Cobain's Death - 20 years. Legacy? Influence? Grunge?

Discussion
1

Nothing much going on now so figured I’d bring to light this subject after Rob Zombie’s recent (and kind of valid) comments:

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/rob-zombie-says-u-s-rock-scene-has-never-recovered-from-rise-of-early-90s-grunge-movement/

It is hard to believe that it has already been 20 years since Cobain’s suicide rocked (?!?!) the world. In light of this milestone - if you can call it that - what kind of legacy do you think he left behind? Was grunge and alternative rock music in general just a passing phase? Do you think the musical climate of today would be much different if he had lived? Or had never been?

Will we ever see the likes of Cobain again? An artist with generational appeal, an artist who oozes originality and genuine emotion - somebody who wasn’t a clone of a clone of a clone. Or have we shot ourselves in the foot with our addictions to the cult of celebrity (ie “musicians” or “artists” who are famous for being famous through media manipulation).

In short, do think Cobain and the movement he championed is as culturally relevant as nostalgic rock journalism makes it out to be?

And what of the other bands that made up the bulk of the “grunge movement”. Is there any evidence that most of those bands have stood the test of time? If anything it seems that the bands they temporarily displaced, such as the old rock bands before them (not just the hair bands)have often had a more lasting and significant influence over rock’n’roll fans today.

If anything, I think rock music to a large extent has moved in the opposite direction towards a more sterile focus on image and general perfectionism. It certainly seems that style is more important than substance. And the whole “disaffected youth” thing that was passed on to nu-metal has (thankfully) pretty much disappeared from the rock landscape. Although I still see a lot of up and coming acts utilising the whole eyeliner and long fringe thing.

Whenever I get the chance and mention Nirvana to the youth of today (around the age I was when Nirvana exploded onto the scene) I get raised eyebrows and general indifference. It’s as if the call to arms to embrace alternative values and a DIY punk ethos has been shouted down in an era of insta-celeb Justin Biebers, Gagas and CGI.

Personally, I believe he was the last great thing to impact on his generation in a way I could truly identify with. The last great artist who truly had something to offer to the masses. But perhaps I’m just old and jaded.

Thoughts?

[:|]

2

“…I believe he was the last great thing to impact on his generation in a way I could truly identify with. The last great artist who truly had something to offer to the masses. But perhaps I’m just old and jaded.”

^^^this

i remember the day
and what i managed to fall into
growing up around the corner from where Nevermind was written

i think with the mediums for which are used and abused
we wont see anyone come close to Cobain

me myself always searching for a way to put pain to paper to harness reality and throw it at those responsible

but no one really cares do they

so i do what i do…

3

It’s gonna take a multi-post answer just for me to address all of this, but I will start by taking a little of the air out of Señor Zombie’s tires.

He’s a great one to be pissing and moaning about people in “flannels” and “grunge” in general. Has he forgotten the not insignificant period of time before he became Beavis & Butthead’s favorite artist? You know, when he was splitting bills with ‘scum rock’ pioneers Pussy Galore in White Zombie’s salad days? And having all his band members attired in what would become the standard 90s grunge uniform, and generally sounding every bit as sloppy and heroin-addled as the best of 'em? Good god, the “Soul Crusher” album is a Grunge 101 disc if ever there was one. They could have opened for Soundgarden when “Make Them Die Slowly” came out, and wouldn’t have been too out of place.

If what he’s criticizing is the wave of copycat bands that came out after Nirvana, who already had significantly less ‘edge’ and fewer ties to the U.S. indie circuit, he has a point - but he owes it to himself to be more specific.

These comments I found interesting too:

“In the '90s, when the grunge rock thing hit, with NIRVANA and all that, everybody thought it was cool to be anti-rock star. But in a way they sort of anti-rock starred themselves right out the door, because the rap guys came in and they said, ‘Fuck it. We’ll be the rock stars then, if you guys are going to wear flannel shirts and stare at your feet.’”

This is a theory I hear a lot, that the record industry’s target market of insecure suburban kids wanted more of an ‘alpha male’ movement to help them act out their fantasies of being hard.

There are contradicting theories, though, that grunge was given its massive industry push to counter the political impact that gangsta rap was having circa the early 1990s (it’s a favorite idea of Biafra’s.)

4

Ok, now back to Cobain himself.

A couple years ago a couple in Spain graciously let me stay at their ‘cozy’ apartment after I played a show in Madrid, sparing me the agony of staying with the extremely loud and touchy guy who had organized the gig. The lady of the house had turned the entire place into a kind of Cobain shrine. I talked to them about seeing Nirvana in Buffalo in 1993, and they were hanging on every goofy little detail about guitars used, opening acts (Boredoms!), music played over the P.A. before the gig (The Frogs’ “It’s Only Right and Natural”), etc. Their devotion was just crazy, at a level I never experienced in the U.S. when Nirvana was at the peak of their fame.

I also encountered tons of adulation among kids in Japan, who still looked to him as kind of a nihilist hero in a culture where being a “slacker” is still a confrontational stance, much as Beatniks were “outlaws” in the U.S. of the 1950s.

So - his impact is still felt, definitely, although you have to look in some places outside the epicenter of rock 'n roll to find it.

For me, I was very saddened when I read K.C.'s “Journals” and just found him to be a man of average intelligence, and above-average sensitivity, swept up in a shit-storm beyond his control. I respect that he always deferred to other influences and never pretended to have ‘started’ anything - he never saw himself as the superior or even equal of Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Melvins, Scratch Acid etc. and at least put people in more of a frame of mind to appreciate that kind of music.

5

I was hoping I didn’t have to be the one to mention/post the Zombie interview. He pretty much reiterates what Gene Simmons said in that clip I posted last year about how rock stars stopped being rock stars. About White Zombie being Beavis & Butthead’s favorite band, Rob hated it. He also hated the band’s appearance in Airheads. There’s bootleg concert footage where he talks shit about both. I’ll dig it up later.

6

Cobain certainly left a legacy…if not there wouldn’t have been massive reissues of his back catalog or an induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. (not that those things matter, but I suppose they do signify a legacy) .

There was something in the air in that era, the early 90’s, that was lost around the time Cobain died- a sense of freedom, optimism, joy. Cobain’s death wasn’t the “end” of that, but that was a huge sobering moment to those who bought into it.

From that point on, it seemed the media tried to find the next Cobain, or the next genre that they can propel to overexposure like they did with Grunge. Alternative won that category, and once that died out by the late 90’s, the media had given up and switched it’s focus to boy bands and Britney Spears, and it’s pretty much been the same ever since.

The world is totally different from 20 years ago, thanks to the internet and the death of MTV (as a music station) . The rise of the internet and it’s social networks now “tell” the people what’s cool. In that sense, it’s become a competition- which glossy, yuppie, happy, processed, fake bullshit are YOU going to be influenced by, should you choose to accept it.

Now was that same concept around in the early 90’s? You bet. But there was certainly much more diversity in mainstream music. In fact it was probably the most diverse era in mainstream music history- grunge/alternative, the golden age of hip hop, throwback rock acts like Lenny Kravitz, house music made it’s way to the mainstream, fushion acts like Faith No More and Beck that combined genres, “industrial” acts like NIN,and of course your pop acts like Madonna and Michael Jackson.

Now? Hip hop music that pretty much sounds the same, glossy over-produced dance music and…that’s really it in regards to what’s mainstream.

So I certainly feel that, even though someone may have followed a certain genre (or multiple genres) in the 90’s, there was a greater sense of individualism because of the diversity as opposed to today’s general population. Which is why, in my opinion, everything seems so stale and dull.

I feel the shift started around the time after Cobain’s death, but perhaps not necessarily due to his death…but then again, who knows. Nirvana were huge, and as a kid we all thought they were the coolest band ever. Maybe as we grew, and if they had stayed around their music grew, they could have reached even higher heights, and really change the direction of the music game.

7

Well put!^

I especially agree with when the focus turned to Britney Spears and boy bands. 1998 may as well have been the end of the world in music as we know it. Sure, there will always be stuff out there that’s good, but it’s getting harder to find.

8

love them - blended pop, accessible noise rock (as in butthole surfers, sonic youth etc) 77 punk, post punk, metal and indie seamlessly. love the melvins and pixies but people who say nirvana ape them and added nothing are missing the point

or fuckwitted wannabe musos, whichever you prefer

kurt really meant it - IMO part of what drove him over the edge was the realisation that rock music isnt the high art you think it is when you’re younger

10

These trends will come and go in waves. Right now, the young generation are riding the crest and celebrating and embracing fame as an entity all of its own. To be famous is something to aspire to - “popularity” is their mantra, regardless of how that popularity is achieved. We live in an age where somebody with a digital camera and an internet connection can literally be transformed into a celebrity overnight. So you can’t really blame these kids for their vapid obsessions.

But I believe there will always be a place in culture for art with integrity and depth and so Cobain’s legacy will live on for aeons. Just wait til we hit a down slope again, then you’ll see. The Biebers of this world will become nothing more than an entry in a schoolgirl’s diary. If you are famous for nothing other than a pretty face and a catchy jingle, your days of being relevant are numbered.

But fuck Rob Zombie anyway. What does he hope to achieve by bemoaning the lack of in your face rock stars? Fuck the Steven Tylers and David Lee Roths of this world. Those guys are as interchangeable as a pair of Levis.

And yes, for the record, I’m a huge Nirvana fan.

11

I blame Nirvana for bands like Creed.

That’s like saying you blame yesterday for today. It’s a hopeless statement to make.

Was it Cobain’s intention when he begun Nirvana to create a mass army of clone “emotionally sensitive yet marketable” bands?

Nope. Like all of us, Cobain was a product of his life experiences. The difference between him and…well…the rest of us is that he had the talent to articulate his experiences in a way that made the world sit up and take notice.

A rare gift indeed.

12

Ok. I guess I’ll be the bad guy here.

I don’t think he was original, or amazing, sure he had appeal and was an influence on many bands and people, but his music doesn’t sound at all different from the million other grunge bands at the time. He’s always seemed pretty generic to me (but then again, I was never into grunge).

I think grunge was a phase. Had he not left this earth in such gruesome fashion the band would’ve probably split due to Cobain not wanting the spotlight on him. Better alternative than offing yourself, and thus I don’t think the Nirvana/Cobain legacy would be where it is today.

I’ll give Cobain this though. It’s always pretty cool seeing a 13 year old youngster wearing a Nirvana shirt and who actually knows the music. Beats being a Blink 182 fan or some shit, although the whiippersnapper’s prob a Blink fan too, faggot.

13

I’d rather see a 13 year old in a "Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste " shirt…but as that’s pretty unlikely these days I’ll happily settle for a kid wearing a “Baby Showing Its Weenie” Nirvana shirt.

Better that than a Creed / Nickleback / Days Of The New/ Candlebox / Everclear / Bush / Silverchair / Eels / Cake / Linkin Park / Barenaked Ladies / Blink 182 / Toad The Wet Sprocket / Presidents Of The United States / Local H / Marcy Playground…(take your pick) shirt.

The late 90’s SUCKED!

14

definitely disagree that nirvana were the same as stp, soundgarden and pearl jam - they’re just rock bands doing the current thing, none of the honesty or personal quality that nirvana had

this might ruffle feathers but really what seperates pearl jam from nickelback? if it were earlier they would have been hair metal - cant see cobain being like that

15

Ok. I guess I’ll be the bad guy here.

I don’t think he was original, or amazing, sure he had appeal and was an influence on many bands and people, but his music doesn’t sound at all different from the million other grunge bands at the time. He’s always seemed pretty generic to me (but then again, I was never into grunge).

I think grunge was a phase. Had he not left this earth in such gruesome fashion the band would’ve probably split due to Cobain not wanting the spotlight on him. Better alternative than offing yourself, and thus I don’t think the Nirvana/Cobain legacy would be where it is today.

I’ll give Cobain this though. It’s always pretty cool seeing a 13 year old youngster wearing a Nirvana shirt and who actually knows the music. Beats being a Blink 182 fan or some shit, although the whiippersnapper’s prob a Blink fan too, faggot.

You beat me to it…I’m a life long music fan…popped out of the womb listening to music…I honestly never understood the mass appeal of Nirvana…I don’t understand the worship of Cobain and his iconic status as a cultural phenomenon…people assume I’m just being contrary when I say that but it just isn’t the case…I enjoy other music that gained commercial mainstream acclaim…I just never saw anything special about that band…and quite frankly,I found Cobain’s vocals to be grating and annoying…

along with Pearl Jam and STP probably my least favorite band to come out of that scene…give me Melvins(yeah I know they pre-date),Tad,Screaming Trees,Mudhoney and Gruntruck and many others any day of the week…

For me:Nirvana=just another band

16

Yeah. For all their “alterna cred”, bands like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains and certainly Stone Temple Pilots were more or less re-imagined versions of standard 70’s rock radio. Pearl Jam, to me at least, came across as a kind of Springsteen meets Tom Petty meets The Who amalgamation.

But whatever. They had their time and place in the sun. At least they didn’t rely on baby-faced good looks, a programmed dance track and a youtube account to get their message across.

Soundgarden had that Swans meets Sabbath meets Grand Funk thing going for a while (which was cool) but it all turned ugly very quickly once that Supermegabonanza shlockfest album came out in 1994 and inspired millions of young musicians the world over to make really horrid rock music.

17

In Utero sounds timeless to me and I still love blasting songs from it. I think that album was the best thing Cobain left behind. It doesn’t sound like it was made in the early 90’s at all to me. It’s crazy how it still sounds relevant and fresh (to me at least).

As far as there ever being another Kurt Cobain… there won’t be. Not because he was god’s gift to the world or some bullshit. But because so many people have tried and are still trying to be the next Kurt Cobain and everyone has failed. They missed the point and the boat.

If there will ever be anything or anyone as popular and influential it will be something that sounds fresh (which also means not sounding like Nirvana), and will have to somehow garner enough interest for people to take notice, buy their music, go to their shows, etc. They’d have to be popular, while remaining honest and unapologetic in regards to their work, within a dead music industry. If you think “Nirvana” or “Kurt Cobain” when hearing a newer band or artist then you know for certain that you’re not hearing the next “big thing”.

And I disagree with Rob Zombie in that article in terms of Nirvana and people listening to rap instead of rock because they were trying to be “anti-rock” or whatever excuses he was trying to make. Because it’s not one or the other. You listen to what you like. People just got tired of the same old crap - just like they got tired of “grunge” when it became the same old crap and they got tired of gangster rap when it became the same old crap. Nirvana’s “anti-rock” whatever didn’t cause the death of rockstars. I never really got how Nirvana was lumped in with a lot of those “grunge” bands either. They sound absolutely nothing like them.

I mean, there have been “rockstars” and a big “U.S. rock scene” since then. Even if I don’t like the guy at all and I think his music is pure shit, Fred Durst was up there when he was popular, Korn as well, Marilyn Manson WAS the perfect example of a rockstar and he was extremely popular at one point. Nobody has had the impact of Nirvana because so many people keep trying to be Nirvana v.2.0. Add onto that the fact that there isn’t really a music industry anymore where a band like that could get the sort of exposure they’d need to have such a massive impact.

/rant

18

I never got into Nirvana, all my friends loved them, but it just wasn’t for me. I thought Kurt Cobain was a crybaby and a bit of a hypocrite to be honest; if he didn’t want to be a rock star then why not just retire and move somewhere else? I think he did want to be famous and couldn’t handle it, it probably didn’t help that his wife was a total parasite and junkie.

His influence, though, is enormous, i can see that. He inspired a lot of people to wear flannel shirts and buy shitty guitars (which they probably got rid of within a month), not learn to play them properly and cry a lot. On top of that he inspired people to look at music they’d never heard before, to form bands that did last and probably to believe in themselves - if he could do it, maybe they could make it too, even though he’s maybe not the best example of handling newfound fame.

So anyway, i appreciate his influence, i liked In Utero, but for me they were incredibly overrated and i thought Kurt was a little wanker. I suppose i don’t have to like them to appreciate their massive influence.

19

Much stuff to get into here:

There was something in the air in that era, the early 90’s, that was lost around the time Cobain died- a sense of freedom, optimism, joy. Cobain’s death wasn’t the “end” of that, but that was a huge sobering moment to those who bought into it.

It definitely was a different time here. It was the brief time gap between the Cold War and the Global War on Terror, and I think there was a lot more time for introspection and experimentation since the U.S. role as global cop diminished just enough to allow for these kinds of things.

Of course, though there might have been a decent amount of musical diversity on the market, I don’t know how many people really got anything out of it. While it was nice to see people mixing and matching styles and moving out of their rigid cliques, I feel like a lot of the 90s kids just felt post-modern eclecticism was ‘enough’ and only picked up on the most superficial aspects of each style they were sampling.

The world is totally different from 20 years ago, thanks to the internet and the death of MTV (as a music station) . The rise of the internet and it’s social networks now “tell” the people what’s cool. In that sense, it’s become a competition- which glossy, yuppie, happy, processed, fake bullshit are YOU going to be influenced by, should you choose to accept it.

I don’t really consider online social networks as oppositional to outlets like MTV, I just see them as an extension of those forces. I don’t buy the myth that things going ‘viral’ online are just purely grassroots, spontaneous, things - entertainment corporations have as much of a hand in massaging people’s tastes online as they did with television and radio; there’s a reason why “social media coordinator” is actually a real, paying job title these days.

Now? Hip hop music that pretty much sounds the same, glossy over-produced dance music and…that’s really it in regards to what’s mainstream.

I’d argue that today’s pop music is still very eclectic in terms of the sounds produced, but - A.) none of these sounds are the type of thing we would necessarily like and B.) sonic eclecticism means nothing if music isn’t also guided by a diversity of thoughts and opinions.

That is really the main problem I have now, is that the message of currently on-tap pop music can be boiled down to a few insipid ideas, whatever the genre. Mostly something to do with getting rich “or dyin’ tryin’”, puffing up one’s chest over some bullshit claim to superiority, and “being real” (while dousing your music in AutoTune and other heavy edits…)

20

King Buzzo nailed it when he said “if Kurdt looked like Fat Albert, Nirvana would’ve sold a minimal amount of records and the majors wouldn’t have touched them.”

I never was too interested in Nirvana…I was far more interested in underground groups of the time like Ministry, Melvins and Godflesh etc… I found these groups had much better music and also there was something mysterious about them due to a lack of promotion/recognition. In saying that Ministry was pretty popular in Australia in the early 90s.

21

Mostly something to do with …“being real” (while dousing your music in AutoTune and other heavy edits…)

LOLz

King Buzzo nailed it when he said “if Kurdt looked like Fat Albert, Nirvana would’ve sold a minimal amount of records and the majors wouldn’t have touched them.”

Spot on. It’s always about the attractive scale.