I watched a bio of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain a few nights ago called "About a Son - Kurt Cobain. The movie was a handful of tape-recorded interviews Kurt made, about a year before his suicide, married up with some beautiful cinematography of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. It was quite an interesting film, but it got me thinking:The year was 1994. The moment is etched into my memory still, to this very day.
I was working for a department store in the mall. Gottschalks, I believe. I had gone on break that morning and sauntered up to the lunchroom on the administrative floor. I remember looking though the refrigerator for a pop when I heard a news anchor on the television announce what I saw to be the end of the last great music revolution. Kurt Cobain's body had been found in a greenhouse on his property. Police were calling the find a suicide.
Something died in me that day. Now it wasn't that I was a Nirvana fan because I wasn't. In my opinion, they had some really good songs and I had a fair amount of respect for Cobain's songwriting. Although I liked most of the Nevermind album, the band's loud-quiet-loud sound always seemed to me to be much to similar to Frank Black's trademark Pixie's sound, and while Kurt's angst filled lyrics may have earned him multitudes of like-minded fans, it seemed to me to be nothing different than anything else that was popular at the time. In fact, I always got the feeling that Kurt was trying to sell his soul using reverse psychology on his listeners. He was a billboard for anti-commercialism and the rejection of all things popular. Yet for what it was worth, Nirvana was the most popular band of that era and Kurt had no problem cashing those fat Geffin Record paychecks once the band broke.
What I realized in that moment, was that, like Hunter S. Thompson had once written about San Francisco at the end of the 60's, Nirvana had been the high water mark for the alternative music scene of the 90's. Kurt Cobain had unwittingly become the poster child for all of the rage that Generation X, the children of Reaganomics and the Cold War felt. He had become a mouthpiece for the cynicism and anger that our generation felt at that time. We grew up in the 80's, watching the Wall St. yuppie set get rich. Excess was encouraged and greed was good. Then, as Bush 40 took the reigns and inherited an economy troubled by Reagan overspending, we watched our country slip into recession right as we were being birthed into adulthood. Some felt not unlike the baby on the cover of Nevermind, newborn and swimming after that almighty dollar.
This was the catalyst for the alternative movement of the early 90's. At the time, hair metal, in all of it's pomp, glory and materialism, was king of the airwaves. Popular music was the consistency of cotton candy; it was fluffy, light, sweet and lacked any true substance.
From out of nowhere, it seemed the music changed overnight. I remember Nevermind was the album that was at the crest of that wave. These three misfits from Aberdeen erupted with Smells Like Teen Spirit, a song that reflected on the high school world with venomous sarcasm. We had never heard anything like this being played on mainstream radio.
Nevermind was black gold in the minds of record executives. Who knew that kids would have so much antipathy and resentment towards popularity, commercialism and the materialism? Were these the same kids that not one year ago were singing along to Girls, Girls, Girls and Nothing But a Good Time… teasing and spraying their hair into place… wearing spandex and bleached jeans?
Like oil tycoons hungry after a strike, we began to see the alternative genre quickly become mainstream, thus not really alternative anymore at all. Record companies were signing indie bands left and right, hoping for the next Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins or Pearl Jam. Festivals such as Lollapalooza grew out of the culture and flourished for a short time. Even Woodstock was brought back, although the $8.00 bottled water made it obvious that this wasn't a peace-loving, tree hugging hippie fest as it was in the 60s.
This was the real difference in the beauty of what occurred in the music world of the late 60s and what was sold part and parcel by the labels in the early 90's. While I believe that the anti-establishment and independent views of many of these bands were honest and true, the commercial establishment along with corporate media such as Rolling Stone and Spin turned the movement into a product, mass produced it, and sold it to the angry masses.
In 1994, Cobain killed it all.
Maybe he pulled the trigger because of his unending stomach pain. Maybe he did it because he couldn't cope with his drug addiction or feared the path of fatherhood he found himself on. Maybe he just couldn't stand Courtney anymore. Perhaps he was simply uncomfortable with the pedestal he had been placed on by so many people he didn't know, and undoubtedly cared nothing for.
Or maybe he opened his eyes and saw the irony of the whole situation.
Well…whatever, never mind.
