Nirvana C/D

I suppose "In Bloom" was his lament of fans who had no fucking idea who he was and what he represented?

yep, as someone in a small british city getting into them in the late 90s, I would say anyone I knew who was really into the band couldn't help but be aware of it. it wasn't some secret. all we had pre-internet was liner notes and even though we were coming to the party late, we would read the shit out of kurt's every utterance.

it was hard convincing my literal-minded mother to let me buy In Utero because of "Rape Me", which of course, she took as a pro-rape anthem.

didn't get it until my 20s

my dad tried to drill hard into my head that Kurt Cobain was a lazy slacker loser asshole that I shouldn't give my money to

I actually know someone whose Dad reportedly did the same, and from everything else I know, he always sounded like that character Lee J. Cobb plays in 12 Angry Men...but this is like 50+ years after that movie came out and I always think "why do parents like you still have to exist?"

Nirvana ruled.

anytime I go somewhere with a Touchtunes I love to put "Milk It" and "Scentless Apprentice" on, followed sometimes by "Breed". those are good ones to enjoy w/ other people.

Also: to champion the Raincoats, Bikini Kill, and Hole in the early '90s as a blonde blue-eyed dude was in its small way a queer thing, and I responded.

I was 15 when Nevermind came out and a huge fan. I remember the older meatheads at my central Illinois high school listening to it, but starting to call it "music for queers" after the infamous ball gown on Headbanger's Ball. Since it pissed off these guys who hadn't yet moved past Aerosmith and Van Halen (not to disparage these bands), I knew that Kurt was onto something and it made me embrace them all the more.

Also: to champion the Raincoats, Bikini Kill, and Hole in the early '90s as a blonde blue-eyed dude was in its small way a queer thing, and I responded.

this. kurt tried to do good with the power he was awarded by his band's success

More Songs About Queers and Raincoats.

people who tried to call Bush the British Nirvana aggravated me.

"Benzedrine telephone" gtfo

It's been a long time since I read it, but if I recall correctly Everett True's book contextualises the influence of Riot Grrl and Olympia pretty thoroughly.

my dad tried to drill hard into my head that Kurt Cobain was a lazy slacker loser asshole that I shouldn't give my money to

Typical dad behavior!

"if you're racist, sexist, or a bigot, don't listen to our band, I don't care if you love me because I fucking hate you" -

I suppose "In Bloom" was his lament of fans who had no fucking idea who he was and what he represented?

These fans were undeterred, though. The Aerosmith and Van Halen people were more outraged by his lack of chops, iirc.

Keep in mind the context for a lot of ppl was MTV, you'd see Nirvana videos insterspersed with images of partying spring breakers and the like, all muscleheaded Emilio Estevez types and no Ally Sheedys.

The classic interview segment that every band would do then was to refuse to answer questions, stare at their shoes and generally appear as aparhetic as possible, just make it clear that they regarded MTV as rather beneath them, and then cut back to Kurt Loder 15 seconds later.

did they even have a lot of fans when he wrote in bloom?

xp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t92FpC-7Zt0

I became aware of Nirvana thru MTV, the video for Lithium, I think i was 8 years old. I thought the lyrics were funny, it made me giggle. It also struck me as crazed and unhinged, and sounded sludgy. Was def surprised to find out shortly afterwards that they were evidently the most popular band in the world.

Speculation as to why this band became so huge and not the Pixies or Husker Du was obligatory in anything you'd read about them even then. So I'm familiar with the various explanations and I get it, but at the same time they always struck me as the unlikeliest band to achieve that kind of popularity. They really seemed like they could just as easily have been a rando indie pop band on K records, or a band that only ever released a couple pf short run 7" singles.

The Vig production and mix, though. Pixies didn't have it and sure as hell Husker Du didn't either.

i don't think pixies or husker du would have rejected that kind of thing had they stayed around. breeders and sugar did ok post-nevermind

Pretty singer with a strong voice, consistent hooks.xps

I based my immediate attraction to Sugar on how massive it sounded.

xxxp yeah, of course, but they might have gone another way and their other records paint them in a very different light.

Yeah I remember an interview with Lou Barlow who was bitching that Dinosaur Jr "did everything Nirvana did first" or something like that and complained that Kurt's voice was "nectar...fucking nectar" and they couldn't compete in that category.

Love Bob Mould and Frank Black but it doesn't seem mysterious why they didn't appear on as many magazine covers.

Sure, and much has been said about this in the last 30 years as I mentioned (I think testosterone and machismo were often cited in explanation, funnily enough). Those two bands were the most frequently mentioned in comparison probably because there were expectations of crossover success which they ultimately did not meet, where Nirvana's success was unexpected.

Anyway, re:hooks- much as I came to love Cobain's sort of harmonic asymmetry, it made me queasy age 8 or 9! 'More than a feeling" was much more palatable to me than " smells like teen spirit" at that time, though i seem to be alone in this and they were the most popular band among my age group by a huge distance.

I sound like Geir Hongro now.

There must be an ancient Geir Hongro thread on here on Nirvana vs. Nirvana Uk where he says that although the American Nirvana had a couple of nice songs, the British Nirvana were much better overall.

Listen, you could've produced Kurt's songs any way and they would've been massive -- I don't think the production on Doolittle or Flip Your Wig/Candy Apple Grey did anything good for their respective artists, and yes Vig did an exceptional job on Nevermind, but Kurt is in a league of his own even when he's recording onto a fucking boombox. I think it has a lot to do with the hooks and the really unusual songwriting in a technical sense--I've said this before but there's a series of great posts on ILX in one of the infinite Nirvana threads that analyzes their songs harmonically and whatever, I'm too dumb to go on but the person said something to the effect of Kurt using dissonant thirds or something. Please someone find that post. They talk about the descending vocal line in the chorus of "Lithium."

It's in the power chords he used, how they make NO sense together, yet somehow do. "Lithium" is not only immediately recognizable on an acoustic guitar, it also sounds completely different from most other pop music using standard major and minor chord patterns.

Quite Lennonesque

In the someday
What's that sound

xxp That's just it, though, I experienced those harmonic things as very bitter and syrupy as a child, in Nirvana and in grunge more broadly to an extent, I probably associated it with a seasick feeling more than anything else. This does not seem to have been a common side effect, of course.

Not to undercut Cobain's agency, but with breakthroughs as seismic as Nevermind's you can't overlook serendipity. The album broke the autumn when (a) alternative/college/'modern rock lol' culture had made considerable commercial and cultural inroads, thanks, in part to Pixies, the Smithereens, and their friends in the UK; (b) Soundscan had just made this breakthrough possible. In '91 we learned how popular country and hip-hop were and had always been; now the actual sales told the tale.

I mean, Trompe Le Monde, the best sounding (and, to my ears, best) Pixies album, came out the same month as Nevermind. Only one of them knocked Dangerous from the top of the Billboard chart.

Jane's Addiction & FNM also helped sell alt rock/metal to the Kerrang crowd.

he clearly had something else going on in the songwriting department

Alfred OTM throughout this thread. Also, I'd like to second recommendations of Everett True's Nirvana biog (both, in fact), which are my favourite Nirvana texts by some considerable distance.

most successes can be owed to right place/right time dynamics but i am kinda sympathetic to flappy's argument, dude was just a cut above, very individual voice that struck the balance between sophisticated and raw/tossed off, and the latter gave so much energy and verve to the former that it's irresistible xp

It's not a binary, though. Talent + luck.

One of my postulates is that, contrary to the received wisdom, Nevermind didn't signal the end of the Poppy Bush Interzone but was another weird product of it.

So what was the first post-Bush hit or phenonenon?

Something that gets overlooked by those who say that "Pixies/Husker/Replacements should have made it..." is that by the time that serendipity that Alfred mentions, those bands were DONE. I mean, Husker Dü broke up before Billboard even had an Alternative/Modern Rock chart, The 'Mats broke up the summer before Nevermind, and The Pixies were very nearly on life support.

OTOH, Nirvana comes in with a strong major-label debut, a video that hits outside of 120 Minutes & Headbanger's Ball PLUS THE SERENDIPITY.

Biggie feels distinctly '90s. Garth too, despite getting his start in the Interzone.

otm

xpost

I'm with Alfred here. I don't think the extra Neil Young debt that elevates Cobain above his PNW contemporaries is entirely commensurate with the level of his band's accomplishment. The FNM/Jane's/general-gradual-acceptance-of-harder-rock-as-possibly-acceptable-style quotient is a big factor

It's not a binary, though. Talent + luck.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 2, 2021 2:15 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh yeah, ofc, i just also don't necessarily credit it to vig/wallace, guess i'm still talking about production here

nevermind does sound really really incredible tho

when my buddy Greg bought it on a late November morning record store trip (I bought Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island) and put the tape in the car, it boomed like Def Leppard.

Sidenote: It took me way too long to realize FNM wasn't a mistyped REM or NIN (both of whom also as important as FNM to this discussion).

nevermind does sound really really incredible tho

so do a lot of the records Butch Vig worked on around that time! none of those records had "teen spirit," but "teen spirit" plus the full court press goes a long way.

Sidenote: It took me way too long to realize FNM wasn't a mistyped REM or NIN (both of whom also as important as FNM to this discussion).

― blue whales on ambient (C. Grisso/McCain)

I thought it stood for Fine Noung Mannibals.