Classic Alternative

Ten years ago I was a senior in high school, getting all thrilled and excited about doing Taming of the Shrew for a high school Shakespeare festival in D.C. I had a crush on a girl in the show, but didn't do a blessed thing about it, because I was quite exceptionally gutless about those things (also, I dressed like Screech, but with less flair). I was looking forward to getting the hell out of Waldorf, MD and out into the big bad world.

In short, I didn't give a fuck about Kurt Cobain, alive or dead. When the news came that he'd blown his head off with a shotgun, I wasn't even surprised. Somehow, I had known it would be thus, that the live-fast-die-young-sex-drugs-and-rock n' roll script would claim him. It wasn't like the secret wasn't out that he was a druggie (I swear, they should outlaw heroin. Oh, wait...). I might have given thirty seconds notice to the fact that he was a suicide instead of an overdose, but that was it. When the little grungies gathered at his house for a candlelight vigil, I rolled my eyes. When the papers started blaring that "the voice of a generation is died" I sneered and told anyone who made eye contact that KC didn't speak for me.

It was when they called him Our John Lennon that I started on the path to understanding.

Truth was, I'd always been kind of a closet Nirvana fan. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a truly magnificent moment in pop culture, pulling fury out of a mockery of a cheap exploitation of the very generational revolt of which Nirvana was thereafter declared the first wave. Remember the "Teen Spirit" deodorant commercial? Remember how insulting, how irretrievably stupid it was? Where on earth did anyone get the idea that my "generation" needed it's own anti-perspirant? Was this some kind of prank? Did anyone actually buy or use that stuff? Why?

So yeah, when Nirvana made a video making fun of them, I loved it. I loved it even more when the whole brand -- with their crappy, faux-cool commercial -- dissappeared soon after. And, in my most secret heart of hearts, I loved the song: blistering riff, mumbled vocals, perfect climax, the works. After growing up on the limp-wristed new wave pope and the nauseating hair metal in the 80's, I liked that bands were coming back to the basics.

But I never threw down money for Nevermind. I wanted to, but I didn't dare. Part of this was economic: I was a military brat whose parents were spending every dime they could lay hands on sending me to private school. I couldn't just bug my folks for spending money so I could buy music like all the yuppie kids. The other part of this was a need to not do what everyone else was doing. Since middle school I'd developed a determination to always avoid the crowd, not do what they were doing, not dress how they were dressing (hence the Screech look), and especially not think they way they were thinking. Grunge seemed to have inherited all the political poses (and even at 12 I knew them to be poses) of hippiedom; I had just discovered that Rush Limbaugh was an amusing counterpoint to Northern California's nattering leftiness. So I said "Nirvana sucks" and stuck with it.

But when the piles of hair started saying that Cobain was the Gen-X John Lennon, something in me shook loose. "Dammit," I said, or something along those lines, "Kurt Cobain is not John Lennon! John Lennon was John Lennon, Kurt Cobain is Kurt Cobain! Nirvana is not the Beatles, they're Nirvana! Let them be what they are!" So the path began.


Six years ago, I was just out of college, and had made the decision to stop being a phillistine and start getting into music. I signed up for one of those BMG twelve-for-a-penny dealies and as part of my free shipment, I got Nevermind. "What the hell," I told my roommate with a grin, "It's kinda required, isn't it? Like Frampton Comes Alive was twenty years ago. I'm just bowing to the trends" (remember how admitting how lame you were was so cool in those days?). So I got it, and I listened, and I liked, and I threw it on for mixed-tape fodder, and I hardly cared. The same shipment had Ramones Mania, because I'd gotten into my head that I desperately needed to have "I Wanna Be Sedated." The Ramones got me into the Velvet Underground, and the Velvet Underground got me into all the rest of Punk, and before I had known what had happened, Nirvana had clicked nicely into place on my musical appreciation spectrum. I got the Unplugged album and shivered at the last song (still do). I won't say that they're my favorite band, but I do appreciate their power and their heart. Both of which were evident in their lead singer, who managed the superhuman feat of having charismatic appeal without being all that charismatic.

Which brings us to the media nostalgia/grief machine and the fun they're having this week. Spin prepared a loving print-shrine for their fallen underground martyr that provided the inspiration for this blog entry. The radio stations have shifted to "Gen-X Weekend" formats and playing "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" as though nothing was amiss. We got a new Nirvana single two years ago, and someone decided to publish the his private journals not too long afterward. No, I haven't read them, and no I'm not going to, and it's not because I'd feel dirty about it, like this guy did. It's because I've decided that I have no interest in anything Cobain had to say.


I've trodden the path to understanding that Cobain was a man of great talent, and Nirvana a great band. Their noise was pure, and from the gut, and had about it from the earliest days more than a hint of sadness. It stands the test of time. For Cobain the artist, I have nothing but respect and admiration.

For Cobain the man, I have nothing but contempt. I have nothing but contempt for a man who was intelligent and creative but made no effort to understand the wide world around him, who spent so much time huddled in the corner with his precious pain that he could never ever find a chance to get beyond it. I have nothing but contempt for a man who consciously made himself a rock star (and he did, popular legend to the contrary) and then whined like a kindergartener when he discovered that people were becoming his fans without his permission. I have nothing but contempt for a man who claimed to love his baby daughter and then left her, so irrevocably, and to the care of a woman he had to know would not make a good single mother (she's twelve now, and I don't think I'd be her for anything). Mostly, I have nothing but contempt for a man who took the coward's way out, who gave up on hope after promising it to so many. Shame on him.

And that was indeed the final irony of Courtney Love's words at the aforementioned candlelight vigil, words to the effect that if Kurt really hated being a rock star, he could have stopped. No, Courtney, he couldn't, and he knew it. What else was he going to do? Starved on an intellectual diet that demanded an ascetic withdrawal from anything that smacked of normality, Cobain couldn't have just dropped it and sat in a house and had a beer and painted something. Like the Cathars of the 13th Century, grunge/punk demanded spiritual purity of its perfecti leaders while the laity were off having the time of their lives. Kurt didn't have the philosophical readiness to deal with his disappointment, to find the thing that made him valuable and cling to it. He was so busy unleashing his demons that he neglected to hunt for angels. He never grasped that the reason you walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death is not for its own sake but to reach redemption on the other side.

More fool him. And more fool us, for not learning from him.