I saw the world set ablaze! I will show you that great and terrible fury!!

[theperfectdoug]

-Metal Gear Solid 3 is amazing. It's the best video game I've played since River City Ransom. Kojima slowed things down and brought the story back to the characters and the relationships they share. And the characters do not disappoint. Snake is just enough of a bad ass mixed with just enough of a cold, distant soldier, combined with a little hint

Comments

[theperfectdoug]

I'm not saying that there weren't other talented bands out there, especially ones that predated Nirvana. Im not trying to compare quality of music either. Comparing the quality of Sonic Youth and Nirvana is like comparing two filet mignons, but one is served shaped like a star and the other is served shaped like a snowman. There's no difference in quality its just in aesthetics (and if you prefer eating snowmen...which i do). What im saying is that if the great music you create has no exposure, how much of an effect can it truly have? Nirvana got me started into Sonic Youth. Im sure for many people (especially those slightly older than us who were there when Youth first started, thats the other way around). Nirvana had way more mainstream exposure, thus they could sell more albumns, thus they could effect more people. Yes Kurt Cobain was a handsom man, but every movement needs a figurehead. More than that Cobain had charisma, boatloads of it. He's charming in every interview he gives but at the same time gives off this sense of being an outsider, someone at the front of a counter-culture movement. Thurston Moore didnt have that. The man is a musical genius but he wasnt really someone for impressionable young people to get behind in the hopes of being like him one day. Same goes with Frank Black. This is the point im trying to make, think back through the history of music and can you think of one band that came and changed music so severely? Elvis? Maybe. The Beatles? Nah. The explosion of rap really can't rest on the shoulders of just one band and the same goes for punk (not that that was much of an explosion....). Nirvana connected with an audience much more broad than the kids picking up Beatles albumns or the African Americans picking up Fab Five Freddy. Kid's parents liked Nirvana. People got behind Kurt because people wanted a musical revolution, and im not just talking about the people hanging out in their ultra-cool indy record store either. Kids who were just turning on the radio every afternoon wanted something more. People riding home after work had had enough of Bobby Brown and Lover Boy. Im not trying to take away from the contributions of the other great bands doing the same stuff at the same time, or before. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, they all left their mark. But if Nevermind wasnt selling the way it was most of us never would have been introduced to these bands on popular radio or even through the heavy rotation they enjoyed on MTV. It would have been all scary puppets from Phil Collins and gawd-awful Paula Abdul/Keaneu Reeves collaborations.
As far as suicide goes, as much as i hate people wallowing in their own misery and refusing to do anything positive, ive never be a big fan of the "suicide as a way to be cool" theory. Because how are you going to enjoy your notoriety once your dead? Kurt was in a sad state when he killed himself, and for most of his life for that matter. What on earth could make a person so sad, ESPECIALLY someone in Kurt's financial situation that he decided the pain of existence was too great and needed to end it? I dont feel contempt towards the guy for it, i genuinely feel bad. Im sympathetic because i hope i'll never feel what he must have felt. Was it selfish? Yes. Was it caused by the drugs? Well they certainly weren't helping. And of course i feel bad for Francis Bean. There's enough sympathy for the both of them, there's no reason to feel worse for one than the other. What im really trying to say in all this is can someone give me the name of just ONE band, that did more for a genre, did more to change the landscape of music, even briefly, than Nirvana did? And if Nirvana wasn't the Jesus Christ of Rock and Roll than who was? Or are you a rock Jew and don't believe the messiah has come yet ;). Just remember, Kurt forgives you. You didnt know what you were doing.

ARE YOU FUCKING STONED?!?!?!?!

[thebeyonder]

Are you really going to sit there and tell me that Nirvana had more of an influence on rock music than Elvis Presley and the Beatles? Puhlease... if it wasn't for Elis and the Beatles we wouldn't have had a Nirvana. Kurt Cobain himself was turned on to music by the Beatles in the first place.

Did they have talent? Yes, inarguably. However, their success can be attributed to one fact. They grabbed onto the wings of a musical movement that had all ready taken flight. The masses wanted grunge, all they needed was a face. As circumstance would have it, that face was Kurt's, but if it wasn't him it would've been someone else.

Kurt Cobain and Nirvana formed at a time when grunge all ready existed. Punk gave birth to bands like Sonic Youth, Husker Du, and Green River, taking the punk sound and making it more heartfelt, artsy, and personal. These bands planted the idea in our minds. Bands like Soundgarden and Dinosaur Jr. gave birth to true grunge, and as grunge gained popularity (just as it always happens) more and more bands jumped onto the band waggon. Nirvana formed in 1987 while grunge was already well on it's way up.

But Nirvana revolutionized the genre!!! Yes... yes they did. They took an underground movement, cleaned it up, and made it radio friendly. Nirvana released "Bleach" on Sub Pop and that got them out in the open. Mainstream record companies saw the very rapidly rising popularity of grunge on the underground and wanted to get their hands on it. The radio-friendly Nirvana was signed by DGC and they released "Nevermind." Nirvana was gained huge success by adopting something that was beautiful and dumbing it down for the radio. When they saw this, all the other grunge bands that we know today dumbed their stuff down too and gained their mainstream success.

Now, I like Nirvana too. But you honestly can't deny that Nirvana came up the way they did. And you can't deny the omnipresent invfluence of Kurt's predecessors.

Chuck Berry -> Elvis -> The British Invasion (Beatles, Stones, the Who, the Kinks)& the political folk of Bob Dylan and Neil Young -> Psychedelia(Latter Beatles & Stones, The Doors, Pink Floyd) & Metal (Zeppelin, Sabbath) -> Punk (Sex Pistols, the Clash, Buzzcocks, The Ramones) & The Velvet Underground & Bowie -> Post-Punk (Sonic Youth, Husker Du) -> Grunge (Green River, Dino Jr., Soundgarden) -> Nirvana, Alice in Chains -> Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins

Re: ARE YOU FUCKING STONED?!?!?!?!

[thebeyonder]

Oh yeah... my point being that the influence comes from grunge as a whole, not just Nirvana. And as big of an influence as it may be, it's still not nearly as big as that of it's forefathers. It happens in every generation, back then they said the same thing that you say now.

There's never been an Elvis Presley and there never will be another Elvis Presley.

No one will ever have as big of an impact as the Beatles.

Music is ever changing and evolving. Every once in a while something happens that everyone goes nuts for. We went nuts for Nirvana because that's what the big record companies gave us first. It's happened before and it will happen again. Get over it.