Damage Case #3: Nirvana

First of all , I have a confession - I do not have any Nirvana albums on my hard drive to listen to while I type this.  Instead, i am listening to Mudhoney's "Superfuzz Bigmuff", which I regard as superior to anything Nirvana put out.

If presented with a choice between having to listen to Nirvana's In Utero or the entire Ace of Base catalog, I'd probably go with Ace of Base.  That's not a joke.  I find In Utero insufferable.  More on that later.


Starting back at the beginning, I first heard Nirvana on my thirteenth birthday while riding in the car with my older sister, a few days before my first day of seventh grade.  The song was "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and it was just starting to get a little airplay on the local college radio station.  If I remember correctly, I initially disliked the song because the melody of the "with the lights out / it's less dangerous / here we are now / entertain us " was catchy, but I couldn't yet make out the words.  It's usually a good sign when something like that bothers me, and as the days went on and I started hearing the song more often, it grew on me.

I was sitting at a lunch table packed with former Pettengill Elementry students one day towards the end of the first week of school.  We were discussing music, and I mentioned "Smells Like Teen Spirit".  Most of the other people at the table hadn't heard it, and the one who claimed to have called me a fag for liking them.   Coincidentally, that person later turned out to be gay.

I actually liked "Come As You Are" better than "Teen Spirit", and to this day, it remains one of the few songs actually written by Nirvana that I genuinely love.   I remember having an awkward conversation with a friend about the video and how I really liked the melody.   She told me that she really didn't like Nirvana because they had a song called lithium.

I didn't end up getting "Nevermind" until much later, but I did have a cd single of "Teen Spirit" that I got in a trade along with a copy of Final Fantasy II for the SNES in exchange for Final Fight.  I feel like I got the better part of that deal, even if the liner notes to the single smelled like skunk weed and patchouli.

About a year later, "Incesticide" came out, and I got it for Christmas, along with Minor Threat's complete discography.

(I just switched up, and am listening to Azam Ali's "From Night to the Edge of Day" because it's getting late and I want to unwind.)

"Incesticide" is a compilation of unreleased and older material from early singles, EPs and mix tapes.   The best three tracks on the album, in my opinion, are a cover of Devo's "Turnaround" and a pair of Vaselines covers.  Those two Vaselines covers, "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun" are actually my favorite Nirvana recordings, which is why Incesticide is the only Nirvana album I still own.   In case you're wondering, I sold my copies of "Nevermind" and "In Utero" at a garage sale about 18 years ago. 

"In Utero" came out a few weeks into my freshman year of high school.   I didn't like it.  Maybe I am alone in this sentiment, but when I was severely depressed, suffering from insomnia because I couldn't get the image of my mother's brain pulsing through a crack in her skull and the tinny gurgle of blood choking her airways out of my head, just trying to make it through my day without losing it, listening to some rich junkie who has the world in the motherfucking palm of his hand whine and wallow in his own misery just didn't hold that much appeal for me.

For what it's worth, the MTV unplugged recording is pretty great, but its always bugged me that the strongest songs on the album are the covers.  Plus, I hate the way Kurt sings the word "birds".

Hindsight plays a role in my generally negative appraisal of Nirvana, and especially In Utero.  Once it stopped being shocking, Kurt Cobain's suicide really just pissed me off.   Not just the media attention or his posthumous rise to iconic status, though that fucking droopy dog looking image that wound up plastered on shirts sold at Spencers and Hot Topic still pisses me off.   I mean that the act itself really just pissed me off.   I know that he was mentally ill and suffering from drug addiction and Crohn's disease, so his judgement was fucked, but he had a wife and kid and countless other people who gave a shit about him.   Instead of getting help, he ate a fucking gun.

Even before he offed himself though, my interest was shifting away from mainstream music and more towards punk and hardcore.  As I mentioned in my last post, I was listening to the Sex Pistols a lot, along with Crass, punk and hip hop era Beastie Boys and the Dead Kennedys, and my sister had just introduced me to Green Day and the Bouncing Souls.  A few months later, I'd run across Rancid, who had a much bigger impact on me.

....

Five years later, on the anniversary of his death, I was running a punk, oi! and hardcore radio show on WRBC.  These kids kept calling in, asking me to play Nirvana and sobbing when I would refuse.   It almost would have been funny, if they weren't so persistent and whiny.