It does not seem like Nirvana are quite the cultural apex that they used to be considered. When I was in junior high and Nevermind came out, music journos and deejays alike hailed them as a kind of second coming, Kurt Cobain the patron saint of rock music, his music and lyrics a new testament of…whatever. The praise was immense, and admittedly maybe a little much. While the band certainly did make the kind of waves in the industry that dictated popular tastes, spawned the major label signing of a million underground acts, and impacted the culture at large, all the more measurable now a quarter of a century later, music writers are prone to hyperbole. And at 13, I ate every bit of that up.
“Even if you have a cold still…”
It all just feels lesser now. In hindsight, they weren’t Elvis or The Beatles or anything quite so world shattering as all that. They just felt like it to me at the time, though I am still an Uber-fan. I just don’t think kids really give a shit about Nirvana now the way I felt about The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin when I was young. It’s like the divide is getting larger. Or, I just keep getting older.
“You can cough on me again…”
I could keep bemoaning my age or bluster about youth being wasted on the young or more nonsense like that, but I’m not going to. They’re proving to be far better than we ever were anyway. Instead I’m going to listen to Nirvana’s “I Hate Myself and Want to Die,” an awesome jam that for some reason got relegated to The Beavis and Butt-head Experience for release, though it did eventually land as a B-side on the “Pennyroyal Tea” single too. It’s one of my favorites from the band, one of the last things they released, and it garnered up its far share of controversy with the title and Cobain’s imminent demise. But it all just feels like a goof. A noisy, feedback-laden goof. I need more of that kind of thing.
“I still haven’t had my fulfill…”
Listen below, our Daily Jam.
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