10 August 2010

NIRVANA: "Good music is good music, and everything else can go to hell."

That's a Dave Matthews quote. This posting will not be about Dave Matthews, but that statement is a pretty solid note to start this blog on. No, this post is going to be about Nirvana... because they're sweet, and that's that. It makes sense to start this blog off with something of a foundation, and Grunge seems to be all the rage right now (no matter how incorrectly the term is being thrown around).


Recently I’ve spent a few months living in London for the purpose of studying fine art. However, I came away from that experience with a greater interest in music that in art. Not to say I didn’t learn a lot about art, I did. Central Saint Martins was pretty influential, and I went to the Tate Modern eight times in that stay in London alone, and countless (literally) other galleries. What really grabbed me though, was walking through the markets of Northwest borough Camden Town, and the conversations had while hanging around coffee shops in Shoreditch, an area of East London. The importance placed on music, and the aesthetic of musicians, amazed me. And then you come back to Vancouver and everyone’s stoked on The Beat 94.5 and all you can think is “What the heck is this drivel these people subject their ears to?” The scene that especially caught my attention was the Grunge scene from Seattle, circa 1989. I found a Michael Levine photography book filled with images of all of the so-called Grunge bands from the late 80’s moving into the early 90’s, and of course, within those pages were some sweet pictures of Nirvana.

Let’s take an unprecedented moment here to discuss the term Grunge, because the misuse and misunderstanding of this term is beginning to annoy me. The term was coined by a girl who worked in media relations at Sub Pop, an independent label out of Seattle in the late 80’s. She had to come up with something to summarize the sound that Sub Pop was delivering to the Seattle Scene, and found amusement in this term. The press ate it up. Check out Sub Pop's history, the label has been hugely influential. 

Sub Pop   PODFISTING OUR WAY TO YOUR BLOG. OR WHATEVER.

And so I moved into my Nirvana phase. Like Picasso and his painting periods, this is my Nirvana period, and it’s super long overdue. Man, the number of books I bought on this particular scene is ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome, but what was I thinking? Considering I had to bring them all home in the two suitcases I brought over when I moved, which mind you, were stuffed upon arrival with zero space for textbook size art books. All I can say is, Thank God the woman who checked in my bags at the airport going home was half-asleep, otherwise that could have been over a couple hundred dollars in weight.

Nirvana is to me like 50 Cent is to those crazy kids out in Port Coquitlam. So necessary. When I got back to Vancouver I was hanging out on Commercial Drive with a friend and found a used book by Michael Azerrad called Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. What a brilliant writer. I powered through the book, most of the time with a beer in hand, laughing and underlining amazing quotes and anecdotes. Here’s a favorite:

Nirvana's Nevermind Album Bio Info: "Cobain, a sawblade painter specializing in wildlife and landscapes, met Novoselic at the Gray's Harbor Institute of Northwest Crafts. Novoselic had a passion for gluing seashells and driftwood on burlap and, he remembers, 'I liked what Kurt was doing. I asked him what his thoughts were on a macaroni mobile I was working on. He suggested I glue glitter on it. That really made it!' The incident formed the basis of Nirvana's magic."

Amazing. How can you not be stoked on Kurt Cobain after such a display of wit? Genius. 

With such a defective foundation built by the parents of Gen-X’ers (thank you Douglas Coupland for that misguiding term) it’s no wonder that bands like Green River, Mudhoney, girl band L7 and various others emerged and took such a strong hold with youths. This was a generation defined by their parents’ misgivings, the first bunch of kids dealing with the ugly nature of divorce. Kurt Cobain was no exception. Neither was Dave Grohl, same goes for Chris (Krist) Novoselic. The frustration had to go somewhere. And so it was funneled into three epic albums: Bleach, Nevermind and In Utero, as well as several singles.






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