Nirvana and Punk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xA8tUUrSTIw
Punk rock.

 

What's a 'rawk' ?

 

It's not irony as we know it, except for Alanis Morissette perhaps.

 

When the cult of Kurt dies down and he's not the Harry Potter of rock music (a flawless hero who totally never did anything wrong), I'll lay off and actually like Nirvana more. Kurt Cobain's cult of personality is what turns me off from Nirvana.

 

This is probably not the most effective place to carry out your crusade.

 

So your ability to enjoy Nirvana's music is wholly dependent upon your being satisfied that mankind has forever ridden itself of a blight that exists solely within the tortured recesses of your own imagination?

 

Silly. The personality cult doesn't turn you off - it turns you on! Look at the level of attention you pay to the subject. At least you come out and admit you have an agenda.
Tip: don't get so obsessed with someone you never met or knew and what people make of him. The dude had flaws - like all of us. Anyone who says otherwise is crazy. So don't be crazy. I can tell you personally he was very talented and artistic and a gentle soul. What sudden worldwide fame and crazy fandom and heroin did to him is something else. That was not Kurt. In the end it is just music. If you like it - then like it for what it is and don't obsess about the dramas that people having no fame or talent like to stir up about those that do.

 

Yes. And Vs. is more punk than In Utero.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1RZLfG_KDLA
This is better.

 

All drugs do is enhance a part of a person's personality that was already there. He wasn't a little saintly angel. He was just as much a douche as the people he despised.

 

Who said he was a saintly angel? Do you even know who you're upset with?

 

This is honestly one of the most narrow-minded things I've read in a long time. Who cares about any "cult of personality"? Either you like the music or you don't. Do you dislike The Beatles as well? The Doors? Joy Division? Literally any popular band ever to feature a popular artist who's legacy is or was dictated by millions of people who never even knew him or her? The best part is that you say all this in defense of Guns N Roses of all bands. Really?! Guns and freaking Roses? You're going to lay into Kurt Cobain's "personality" for the benefit of Axl Rose, one of the most notoriously difficult personalities in the history of music?

A majority of your posts come off as someone who reads about things without actually experiencing them and lets the hype for some reason determine your own personal taste--you then start these completely lame threads trying to passive aggressively insult people who like bands that you don't like. Then you take it a step further and try to dictate why these people like these bands when for most of us we just like the music we like and we leave it at that. So now here we are, with you fruitlessly equating Nirvana's music with a reputation the band has some 20 years later, a reputation that Cobain himself has literally no control over. Whether he was a raging jerk or a saint is completely irrelevant to whether you personally enjoy his music. And until you find a quote from Cobain where he explicitly credits himself and Nirvana with "bringing back punk", then stop holding him and his band accountable for something that fans and the media put into your easily manipulated head. And if you really want to know about Cobain and his influences, go pick up a book or read the liner notes to Incesticide.

 

At least John Lennon liked to have a good time. Same with Jim Morrison. They didn't want to destroy the genres they occupied because they hated themselves. Kurt Cobain represents everything wrong with rock. And yeah, Axl Rose is a douche, but at least unlike Kurt, he never pretended he wasn't.

 

Hmmm...reading your comments about what 'punk' is illustrates to me you have no idea what punk was about to be honest, especially UK Punk.

 

When did Kurt Cobain pretend anything? He just said crap and wrote things like anyone. He doesn't represent anything other than your personal hang-ups with what rock is supposed to be or something. You make him sound like some artist who knew he would blow up overnight and had some secret, saintly agenda to take down an industry. Why are you holding him accountable for his likes and dislikes and/or the fact that he was popular? He expressed himself and some people like it, others don't. That's really where things begin and end. And who in the world cares whether he liked to have a good time or not? Are you some dude head-banging in the back of your van or something, lamenting "downer rock" and heralding Van Halen's 90s output as some sort of pinnacle? How did you even wander into these parts in the first place? All you do is pop in to create these lame-brained threads that amount to little more than some strange vendetta against a band that dismantled two decades ago.

Like the music. Dislike the music. Who cares? But stop equating an artist's personality with the merits of their output--it's a slippery slope that leaves basically no single artist not looking like some sort of hypocrite.

 

So you're an expert on drugs now. With an obsession about someone you never knew. And your real agenda comes out.
You sound like you are really struggling emotionally with the issues you place in front of you.

 

No van but yes. Well, only the song from the Twister soundtrack, and the two '96 reunion songs. The pinnacle of hard rock really happened around 1991 with Ten, Use Your Illusion I, and the Black Album. Load was great too, Get a Grip fantastic, as was Ozzy's "Walk on Water" and The Cranberries' No Need to Argue.

 

Well, nothing says "head-banging dude" like The Cranberries, I'll give you that. By the way, I more or less really like the majority of the albums you mentioned. I like Nirvana too (one of my favorite bands in fact). The two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Of course, it does require that one likes different kinds of music or at the very least accepts that other people are free to connect with different types of music. Sometimes it seems like you understand this, other times it seems like you've logged on to one too many Nirvana forums and simply can't cope with the fan base.

 

The Ramones used violins on their album End of the Century. Bad Religion was way more glossy than Nirvana and more artistic seeing as how they made a prog rock album. You say they NEVER wrote a dark song, but they have a song called "I Hate Myself and Want to Die". Sounds pretty dark to me.

I also don't get why you use Guns N' Roses as an example when they were more mainstream and used violins! And other than critics, I don't know where you are finding all of these people that praise Kurt so damn much. I have found way more people that hate Nirvana than like and it has been that way since they broke big. My room mate in college actually celebrated Kurt killing himself. He hated them that much. And the radio disc jockey on the album station joked the day he died that he guess Kurt did have a gun. I like Nirvana and have heard a ton of bashing over the years and practically no praise outside of mainstream media.

I don't know if you were alive when the made it big, but if anything you should be mad at the mainstream media. They are the ones that put them on a pedestal. And like someone else suggested why pick on Kurt over the Beatles. John Lennon wasn't a saint. Look up on youtube where Julian has some pretty harsh things to say about him. Aren't all rock stars overrated.

And you describing Kurt as a douche and not being an angel pretty much makes him sound like a "punk".

 

I just hate the man's hypocrisy. The man was basically making pop-rock ballads at the end while trashing Guns N' Roses and Pearl Jam for being 'corporate rock'. Maybe if he wasn't such a hypocrite I'd respect him more. "Oh, fame sucks, I hate commercialism man" > then goes on MTV and to every corporate industry awards shows and makes videos that are just as out there as anything else.

 

I declare that Kurt Cobain was a mutant. A prototype of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing, surly thrashers.

 

I've had similar passions about popular music when I was about 14. 29 years later, not so much.

 

No one (with any knowledge) has ever said that "Nirvana brought back punk".

What people were saying at the time that was maybe was misinterpreted by others (like Uly), was that Nevermind hitting #1 on the Billboard charts was as if the Sex Pistols had hit #1 with "Nevermind The Bollocks".

People were saying that Nirvana made the mainstream realize that there was this huge underground. And they did. I wrote for a fanzine. The difference pre-Nirvana breaking big and post-Nirvana breaking big was HUGE when it came to how the industry viewed the underground culture.

I get the feeling that this is going to be yet another one of those threads where people who weren't born yet at the time are telling people who were there, how it went down.

Many people, including punkers and myself, considered Nirvana a "punk" band. They did what they wanted and took no prisoners. Watch the Live Tonight Sold Out movie for proof.

 

The media placed him on that pedestal and he did state that he felt like a hypocrite. That was one of the things that contributed to his depression. A lot of popular bands made fun of Guns N' Roses. Kurt actually tried to joke around with Axle Rose and Axle spit at him. James of Metallica called Guns N' Roses; Guns and Poses and Axle was furious. For the record I like Guns' N' Roses too. As for Pearl Jam, Kurt ended up changing his mind about them later on.

I don't put Kurt on any kind of a pedestal. I just like the music. I think Nevermind is a great album, but it's not my favorite from the 90's. The man is dead. He can't tell you why he said what he said. If you don't like him then why start this thread? I personally don't get all of the Beatles worship on this form, but I don't start threads about them being overrated. I happen to like them too by the way.