I don't remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died.

That's not because important cultural moments don't affect me. I'll probably
always remember where I was when the verdict came in for the O.J. Simpson
criminal case, or when either of the doomed space shuttles blew up. It's not
because the deaths of musicians whom I don't know personally don't affect
me; just within the past three years I've mourned the loss of people as
disparate as Joey Ramone, Johnny Cash, and Warren Zevon. And it's not
because, contra Shawn, I'm too old to have been a part of the age group
susceptible to Cobain's influence; I was as heavily invested in new music in
1991 as I was ten years earlier (or now), and I remember where I was when I
heard that John Lennon had died -- and Lennon was a musician from an era
before mine who had gone into retirement right around the time that I hit
puberty.

I don't remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died, because he didn't really
matter to me. My primary reaction when I heard of his death had nothing to
do with his music or his "influence upon the troubled youth of today", blah
blah blah -- it was anger over the fact that his suicide had selfishly hurt
those close to him who had loved him, especially in that it had forever
deprived his toddler daughter of her father. 

Like Mike Bennett, I can think of solid big-picture reasons related to the
music industry as to why Nirvana mattered. But I can't relate to big-picture
reasons why the lyrical content of the band's music and their anti-hero
stance was some sort of seminal cultural signpost. I have a soft spot for
rock'n'roll's loveable losers -- every 'mats fan does -- but I'm not so sure
that I want to be a part of some sort of mass movement that's led by them. I
reject appeals to generational groupthink, for one, and I'm deeply
suspicious for a number of reasons of pop music that purports to "mean
something". I've found that music most often succeeds in telling us
something about the human condition only when it isn't falling all over
itself lyrically in an attempt to do so. And music also tends to convey just
as much or most of its meaning from a listener-directed point of view rather
than an artist-directed point of view -- which is why I can say without
apology that the greatest song in rock'n'roll history bar none is 2:23 worth
of energetic and barely-tuneful clatter from a mid-sixties quartet of
Minneapolis nobodies about a bird who surfs and who also happens to be "the
word". 

I agree with Mike's comment about Nirvana consolidating and crystallizing
the indie-rock universe that came before them. But I wouldn't say that they
*culminated* the movement, at least in a musical sense. I don't think that
Nirvana musically superseded several of the bands that directly influenced
their sound and attitude -- the Wipers, the Replacements, the Pixies, the
Meat Puppets, Husker Du, the Minutemen. Nirvana had the killer single and
the right moment in history that those bands didn't have, but that didn't
necessarily make them a better band than their predecessors.

Still, it's true that Cobain, Novoselic, and Grohl *do* deserve credit for
opening up the radio world and the major labels, at least momentarily, to a
different and wider palette of artists. And that's not an insignificant
thing, even if the word "alternative" did become heavily larded with irony
within a very short amount of time. But "different" doesn't always
necessarily mean "better". While it was good to have Nirvana's outsider
ethos present to act as a palliative to the cheeseball decadence of the
hair-metal bands that ruled rock prior to "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the
pendulum tended to swing too far in the other direction in their wake.
Grunge and alternative made it fashionable to be a whiny, angsty,
emotionally self-indulgent act that took itself far too seriously (which
Alicia Silverstone's character in *Clueless* brilliantly described as
"complaint rock"). Posturing is posturing, no matter if it's swaggering or
slouching.

And in the end, even the most bitter and disaffected musician ought to have
a sense of humor about him- or herself. It humanizes someone far more than
does making Big Statements or living an outlaw life. I remember reading
about Cobain's irritated dismissal of Weird Al Yankovic's brilliant and
hilarious spoof of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and thinking, "Here's a guy
that does not know how to laugh at himself." It made him that much less
likeable.

I'm with Will Harris on this one. I own Nirvana's albums, and I like some of
their songs. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was, and is, one of the best singles
to come out of the nineties, and I prefer Cobain's take on "The Man Who Sold
the World" to Bowie's original -- a distinction I don't make lightly. They
*were* an interesting band, and they earned their rightful niche in rock
history (although the critical hosannas that have been flung their way over
the years tend to be overblown). But I can think of a number of Seattle
bands that were their contemporaries who stand higher in my personal
pantheon: the Young Fresh Fellows, the Posies, Flop, and Fastbacks, to name
just four.

Papa ooh mah-mah mahw, papa ooh mah-mah mahw.


Gregory Sager