Happy Birthday Kurt

 Kurt Cobain would have been 50 years old today. RIP good sir.

Kurt Cobain - Gone 20 Years

 Ack, while I'm busy spewing out ten updates in a row . . . my apologies (no pun intended) to the late great Kurt Cobain. The 20th (!) anniversary of his death passed this week without my commenting. RIP sir, RIP.

Nirvana on Ice

I've got nothing against figure skating, OK? I might even admit to liking it as a spectator sport. And I certainly have nothing against U.S. skater Scott Williams. But this . . [weeps] . . . this . . is a MONSTROSITY. Why Scott? Why?



To make things worse, it's not even a cover, which I think would be slightly kosher, it's the actual album version. Therefore *someone* gave permission to use it, which means I have one more f*ing reason to hate Courtney Love.

Kurt Cobain, and a story of Hole in concert

I think it's downright deplorable that more than a month has passed since the anniversary of his death and I have yet to post in memory of Kurt Cobain.

I know, I know - most of you have no interest in the lead singer of Nirvana. A close friend of mine online has called him a 'loser' and a 'druggie' and even Lisa, while tolerant of my love for Nirvana, secretly dismisses their music as noise and hold them accountable for the death of New Kids.

"School ended and everyone was wearing NKOTB shirts. . . school started in the fall and those same girls were wearing flannel."

Nirvana didn't kill off NKOTB - they had already peaked - but I'm proud to say they did knock Michael Jackson out of the #1 slot, never to return.

I won't go into a long post about Kurt. Instead I'll direct you to a long post I wrote a few years ago. It was over-the-top in parts but it's far from the worst thing I ever wrote.

Ringing endorsement, huh?

* * *

Hand in hand with a love of Kurt seems to be a distaste for . . or outright hatred of his wife Yoko Ono/Maria/Holly/Heather McCartney, a.k.a. Courtney Love. As a cowinkydink, here's the second of three comments an employee (World Traveler) wrote to Slapinons. It tells of seeing Courtney's band Hole in concert.

I have edited it for content, because the man has a knack for vulgarity that would make me pirate grandpappy proud.

So, I will repeat what I so arduously attempted to put down last night. 
 
A long, long time ago in a barrio far, far away, past Boyle Heights, Past East L.A., Past Pacoima, Downey, I mean way out there hombre, Lived a gangly group of fellows:  Dark Vatos, Chewy tobacco, Han Cholo and Princess laidup.  There it was a coffee shop as coffee shops were wont to be in poor, dangerous and dark, deep darkest areas of Los Angeles, a few suburban white kids crossed the color barrier to see a show at the "Natural Fudge Cafe."  We are talking old school, before Lesbians felt safe playing folk songs in Coffee shops or "Coffee Houses" as then they were called.    Am I taking too long getting to the point, too bad!  This is not your forum, eh?
 
Our purpose in trekking past our demographic restrictions was to see a band I am most sure you would approve of called "The Imperial But Wizards."  More on them later.  So, we paid our three dollars and were entreated to a skanky, dirty, dirty-blonde string bag screaming into the microphone with increasing intensity:  "I am not going to f’king strip anymore."  Now, this is long before girls in various parts of the country incorporated words like "F’ing and MotherF*er" so we were a bit interested for the first few and then began to boo with the rest of the ten or twelve in the audience.
 
The Band of course was "Hole" and it had to be all in all, the worst excuse for a headliner.  Most certainly, they did not rate opening up for the But Wizards.  The Bass player was a drunken [redacted] who just held onto the bass like Jimmy Page permanently bent over his Gibson Les Paul.  She didn't even attempt to play, which at least was honest.  The drummer wasn't all that bad and perhaps was the only one with any talent.  I think she could keep time.  Heavy, large and with a chin stud-- than rather avant garde -- she was pretty as an old washtub.  The guitar player was a dude with long hair, unshaven, no makeup and a pull over summer dress.  He was assiduously watching the fretboard, trying to recall the bar chords to the only song they could play over and over again, Neil Young's, "Cinnamon Girl."  He could not keep time nor could he fret a simple bar chord, but no matter. 
 
Later on, weeks after the show after leaving a .45 Grave concert at Raji's on Hollywood Blvd, I struck up a conversation with the aforementioned drummer.  I found her intimidating and big and she invited mefor coffee but I begged out.  Still, I had to ask her about the Vanilla Fudge Concert a few weeks back and it was all she could do to say that next time, she would be singing and that Courtney was stripping for a reason, track marks not withstanding. 
 
[redacted], I want to get on with the real show, the Imperial But Wizards and I would like to refer you to .45 Grave, a most talented, parody death rock band whose lead singer,"Dinah Cancer" [redacted].  But always keep them wanting more, eh.  So for next time, doglast

Tags: Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain

With yesterday being Easter and all, I figured it wasn't the right time to go ahead and post a tribute to a guy who committed suicide (officially at least).

Anyway, here's a link to an article I wrote in '05 about Kurt.

To quote my '06 entry:  The tribute I wrote last year [2005] strikes me as a little too dramatic and formulaic in retrospect, but the sentiment holds true [and what I wrote in the comments sections is some writing I'm pretty proud of, imho]

RIP Kurt

Tags: Cobain, Nirvana, Grunge

Kurt Cobain

Today is the twelfth anniversary of the (estimated) death of Kurt Cobain. The tribute I wrote last year strikes me as a little too dramatic and formulaic in retrospect, but the sentiment holds true [and what I wrote in the comments sections is some writing I'm pretty proud of, imho]

It's been generating some comments lately, so feel free to give it a read if you like.

BTW - anybody else catch the recent news that Courtney has sold off a large share of the rights to Kurt's work? Always the opportunist . . look, let me be blunt: take a look at the website on the pic above, and tell me she didn't have something to do with his death. Maybe she didn't murder him, but she knows more than she's let on. Take a listen to the genuine (candid) audio tapes that reveal her duplicity and judge for yourself.

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The Post about Kurt Cobain April 5th - 11 years later

Eleven years ago today - as best the medical examiner could determine - Kurt Donald Cobain died.

His death was officially recorded as a suicide, and despite great efforts to prove otherwise, it probably was.

[Yet questions remain. Not the least of them how a man injects a dose of heroin large enough to kill instantaneously, yet still finds the time and strength to roll down and button his sleeve, store his paraphernalia, and pick up and use a shotgun]

Whatever the method, his death was a tragedy.

A tragedy for his infant daughter, who has spent her life spinning memories of her father from what she sees and reads about his career.

A tragedy for his fans, who were denied the gift of his talent -and the dozens who mourned his death by following in his footsteps.

And a tragedy for Kurt himself, whose memory and music are now horribly intertwined with a macabre death.

That quite frankly, is obscene.

Obscene because everything you see and hear about Kurt and Nirvana is viewed through the lens of his death. People refuse to think of him as anything but a character in an art house movie, where every scene and every line of dialog has to foreshadow the end:

• MTV turned Unplugged in New York into a funeral dirge when the station played it endlessly after his death.

Never mind that it was one of the most innovative and enjoyable concerts of the series.

• Biographies of the band read like psychology texts, probing and engorging any event for a clue to the suicide.
• The lyrics are dissected and robbed of context. Why? to find a line that has no literal connection to what occurred, but which proves too tasty a quote for some authors to ignore.

Enough.

Go fire up your stereo and listen to Nevermind, their breakthrough album that knocked Michael Jackson from the #1 slot and ended the reign of Michael Bolton and New Kids on the Block.*

Tell me On a Plain, Lithium, or God forbid Smells Like Teen Spirit are anything but joyous anthems of Generation X.

Or their follow up album In Utero: darker, with less concession to commercial demands, but rife with memorable hooks. From the opening notes of Heart Shaped Box to the relentless attack of Scentless Apprentice, this was not the work of a man who had given up hope and abandoned what was important to him.

Of course Nirvana wasn't the The Judds, and not every song was suitable for a child's birthday party.

But I often wonder how much of that was Kurt just living up to his billing. For a man who allegedly hated the limelight, he certainly sought it out enough. He seemed to recognize this contradiction in himself:

Teenage angst has paid off well

but now I'm bored and old . . .

It may be hypocritical, given that I'm choosing to honor him on the annniversary of his death, but I prefer to forget how it ended and concentrate on the things that made me love his music in the first place.

Ear shattering drums that made your speakers quake. Bass lines that refused to quietly submit to a subordinate role, and in fact led the charge on most songs. Guitar that could be manic one second and controlled and subtle the next, with solos that were truly part of a song, not an excuse to write one. Vocals that were raw emotion, with lyrics that gained their strength and context as they wrapped themselves around the music.

That was Nirvana.

And that was Kurt Cobain.

 

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*long time readers will know what a bittersweet,double-edged sword it is to say that