the hendrix boot tyler just posted, damn this goes IN

right? i mean, it might be my favorite hendix album!

hmmm may have to give that a listen. traditionally I've been put-off by the endless slew of "unreleased!" hendrix stuff that gets churned out (altho I was quite fond of the Band of Gypsys album back in the day)

yeah i think this mix is precisely for those of us who never had the inclination to wade thru everything....read the description, dude put a ton of editing work into this

the album art is great too - was that gonna be the actual album art or is that some fan-made collage thing

dude said it was done by the bitches brew artist for a possible gil evans / hendrix collab that obviously never happened.

(don't know if that's true or not)

art is better than this anyway
http://thehelplessdancer.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/gil-evans-plays-the-music-of-jimi-hendrix.jpg

lol

thx for the boot link, this thing is great. The 1997 'First Rays of the New Rising Sun' is a permanent car disc and the Hendrix I listen to most these days so really excited to hear a HendrixiStan's version.

listening to this again -- really is just peak after peak.

thing about this later stuff is that it's so rhythmically complex without seeming totally prog - he makes all these changes seem pretty natural, even though they must have been a bitch to play. at least for his sidemen. anyhoo, should probably just take it over to that posthumous hendrix thread

listening to chubby checker's self-reviled psychedelic album 'chequered' at the moment, and the song 'ballad of jimi' in particular, and chubby introduces what is, tbh, a pretty awful song with a dedication to his "best friend". and my question is, were chubby and jimi really such close friends?

This "First Rays" remix is sweet.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

^yeah, just an absolute laugh riot.

Yeah, I guess it depends on your personal sense of humour - whether you think "Territorial Pissings"'s sendup of hippie music is funnier than "Third Stone From the Sun"'s alien contemplating the destruction of surf music along with everything else on earth. (And Hendrix LIKED surf music btw.)

both those examples aren't funny but Kurt sang goofy more often than jimo

Jimo hongrox

At 14 my favourite artists were nirvana, hendrix and the cure. i think jimi was more innovative and humourous than kurt. nirvanas music seems to hit harder though. i guess growing up in the 90s helps but i would listen to nirvana before hendrix still tbh. i think its kurts voice that really does it. one of the best voices in rock.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

closer than i envisaged

lot of former 90s altrock kid i guess

i couldn't decide between them

The one major difference is that JHendrix was a UK phenomenon that got re-exported to the US.

Am I right in thinking that John Peel and the UK music press helped the likes of Nirvana and Mudhoney break through initially though?

i def bought 'nevermind' on the strength of a rave everett true review in the melody maker, back in the day. was too soft rock for my tastes tho, so i took it back to the shop.

xp - yes: http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the-sub-pop-rosta-18th-march-19891.jpg

I went to see Nirvana on the strength of John Peel playing 'Big Cheese' and 'Love Buzz' the whole damn time for a month.

iirc, that ran alongside another feature specifically on Mudhoney. Ironic how Mudhoney were the ones picked for stardom from the outset & subsequently got short shrift in the ensuing Seattle feeding frenzy.

xp

Let's face it, they were no Blood Circus.