Nirvana

Originally posted on June 23, 2006.

Back about 12 years or so I was a counselor at a summer camp. It was a great couple of weeks spent playing games in the sunshine, hanging out with old friends, and mentoring young people. At the time I thought there would be nothing better than being a teacher, a molder of young minds.

The decade since either brought me to my senses or slipped right by me.

During one of the weeks at camp, I had to go to a concert that I had no interest in. While there I bumped into a girl with whom I had met a few months prior. We began chatting it up and digging each other.

I noticed some scratches on her arm and listened, fascinated, as she told me how she had etched “Kurt Forever” into her skin with a knife. This was not long after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and like a million other young people who are perpetually affected by such things; she took this selfish act to heart.

This was long before I understood terms like “scarring” or that thousands of young people do such things to themselves every day. I didn’t understand the pain, or the crying out such things often represent. I simply thought it was a pretty cool thing to do, if rather weird. While I was saddened, and angered by Cobain’s act, the thought of carving up my own skin because of it was something of incompressibility.

Around the same time I heard “Come As You Are” on the radio which was followed by some smart-alecked DJ making sarcastic comments about Cobain lying when he sang, “And I swear that I don’t have a gun.”

My friend who happened to be a girl who later became something of a girlfriend, became very upset at this comment. She couldn’t understand how someone could joke about the death of an artist, and certainly not the suicide of a genius.

These days when I think about Nirvana, I think about those two girls and their incredibly strong reactions towards the band, its singer, and the songs they produced. In my full-on grunge days I dug the crap out of Nirvana (though truth be told I was always a Pearl Jam man) but these days they barely garner a ‘meh.’

I dig the influential nature of the scene. Rock certainly needed a good swift kick from hair metal and Arena Rock. And when listening to the MTV Unplugged album, you can really get a feel for how great a songwriter Cobain, et al. was. But these days, my musical tastes swing the long shot away from the amped-up new punk that is the bulk of their releases.

Nirvana
10/31/91
Seattle, WA

A Halloween show just after Nirvana became the saviors of rock music. It is loud, full of angst and anger, and some pretty stinkin’ good melodies underneath it all.

From my 30-year-old head, which prefers Donna the Buffalo to Soundgarden, Norah Jones to L7, this guitar-heavy neo-punk music takes a while to warm up to. After the first listen I was bored. So I turned it up a few notches, this is rock ‘n freaking roll after all, and it needs to be cranked.

That helped, the rhythmic pounding blasting from my little Saturn’s speakers got me head banging, all the way down to my pancreas.

But it still wasn’t enough; I kept wishing I had a copy of Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions, or maybe a Bruce Hornsby bootleg, circa 1997.

By the third listen my nerves had calmed down, my mind accepted the distortion, the noise, the grunge of it all and I began to digest the music.

For the love of grunge, this is some great rockin’ shite.

For a band with only two albums under their belt they mix it up pretty well. They cover a good portion of Bleach and Nevermind, throw in a couple of new songs, and even manage to cover the Vaseline’s “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam.”

The band seems to be in good spirits. Besides a rockin’, they make some cracks about the audience not being dressed up for Halloween, white boy funk, and John Jacobs and the POWER team. But mostly they just rock out.

Listening to these guys throw down the heavy stuff for a fourth time didn’t make me join the cult of Nirvana once more, but it reminded me why I was once part of the faithful.

donna the buffalo

“River of Gold” – Donna the Buffalo
from Donna the Buffalo

I caught these guys live at the Lotus Festival here in Bloomington a few years back. They played an intimate show literally under a tent. I was way up close whirling and twirling my head off. My lovely wife was enjoying the music, but not being really familiar with their songs was less enthusiastic than myself. We were very close to the speakers and the sheer volume started to get to her, so she backed away and hit the far end of the tent.

Enjoying myself too much I let her go while I stayed. A dumb move for a married man, I know, but darn these guys were flippin’ fantastic, and I wasn’t about to give up my good seat just to please my wife. And besides, she’ll get over it, right?

Turns out, at the end of the show, she wasn’t mad at me for not joining her, she was mad at me for dancing too close to some groovy hippy chick. Most of us at the front were doing what I call the white man’s groove which consists of lots of short step hops, maybe a twirl or two, and the flailing of arms like drunken chickens in a coup. While doing this, many of us get kind of entwined and bump into each other on accident.

Apparently, I was grooving too close to an attractive girl. I can’t say that I didn’t notice this girl, or didn’t enjoy being in close proximity, I am male and human after all. However, I really was way more into the music, than the girl. Come on, I’m happily married, and I know my wife is somewhere behind me, probably already mad at me. No chance I’m going to try anything.

She stayed mad for a few days, and it was all worth it. Being that close to one of the best bands playing music today was so totally worth a little married madness that I’d do it again.

Donna the Buffalo is a hard band to describe. They have influences from reggae, ska, classic rock, folk, and old country music. They play the type of music that I’d play if I played music. It is fun. It’s music to groove to, to get up and dance to, to close your eyes and get off to. The lyrics are lightly political without sounding preachy or political.

“River of Gold” is a great bouncy tune with a chorus to shout along to.

“I want the river to rock
I want the river to roll
I am willing to lose complete control.”

Tell me that’s not something to get lost in while chanting with a thousand other fans.

don mclean tapestry

“And I Love You So” – Don McLean
from Tapestry

One of a handful of songs that makes me sit down and listen, no matter where I am or what I am doing. It is a song that can make me weep, and always makes me tearful with remembrances. Funny thing for a love song to do.

Though it is a delicate love song, there are lines about loneliness that remind me of times in my own life when I was alone. I listened to this song a great deal towards the end of my college career when the course of my life was unclear and when there was no true love in sight. When Don sings of knowing “how lonely life can be” I feel that loneliness somewhere deep inside. Even now, while happily married I can still remember all those lonely nights through my life and I must take pause.

rolling stones let it bleed “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – The Rolling Stones
from Let it Bleed

This song reminds me of two things vividly; the opening scene to The Big Chill of course, but also of a night sitting in a friend’s dorm room.

The friend in question made a comp tape with what he called the “Big Three.” It included “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Inagaddadavida” by Iron Butterfly. Late one night he lit some candles, burned some incense, turned off the lights, and cranked it up. A bunch of us boys were in there, as we always were hanging out and talking about everything and nothing at the same time. The tunes fell out like wine and we had a great, great time.

I’m not sure what the neighbors thought, what with the ten-minute drum solo, but man we sure dug it. I mostly remember the Iron Butterfly tune and its psychedelic craziness, but the Stones song is what remains in my music collection. The funny thing about that version was that my friend had taped it off the radio, so the first few seconds consisted of some annoying DJ chattering over the opening organ bits. But the rest was all rabid rock and roll.

What a night it was.

nirvana nevermind “Drain You” – Nirvanafrom Nevermind

Anytime I think of Nirvana now, I think of a lovely young lass I met at some summer camp way back when. It was shortly after Cobain had killed himself and the uncertainty of everything was still in the air. I was a senior in high school and uncertainty was always in the air, but after the icon of my generation (or my life at least) whacked himself things were even more in turmoil. This maiden and I stumbled upon a conversation at the side of an auditorium where some uninteresting musical group was singing. She likes my hair (it was long and not so receding back then) I liked her…well I just liked her, she was all girl, and I liked girls.

She had big scars up and down her arm, where she had cut herself over the deal with Kurt Cobain. Written things like “Kurt Lives Forever” into her skin. I dug the crap out of Nirvana, but not enough to ever carve anything into my body. Like many girls of her age and persuasion, I suppose she was just trying to feel something, but at the time all I could think about was “cool.” Well maybe not cool, but my brainwaves weren’t far beyond anything but hormones.

I’m older now, and while I appreciate the intensity of youth, and the historical significance of Nirvana, my ears prefer much gentler things these days. Once in a while I find some old punk/metal records and play them loud whilst driving down the road. But mostly I leave the angst to the kids these days.

o cracker where art thou “Low” – Cracker and Leftover Salmon
from O’Cracker, Where Art Thou?

An odd, interesting mix to leave this week’s Random Shuffle. Leftover Salmon teamed up with Mark Lowry of Cracker fame in a bluegrass mixing of some of Cracker’s songs. It works in more ways than it has any right to. Their version of “Low” is one of the exceptions. The original has a deep foreboding sound to it that just can’t be conjured with a banjo.

Leftover Salmon can create panoplies of musical gyrations, but here they leave too much out. There isn’t enough going on musically to keep my interest. In the final coda, all the instruments come out, and it becomes something to listen to, but by that point, I’ve already tuned out or hit forward.