Alternative Wednesday!
At first I wasn't going to talk about them. Everyone else has, so I felt like I didn't have anything new to add to the discussion. Then I realized that Alternative Wednesday isn't only about exposing people to new bands, it's about MY experiences with these bands, MY moment of discovery and falling in love with some element of some song or band. And there's no band I needed to fall for like I did Nirvana.
Nirvana didn't do anything that other bands hadn't done before. Mudhoney created the punked out fuzzy sound of grunge and the Pixies are famous for the loud quite loud dynamic that Nirvana appropriated. Maybe they were just in the right place at the right time to become the biggest band of the 90s. For whatever reason, they were and from my perspective alternative rock owes them a debt. Without Nirvana, Seattle wouldn't have hit the public radar the way it did. Without Nirvana, radio wouldn't have become safe for bands like Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains, or the Breeders. Without Nirvana, a lot of bands that influenced them wouldn't have gotten that additional exposure. I first listened to the Breeders, Pixies, and Mudhoney BECAUSE of Nirvana and people who heard of them due to the band. For a band that existed in the public eye such a very short time, they had a huge impact.
I missed Bleach, like just about everyone else, but Nevermind was inescapable. From the opener and first single, to Drain You, to In Bloom all are part of the landscape these days and inescapable. At one point, however, they were just songs. Beautiful obnoxious modern punk songs off an album that wasn't really meant to go anywhere. That's how I try to remember them and advise listening to them. The music is greater for it.
Everyone reading this knows the story of Nirvana, so there's really no point in going over that ground again. Everyone knows about the drugs, about Courtney Love, about In Utero and the Unplugged album, and the end. I was working retail at the time and had just gone to lunch with a buddy. As we were lining up to place our orders, the announcement of Kurt's death came over the radio in the corner. I can place myself at four events like that - the death of my grandfather, the death of Johnny Cash, the Challenger and Columbia explosions, and the death of Kurt Cobain. Regardless of your opinion, whether it was suicide or murder, a result of drugs, fear, or a wife out for money and blood, it meant the end of the band.
It seems so inadequate to sum up Nirvana with one song. That one band with such an impact on me could be summed up with one song is rather impossible. So I will cheat a bit by showing two videos, the extremes of the band the loud, punk rock songs like Aneurysm that I first knew them for and the direction they might've gone if the world were a different place with their version of Lead Belly's In the Pines from Unplugged.
Nirvana didn't do anything that other bands hadn't done before. Mudhoney created the punked out fuzzy sound of grunge and the Pixies are famous for the loud quite loud dynamic that Nirvana appropriated. Maybe they were just in the right place at the right time to become the biggest band of the 90s. For whatever reason, they were and from my perspective alternative rock owes them a debt. Without Nirvana, Seattle wouldn't have hit the public radar the way it did. Without Nirvana, radio wouldn't have become safe for bands like Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains, or the Breeders. Without Nirvana, a lot of bands that influenced them wouldn't have gotten that additional exposure. I first listened to the Breeders, Pixies, and Mudhoney BECAUSE of Nirvana and people who heard of them due to the band. For a band that existed in the public eye such a very short time, they had a huge impact.
I missed Bleach, like just about everyone else, but Nevermind was inescapable. From the opener and first single, to Drain You, to In Bloom all are part of the landscape these days and inescapable. At one point, however, they were just songs. Beautiful obnoxious modern punk songs off an album that wasn't really meant to go anywhere. That's how I try to remember them and advise listening to them. The music is greater for it.
Everyone reading this knows the story of Nirvana, so there's really no point in going over that ground again. Everyone knows about the drugs, about Courtney Love, about In Utero and the Unplugged album, and the end. I was working retail at the time and had just gone to lunch with a buddy. As we were lining up to place our orders, the announcement of Kurt's death came over the radio in the corner. I can place myself at four events like that - the death of my grandfather, the death of Johnny Cash, the Challenger and Columbia explosions, and the death of Kurt Cobain. Regardless of your opinion, whether it was suicide or murder, a result of drugs, fear, or a wife out for money and blood, it meant the end of the band.
It seems so inadequate to sum up Nirvana with one song. That one band with such an impact on me could be summed up with one song is rather impossible. So I will cheat a bit by showing two videos, the extremes of the band the loud, punk rock songs like Aneurysm that I first knew them for and the direction they might've gone if the world were a different place with their version of Lead Belly's In the Pines from Unplugged.
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