mrdespues said:

Sad that they don't make like that anymore. Does anything pass for good altnerative rock anymore?

VinnyM27 said:

Queens of the Stone Age are pretty cool.

i liked nirvana for about a week. literally. then i realized i just wasn't that angsty. i never knew what he was talking about in smells like teen spirit, i just knew i liked tori's version as much as their's. and since i never know what she's on about, it just all seemed to make sense to me at the time.

i did like temple of the dog, soundgarden, sonic youth, dinosaur jr., and the rest of the 120 minutes crowd (i loved 120 minutes, by the way, but moreso when dave kendall was hosting it and they played siouxsie, echo and the bunnymen, the cure... ). i just never fell for nirvana or pearl jam. i think because i couldn't away from them. they were everywhere.

sallysassalot said:

Kurt would be very pleased to know that you never cared for Pearl Jam.

Militant said:

I AGREE 100%

Anx said:

Militant said:

NDRU said:

I've never understood all the credit given to Nirvana.

I'll give them "interesting." And their lyrics and contructions were even pretty thoughtful. (The whole quiet-loud-quiet succession was MAD energizing! And All Apologies, in fact, remains one of my all-time favorite songs.) But I wonder if they were simply "the lucky ones" amid countless kids that were fairly identical, just as talented... and just as internally bored out of their friggin' minds.

That whole "grunge" scene was the weirdest thing I think I've seen as an adult. It was like a '90s Beat Generation redux: A bunch of largely middleclass, suburban kids suffering the futility of being raised not quite desolate enough to access any deeper personal soul, but perhaps not quite privileged and perfect enough that they could access the spoils of mindless mall culture. (Joni Mitchell called 'em "whiny white kids.") Suddenly, "fitting in" and actually being happy with things became somehow unsatisfactory. ...especially if those things were enjoyed by too many other people. And God forbid those other people not be as melancholy and cynical as you!

So no more glam. No more pop music or pop icons. No more allegiance to '80s-style capitalism and mass marketing (even though secretly that's exactly what every would-be-recognized grunge band craved.) And it was cool as hell to claim anything esoteric and/or underdog among your peers and inspirations: So suddenly 120 Minute-type no-name acts over, say, U2 or R.E.M. (both of whom were heralded as awesome in their own "alternative" days, but rendered somehow less cool simply because they'd become too appreciated); suddenly the heroin of yesteryear over the more contemporary cocaine as the "chic drug"; suddenly the clinically depressed homeless look over... well... personal hygiene.

And the nihilist reactionism didn't end there: As soon as people began respecting the very real merits of the scene's aesthetic, the purveyors thereof effectively turned their backs even on themselves! Bands broke up. Grungers started publicly dissing grunge. Other started ODing and/or killing themselves. The sh*t was crazy! (Apparently the logic of the scene was/is: People acknowledging something is worth existing = that thing isn't worth existing.)

There are bands I like that were grouped with this scene, but self-loathing and self-pity en masse has just never appealed that much to me.

...No offense to all y'all Nirvana/grunge fans, by the way. Just stating my opinion.
[Edited 9/26/06 22:04pm]

its a good Replacements song.

VinnyM27 said:

I dunno, I try to achieve a similar result in my own music (check the sig)

sallysassalot said:

i loved it when nirvana would come out in tutus and do ballet dances to tori's version of 'teen spirit' - i wish to hell i had it on video!

see, i never thought of nirvana as angst for the sake of angst. i always thought there was a lot of humor and insight and genuine sadness in kurt's lyrics. i think anyone who registers the whole of their work as a lot of big angry noise is just skimming the surface instead of cracking it. a song like "all apologies" or "pennyroyal tea" is just completely brilliant to me, and makes me frustrated for where his songwriting could have gone.

i'm sorry, but i remember the days when kurt was writing love notes to the advocate magazine and writing killer liner notes about how he didn't want date-raping jocks at his shows and kissing his bandmates on the mouth on SNL and starting feuds with axl rose and doing a morrissey impersonation during a tv performance of 'teen spirit' and playing an old guitar of leadbelly's on mtv unplugged and covering an old bowie tune...and and and...yeah, you're right, they sucked, what was i thinking

Anx said:

What he said.

Everything that has an indelible impact will have a backlash.

This song did spearhead a shift in rock, even if Nirvana wasn't the only band of the zeitgeist. They were incredibly gifted musicians with a rather remarkable purity in their approach. I'll never consider myself a huge fan, but I'll always appreciate Nirvana.

Moonbeam said:

too heavy?

GangstaFam said:

No- I can't fault the music at all. I just don't identify with it enough to consider myself a huge fan. I totally understand all of the gaga gushfests about them, though.

Moonbeam said:

too 90's?

Moonbeam said:

And yet, you hate one of their biggest influences, The Beatles?

GangstaFam said:

co-sign

well put, Anx.

mrdespues said:

i don't know how conscious an influence the beatles were on nirvana, at least on kurt. i think his influences were more in the vein of the pixies and a lot of the old indie bands. i do hear a plain lennon/mccartney influence in their slower stuff, but then again 'teen spirit' sounds like a boston song.

Anx said:

I've always thought that "About A Girl" sounded like an early Beatles song on crack.

GangstaFam said:

yeah, kinda...or like an old beatles song with a black eye.

NDRU said:

I love Nirvana's Nevermind. Pearl Jam was great in that era ("Jeremy" being one of my favorite songs of all time), and also the old Peppers -- Mofo Part Plan; Mother's Milk and BLood, Sugar, Sex.... One of my favorite bands was Rage Against the Machine. People always tell me to try Audioslave, but I just have a hard time with that transition. I also loved Arrested Development. There were a lot of great bands from that era. I also love watching MTV unplugged. And there was that late nite music show--I can't remember its name. I miss that era a lot.
[Edited 9/27/06 5:40am]

Anx said:

Anx, you should really know that The Beatles in particular John Lennon were a HUGE influence on Kurt!

mrdespues said:

it's been a long time since i read my nirvana bio...i know kurt dug the beatles, but i also got the idea that he kinda tried to downplay that in order to give exposure to a lot of the more obscure bands he loved. which doesn't mean he was any less of a beatles fan, i guess...

mrdespues said:

Yeah, he was pretty clear in his feelings about the Beatles.

But other than the airtight songwriting, I don't HEAR much of their sound rubbing off on Nirvana.

Anx said:

Yeah, that was just to fit into the scene, but he was a huge pop fan on the inside.

GangstaFam said:

As a songwriter myself, I can hear Lennon all through his work.

Take away the distortion and lyrical Cobainisms and unconventional chord changes and there's a lot of similarity to Lennon, melodically and harmonically.

Much of Nevermind for example, songs like Drain You...so Lennon!

Also All Apologies.... Lithium... Heart Shaped Box....

Both Cobain and Lennon are pretty big influences on my own writing, so I can hear a lot of similarities beyond the superficial differences. And influences are usually not conscious acknowledgments... they just come out in the mix... like anything in life, whatever you put in will come out again in some way..it's the same in song.

mrdespues said:

yup, that's the vibe i get. kinda like how prince seems to downplay his love of hendrix so as not to appear too rock-ist (my theory, anyway).

Anx said:

That was always mine too, regarding Prince and Hendrix!