Ten Years Gone

[dougo]

Kurt Cobain died ten years ago yesterday, April 5th, 1994. His body wasn't found until April 8th, so I guess that would be an additional day to memorialize if you missed it yesterday.

I remember waking up to the radio that day discussing a body being found in the attic of his house, but people thought he was in Europe and it was some crazy fan who snuck in or something; I don't remember exactly when I learned that it was confirmed to be his body, later that day at work or maybe even some days later (there was a lot of confusion).

It was a sad month, seeing his face everywhere (TV, magazine covers, t-shirts). It was strange to see the attention his death got in the national media, when at the time grunge was still not quite fully mainstream; and even then, he was just a guy in a popular band with a nasty drug habit who offed himself, and didn't seem to deserve the Lennon-like level of public mourning. On a personal level, however, his death did affect me deeply; Nirvana was never my favorite band or anything, but it and he represented a lot of things that were important to me, like the way the culture was changing (or the way I wanted it to change) as my generation was coming of age. Well, that's kind of vague, and not the whole of it, but I can't really put into words all of how I felt connected to him and how I wanted to see (and hear) him succeed (whatever that meant).

I'm curious about how the world would be different had he been able to do what he needed to survive (starting with a divorce, most likely), but I can't say that I wish he were alive because I don't really think it would be that different. I sometimes wonder the same thing about Hendrix surviving, but I've pretty much decided his soul would have been crushed by the '70s anyway. Instead I just fervently hope that Frances Bean will turn out OK and manage to put together a good life for herself.

[Also, MLK was assassinated 36 years ago the day before yesterday. I only know this because the U2 song "Pride" has the line "early morning, April 4". I hadn't noticed the nearness of those dates before, huh.]

Comments

[petdance.livejournal.com]

Would there have been anything worth listening to after "In Utero"? I wonder. Doing an Unplugged album didn't bode well, Meat Puppets in tow or not.

And for what it's worth, Bono took liberties on "Pride". MLK was shot around 6pm.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Well, I really like "You Know You're Right", which was recorded in early 1994. I think they had plenty more good stuff in them. The interesting question is whether Kurt would have let Dave Grohl write some songs, maybe turning them into a quasi-Foo Fighters. (Or maybe Grohl didn't care about songwriting until Kurt died?)

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

I was a huge Nirvana fan and remembered defending "Kurdt" when he took that barbituate overdose. The way I recall it, grunge was already the mainstream by then. Unfortunately, teen angst went in a different direction and now we are stuck with sub-music by Eminem and apparently now someone called 50-cent. Not that Nirvana was so musically talented, but at least it had melody and was pretty short on the profanity.

I've been trying to wait-out hip-hop, but it just keeps getting more and more popular. I should be glad that, even though my neighboors are very annoying, that they don't play loud rap. They like punk, though, and I've decided uninvited punk--and basically uninvited music of any kind--sucks too. (Again, equal lack of music talent there.)

Music used to actually mean something. Now the rebel image of the 60s has been appropriated by large record companies just to sell more music. The image is there, but everything else has been removed. To one of my younger housemates in Massachusetts Eminem meaned a lot to her. She felt that he addressed issues people didn't like to talk about. I can't say that I agree, but it does support the idea that people mistake the image for the real thing these days.

(OK, I suppose there's Rage Against the Machine, Blackalicious and other examples, but you really have to look to find it.)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything against hip-hop. There's some fantastically creative stuff going on in the hip-hop/R&B world (Missy Elliott, Outkast, the Roots, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D.) and I don't think it's going away anytime soon. The main thing that depressed me about the fall of grunge in the mid '90s was the rise of dancing boy bands and young divas; I realize that the next generation deserves their share of the pop culture focus, but it felt like we only got about 5 years or so in between the Boomers and them. I'm glad for the White Stripes, though.