http://youtu.be/bbSKYCpOdVM
I just read a bunch of comments on Nirvana on another site, and it’s a real bitchfest of a bunch of old white men complaining. Apparently Yes, Grand Funk Railroad and Moody Blues are better.
I thought Kurt Cobain was a fucking genius. I still remember the first time I heard him. It was New Year’s Day 1991, the local alternative station was playing the year’s best 100 albums countdown when my clock radio went off and I heard this ungodly scream from the speaker. I sat right up in bed and said, “Who the fuck is that?” In a good way.
Like the Beatles.
I sat transfixed for the rest of the album, and the next day went out to buy “Nevermind” — ostensibly for my kid.
I thought he was a genius. Still do.
Fanboys would rather argue that someone else did it earlier or better, but Kurt got the job done. Simple as that. Those arguments are as silly as saying that the Beatles shouldn’t get credit for their sound, it was all in their influences, their sound was a pastiche.
But that’s what artists do. They make stew.
One of the reason I hate the whole “High Fidelity”-like music wars (that movie made me cringe, I know so many fanboys like that Jack Black character) is that so many male fans turn music into a fucking testosterone-spewing Olympic competition. It’s so stupid. It’s like saying one ocean wave is better than another.
It’s art, it’s communication. Does this work communicate something, and does it do it in a completely different way than anyone else has? Well, then.
And the fanboys so often confuse technical competence for brilliance. I’ve played in bands, we always broke it down into “players” vs. musicians. Players could perform technically perfect music — but musicians have the soul. Kurt Cobain didn’t have to be technically proficient, he was a musician.
Finally, music is inextricably tied to memory. A song may be meaningful to you because of the life events to which it was the soundtrack. It’s not the same as the musician being a genius, he or she is only reflecting back your life.
All geniuses are artists, but not all real artists are geniuses. Michael Jackson was an artist; I’m not sure if he was a genius. Prince is a genius. So is Neil Young. Joni Mitchell is an artist. Hank Williams, five chords and a guitar: Genius. Chrissie Hynde? Artist, pure artist.
And what difference does it make? It’s all there for us to love.
Cobain was a genius but he was also a fucking asshole – if he had offed himself via an OD or drowning in his own vomit (in the great RnR tradition) I could be okay with that but resorting to blowing his brains out made an utter mockery of anyone who’s ever struggled to make their way in the music world. I loved “Nevermind” when it came out but have been unable to listen to it (or any other of his recordings) since 1994 as they piss me off too much. There are other ways to walk away from ‘stardom’…
That was a great way of communicating what art is and what music is. It gets you viscerally in the parts of you that matter. Thank you!