In Utero

I've had an intense love/hate relationship with Nirvana since the 11th grade. I loved them unconditionally when I was in the 10th grade, but when you get older and smarter and more musically informed, it becomes more difficult to decide which stance to take. The initial transition is to, 'They had some good tunes,' and then, 'They were fucking lame,' and then, 'They're one of the worst occurrences in rock history,' if you want to be over-the-top about it, which I did. But all of these statements are nothing if not uninformed and somewhat silly, and definitely immature.

Firstly, they had a lot of really good fucking songs (Blew, Negative Creep, Swap Meet, Drain You, Aneurysm, all of the songs on In Utero, everything on Nirvana: Unplugged, etc.). Secondly, all rock music is usually pretty lame if you really think about it. In fact, it's almost impossible to really, 'rock,' without being, 'lame.' If you don't follow me I don't really know how to explain it, plus I am kind of full of shit, cause the definition of 'cool' I'm using to claim that rocking is lame is not the definition of cool that I would really use. I can't look at the back of Appetite For Destruction and pretend that it's not cool, or read about Nikki Sixx snorting ants and piss and not think that's cool, or listen to a Nirvana song (aside from Smells Like Teen Spirit, Something in the Way, etc.) without thinking it's cool, so fuck it.

But if we're using the indie pretention definition of cool, rocking is uncool. Which is why Indie is cool, and also why it sucks balls. Same can be said for instrumental music of any kind (aside from Miles Davis, which is obviously cool as fuck).

Anyway, that being said, Nirvana were pretty cool. Kurt Cobain, as a dude, was never cool. In fact he was almost always the least cool person in the room. He was either being somewhat friendly and normal, or quiet and weird. He was never being cool. Before Nevermind, he was that loser that butts into a conversation about like, Pavement or something, and is like, 'Yeh they totally rule, I totally know who they are and like them.' (This is documented on at least one occasion.) But on a general scale, in the eyes of the public and rock music after the 80's, he was the coolest shit ever, and so was Nirvana.

Smells Like Teen Spirit is supposed to be the 'definitive' Nirvana song, but that's only because it was the breakthrough hit, but if you know anything about the band and why they were important, it should be pretty obvious that the real definitive Nirvana song is Lithium. Lithium so thoroughly defines everything about that band, their following, and their importance and why they 'defined a generation,' that it's fucking sick. The lyrics in the song are definitely not cool, but they're certainly not as embarrassing as the lyrics in Teen Spirit, and they certainly do say a lot about everyone who loved the band and why. I really don't want to go into all the lyrics in the song, so I'm not going to, but listen to it and think about what defines 'generation x;' it's all there.

Bleach was a fucking awesome record. It didn't have any label pressure, it had very few really lame lyrics, and all the songs rock your ass off. Nevermind seems, at first, like some singles and filler, but there are like six really good fucking songs on it (Come As You Are, Lithium, Drain You, Breed, Polly and Lounge Act, the others are debatable). Which means, generally, it's listenable in its' entirety. Incesticide is brilliant, and better than Nevermind. Aneurysm is probably the best song Nirvana ever recorded, with the possible exception of You Know You're Right. Plus Dive, Sliver, Been a Son, Molly's Lips, Downer, Hairspray Queen and Aerozeppelin are all really good songs.

I'm giving In Utero it's own paragraph, since when I started writing this, it was only to talk about that record. In Utero is fucking awesome. All the music that Steve Albini writes himself sucks ass, and he should really not bother, but as a producer, he's a fucking genius. His brilliance on Surfer Rosa goes without saying, but it's really cool that Nirvana would choose him based on such a great record, and that he would help Nirvana make what's probably their best album, in the general sense. I don't skip any songs on In Utero. I don't have any albums that sound like it, and that's awesome. It' s got bone-crushing drums, impressively precise and consistent bass lines, and crunching startling guitars that melt your fucking face. I won't get into how underrated Cobain's guitar-playing is (even though it is) but I will say that the guitar playing on this album is incendiary and immaculate. All the songs are good, and I'm glad the band fucked with Albini's production by adding Scott Litt's mix work. I'm sure that the band was right about the album not being good enough as Albini's 'final product,' especially since everyone except Albini (who, pretentious asshole that he is, claimed he worked with Nirvana out of pity for them) agrees that the vocals weren't loud enough, and the bass was inaudible. Both those things are unacceptable. This record rocks so hard it's ridiculous, and therefore, by my definition, it's cool as fuck. And the older I get, the less I give a shit about the lyrics being 'lame.' As far as I'm concerned, Cobain just wrote about whatever, and all power to him really; we can't all be Morrissey.

That wasn't the point anyway, and that's why Nirvana will be loved and hated for all the wrong reasons forever. Everyone acts like it's bullshit when Cobain (and Dave and Krist, by the way) insist that the lyrics were the least important part, and that the structure, melody and fucking ROCK was what mattered, but I'm 100% positive that this was the case. In fact, it seems almost stupidly obvious. This would be easy to argue for Bleach, but in every song they ever wrote, the subject has no consistency, often doesn't make sense, and lines are placed seemingly at random, as long as they rhyme, and sometimes even if they don't. You will get no argument from me that Cobain wrote really terrible poetry on a regular basis, and everyone knows that a lot of his lyrics came from those, so from that you can basically just claim that his lyrics were terrible, and fair enough, but really though, who fucking cares? If you're into a band because of their lyrics, that's stupid. And this is coming from a dude who's favourite song of all time (probably) is a Smiths song. But the Smiths were an awesome band. Morrissey's lyricism is an important part, obviously, to everything that the band was, but if Marr, Rourke and Joyce had sucked ass, I wouldn't care about them. In Nirvana's case, I mostly regard the lyrics the same way as the bass line, they sounded good, in a purely musical sense.

Most of the time when I talk about Kurt Cobain, I feel like an asshole. This is because I pass a ridiculous amount of judgement his way, the same way that everyone else does, despite the fact that in reality, I don't really know anything about him, and neither does anyone else who talks about him all the time. I know his birthday, his parents, who gave him his first guitar, his favourite album of the 80's, when he killed himself, what his suicide note said, and an endless amount of useless trivia shit, but I don't know him, at all. All the people that did know him (Krist, Dave, that dude that still does heroin and insists that no one killed Kurt because if he thought they had, 'they would be dead... I would kill them.') seem to agree that he was a good dude. Apparently funny, really serious about loving music, friendly, and a bit odd, but never pretentious, no sense of inflated self-importance, no elitist attitude, etc. This seems fair enough and everything, but for some reason I still assume he was an asshole. Mostly because he killed himself, and people that kill themselves are assholes. But then, as I talk out loud, I inevitably blame Courtney Love. I know this seems like a lame fan thing to think, but it seems legitimately probable. He may not have been so bad with heroin, he wouldn't of abandoned all of his friends and made them hate him (though they never said they hated him, it seems pretty obvious) and therefore he may have enjoyed playing music and continued doing it.

I honestly believe that he felt trapped by Courtney. Everyone has stated in interviews that she was a controlling bitch (she would come down to the studio during the recording of In Utero and piss everyone off by critiquing everyone, and Kurt would just sit there all sad and shit) and no one provides more evidence of this then her. The fact that she kept the rights to their catalogue and unreleased material is fucking infuriating, even to me. She had nothing to do with their music, and it's as plain as day to everyone who isn't retarded that Krist and Dave should own all rights to the music they helped create. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at here, is that Courtney killed Cobain, but not in any conspiracy type way, she was just real bad for him in general. I don't buy that she made any serious attempt to get him off drugs, and I do buy that she was/is a stupid bitch.

So the thing is this: all accounts of Cobain seem to point out the fact that whenever he was playing shows and writing songs, he was happy, and whenever he wasn't he was not. This makes a lot of sense. Courtney seemed to have fucked this up for him. If she'd been a good wife/mother, I really don't buy that he would've been so selfish as to off himself. Reports also indicate that Kurt was considering breaking up the band, and I don't buy that either. Cobain reported that he was super-psyched that some of the songs on In Utero came together jamming, and were therefore collaborative efforts, and they fucking made You Know You're Right, and Kurt was working with Pat Smear on a recently released home recording called Do Re Mi, that's fucking really, really good. This doesn't seem like a person ready to quit. In fact, the only person that seems certain of this is Courtney, because she wanted him to quit. Therefore, I'm sure the prospect of not having his friends, family or band and being left to deal with Courtney's psycho shit, and be a heroin-addicted asshole worse at fathering than his father, made him want to kill himself (coupled, of course, with a mysterious stomach disease, as well as what was probably manic depression). That makes a lot of sense to me.

Nirvana:Unplugged is so fucking good it doesn't even make sense. It is the best live album of all time. All the songs on it are better than the original versions (especially the covers) and you can definitely tell that Kurt is mad down with this idea, despite his supposed dislike of MTV. Everything about this album is great. It's also very much one of a kind. I won't get too far into it, but I'm just saying, Nirvana:Unplugged fa lyfe.

I think this will be the last thing I talk about: You Know You're Right is by far the best single of their career (or would've been) it's better than the rest combined, including Love Buzz and obviously Teen Spirit. Do Re Mi was a major step forward in Cobain's songwriting and singing, therefore, if it hadn't been for Courtney Love, they would've made the best album of their career in the next year or so, and that's depressing.

I hope Courtney Love gets cancer.