Nevermind  - Nirvana

A while before Nirvana hit it big, I remember seeing an interview on MTV's late night alternative music show "120 minutes" where they were speaking with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. Well, they were speaking to Krist, anyhow - Kurt was silent throughout the interview and showed no reaction to any of what appeared to be going on around him. Moreover, he was wearing what looked like a bright yellow vinyl rain parka which completely encased him below the neck, and a pair of huge, Elton John-style sunglasses with pink lenses. Not only did he look ridiculous, he really did resemble a large flying insect. 

Krist, of course, was dressed quite normally (in a grungy kind of way), and so the two of them are sitting there on the couch,  and the interviewer and Krist are having a normal conversation, both of them seemingly unconcerned about Kurt's odd behavior.

I didn't know who Nirvana were at the time, but the image stuck in my mind and a few years later when Smells Like Teen Spirit was all the rage, I thought about it again.

A fitting image indeed - here was a guy who cared so little about what anyone else could possibly think that, ironically, he was able to express himself in a such a way that millions could relate to. 

For me, despite a lifetime of listening to music, and of analyzing it with musical aspirations, the melodies and chord progressions on Nevermind, along with the very feelings expressed in the music, were completely novel to me, and yet it seemed as if I had always known them. 

Distorted guitars, screeching vocals... and yet, it wasn't heavy metal, although that was the closest thing it came to something I was familiar with. But there were no power chords, no long hair ballads. No love songs or claims of virility. No preening for the camera and no vain rock star pretensions trying to sound mature to a I-IV-V rhythm section. 

Just one strange skinny kid who didn't seem to give a shit, and was trying his best to make sure everyone knew it.

There are no lyrics on Nevermind. Just sentence fragments, if that. Free association, mainly. Basically unintelligible but somehow they made sense in a personal way. Perfect for the album as it stood, and for the statement it made... as were all of the other elements of this record.

After the success of the album, Kurt Cobain was often seen and heard denouncing success as a corporate evil, and publicly disavowed the idea that Nirvana would 'sell out' to the masses.

Success and fame, however, proved irresistable even for that strange skinny kid, and by the time of the second Nirvana album, "In Utero," it was clear that the proverbial feeling was already gone. 

Without it, lyrics about nothing and senseless chord progessions became a chore to produce and to listen to. The very presence of a lyric sheet seemed to be a self-undermining endeavor - why do we need to know the exact words when they didn't make sense to begin with?

The urgency of the music was replaced by a sadly obvious and mechanical attempt to repeat what "Nevermind" had been, and Kurt Cobain, gifted and intelligent as he was, apparently decided that, unlike 95% of musicians who make it big, a lifetime searching for the hunger again was not for him. 

Would we have like to have saved him, other than to ensure that we might be a party to any future greatness?

It's true what they say about pain being the driving force behind art; it is when pain overcomes fear and inhibition that the most beautiful art is possible. But things we are unaware of frighten us, and things we cannot see or know push us away from beauty, and from art.

They prevent the expression of our pain, and keep it locked within us.