He was a good songwriter, I give him that. And I believe he would have been able to grow in that field, if he still lived.

He also seemed to tap in right into the zeitgeist among many people with the sound and the lyrics of the Nevermind-album.

But personally, i have never been able to listen an Nirvana-album in its entirety. There was simply too much selfloathing in his lyrics, too much of a 'look how sad and pathetic i am'-thing that really turned me off.

Indeed, grunge was responsible for the dead of cheesy, badly composed and banal 'hair metal', but we got an equally annoying generation of over-serious 'whiners-with-bad-childhoods' like Staind and Papa Roach in return. Not exactly an improvement IMO.

Nonetheless, despite the whining and selfloathing, I can see he was a gifted songwriter. Not really original (mixing old REM with the Pixies and throwing in a snippet of The Beatles), but I could hear he could deliver a good hook, and write a strong melody.
Comparising him to Puff Daddy/Diddy is ridicolous (totally different styles of music, and Diddy is a clever businessman in the first place. Despite the annoying selfloathing, Cobain at least seem to 'mean it'.

Reacting on the following quote:



That is total bullshit your sprouting of course. Can only black musicians sing about being opposed? And was Cobain actually singing about that? I think he was simply singing about his personal, subjective view, whats wrong with that?
Is feeling cheated and angry something that is only happening to black people or something?
You sound like a little kid saying: 'Hey, Kurt says his life is bad, but my life is even worse. And as a black person I can know'. What a bunch of racistic bullocks.
As I said i am not a Cobain fan at all, but you bring a 'racial factor' that doesnt make any sense.

look fella, you have to be american to understand some things. I'm from the same place as kurt, and let me tell you, compared to a lot of places in the world, or even in america, it's just not that bad, pretty tame and boring really. And he's from Auburn, nothing happens in Auburn, nothing that would spawn real desperation or survival mechanisms. No you don't have to be black, that would be stupid, if that were the case Springsteen and Elvis would hold no meaning because their music is steeped in struggle, blues, dissapointment, joy. Kurt is not in that club, kurt is nothing but a narcissistic whiner, of course with a little push, teenagers will buy just about anything, just so happens that some of the fads have no overall lasting meaning, Elvis had meaning, The Beatles had meaning, Milli Vanilli, The Monkees and Kurt Kobain only prove the old adage "no one went broke underestimating the taste of the american public". If Kurt was really that good, I would be the first to admit it, he wasn't. Outside of Jim Morrison I can't think of a more deserving guy to destroy himself. you don't like life then get the fuck out, life's a gift, something the true rockers never forgot in spite of their shortcomings.

So now i have to be american to understand? give me a break please.

You are nothing more then an ignorant, racist whiner. Keep playing the victim-card I would say.

Kurt had a pretty traumatic childhood. How do you know nothing bad happens in Auburn? Are you in every home, church and school? Bad happens everywhere-just cause you don't see it or here it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I grew up in an idyllic, small Pennsylvania town with exteriors that would make Currier & Ives weep, but I could tell you some stories. There was REAL ugliness under that facade. REAL ugliness.

you are a condescending, elitist individual, and no, i'm not a whiner, life is struggle, for everyone, but...It is wonderful, life is great, I love life unlike yourself, you sound like a miserable person, i've seen your other posts jackass.that's the last I'll even read or respond to you. Someone should take your computer away so you could just sit trapped in your own hatred. And btw, I'm not black stupid, assuming little prick.

mozfonky just thinks he is 'more sad' then Kurt Cobain. And that only black people have the right to complain about their life, because it has been SO hard to them....

Wow I was going to comment on this thread but maybe not!

scriptgirl said:[quote]Kurt had a pretty traumatic childhood. How do you know nothing bad happens in Auburn? Are you in every home, church and school? Bad happens everywhere-just cause you don't see it or here it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I grew up in an idyllic, small Pennsylvania town with exteriors that would make Currier & Ives weep, but I could tell you some stories. There was REAL ugliness under that facade. REAL ugliness.[/quote

Everyone has a traumatic childhood, or at least its pretty common, after a point you have to get on with living. My qualm with guys like Kurt, and I've known a lot of them, is that life as it is just doesn't contain enough drama, so what do they do? They create craziness, in their dress, in their treatment of their bodies, in their mannerisms. Yes, that's right, they create problems because they don't have enough of them. Gen X oh what a crock of shit that was. As I've said, lest anyone takes exception, life is beautiful, life is gorgeous, but lets not forget that there are still horrible things out there, things that Kurt would know nothing about, and maybe if he did, he'd be a little tougher and more balanced, life is struggle for everyone, something some of us are quite at peace with. Some of us endure physical pain without resorting to crack, heroin, pills because we know that it's just a part of life and we accept it. I could forgive Kurt if what he did weren't such a slap in the face of Rock and Roll. And well, hip hop too, the goofballs that imitate these thugs on MTV don't know shit about gangsta life for the most part and often get themselves in deadly situations trying to imitate these idiots. At least grunge is dead, Hip Hop has taken over everything and is ten times worse an influence than grunge ever even hoped to be.

You keep playing the victim-role Mozfonky... huh.. don't you?

Cobain has been dead for over a decade now, why you bother?

I think Kurt Cobain is a very good songwriter & a great singer who came along just at the right time when rock music was ripe for change.

I agree he was right on time. If he had come out 10 years later, I don't think he would have had the same cultural impact.

Kurt was from Aberdeen, WA not Auburn.

I have been to Aberdeen and visited the Wishkah bridge which is now a public tribute to Kurt and fans like me travel there from all over the world.

I gotta say, that place is one hell of a backwater dump. Shit if I was from there I might wanna kill myself too

mozfonky said:

They don't understand because they weren't here to witness it. They saw the grunge scene from the t.v. and magazines. They didn't see the WHOLE scene, they only saw the parts the media wanted to show them to sell them on it.
The success of the Seattle grunge scene was mostly TIMING. The bottom fell out of the industry in 1990-1991 and grunge and rap sold when nothing else did. Execs ran to Seattle trying to sign every act that Sub Pop didn't already have locked down. The grunge scene was about white angst and Kurt was the voice of a generation. That I give him credit for. All of this b.s. about elevating him to "genius" level is basically the result of the romanticization of his work after his death. I had an interview he did in The Rocket (those who remember it know what I'm talking about) where he said that he didn't want to be an old ass rocker like the Stones. He wanted to burn out fast. Dude knew exactly what he was doing and where it was going to lead him. He expressed a tone of society during a specific era. He was not a genius. That does not mean he didn't affect or influence many people. He just wasn't a genius...unless you come to this thread...where he IS a genius and Mozart and Jimi pale in comparison.

I used to read the rocket even had a review in it once, but even the Rocket, if memory serves correctly, had Kurt over Jimi in some duphus list they had. Now to me that's just an insult and blatant racism. Kurt's live fast die young wish is just one of the reasons not to put him up there with the other greats. Jimi, Elvis and now, Michael all conquered and overcame a lot, they lost out to their own demons and drugs in the end but that doesn't negate all the great work they did. None of them consciously went about killing themselves and they all put lots of effort into their crafts. They all died still trying. Then you have a guy like Kurt who blows his brains out and leaves a whiny letter how he "loves you from the pit of my burning naseous stomach" and that's suppossed to make him some kind of genius in the end? At the end of the day, in my mind, he's just corny not really even worthy of a lot of debate. Some of his songs were alright, but I couldn't even tell you how good or bad his albums were because I was just never interested in them. He knocked some great albums off the charts along with hip hop though. Terence Trent Darby's symphony or damn, Springsteens double album release, Michaels album were all basically ignored or at least sold less because of this changing of style. I'm sorry, it's hard to be impressed by Kurt when you've grown up studying some of these other people, just doesn't make the cut. In fact, those are the years when I just stopped listening to any new music at all, and when I do get a peek of some of the crap passing for music in the subsequent years, I'm usually not surprised by how badly concieved, poorly sung and base the stuff is. I give credit where it's due, and sometimes we get some real talent but all too often it's just gimmicky or pandering to an audience that doesn't know any better.