2013 – Nirvana Legacy

Starting the Year the Nirvana Way

I love Christmas – always a good reminder that I’ve been lucky enough to have a family consisting entirely of top-notch people I enjoy spending time with. Now! How did you kick-off January?

People underestimate the value of a finishing line and a starting line. Even though it’s artificial there has to be a point where something finishes so that as much as possible can be packed away – that word ‘closure’ applies to average everyday life as much as it does to crises and drama. The move from one year to the next allows at least the pretence of a fresh piece of paper on which to plot the course of the next year – it’s why gym attendance peaks in January, slowly declines to a mild bump just as summer starts, then declines all the way to the end of the year. It’s why the job market kicks into gear as organisations try to fill their vacancies and job-hunters get their motivation to keep trying.

What’s fun about the Nirvana stat posts (look in the left-hand column on the screen, scroll down to the Categories – they’re another way to find/see the 310 posts buried on this blog) is the line between revealing what isn’t perhaps so obvious with the naked eye versus potentially inventing something via numbers and seeing something that isn’t there. Great fun! On top of that, often what I’m seeking to reveal isn’t some earth-shattering new idea, it’s simply a confirmation that Kurt, Krist and Dave (et al.) were normal people and as prone as anyone else to routine, habit, the unconscious-making of patterns in life. That’s different from the proposal that there were deeply considered and plotted diagramatic masterplans – intentional behaviour does not necessarily mean conscious choices.

Nirvana, I feel save saying, were as sensitive as anyone to the desire to kick-start each year – the difference between them and the majority of us is that their focus was music so the way to set the year off at a flying pace was to commence with a musical endeavour. Can I prove it?

Well…Yeah. Over the years in which the band was in existence, here’s the pattern of which months they recorded in and how many times over that period:

1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993 and 1994 all commenced with a January recording session – 1992 being the only calendar year exception. There’s a similar reinforcement of this point in terms of how many songs Nirvana recorded if examined month-by-month:

I even allocated all songs recorded during the Bleach sessions in December 1988/January 1989 to December and still Nirvana recorded nearly twice as many songs in January as in any other month. Just because I enjoy muddying the waters of my own thoughts though – here’s the pattern of number of days spent in studio as best as is known:

On the one hand, it shows how a single odd result can skew data when working with small quantities – the Nevermind sessions of May 1991 were the lengthiest Nirvana ever indulged in, an outlier, and they make things look different…However, look again at the overall tendency toward winter working – December, January, February. Also, it points out that though Nirvana did persistently and consistently head in to record in January, they never embarked on a major recording session in that month – May comes first on this chart because of the Nevermind session, February comes second because of the In Utero session. January was their month to get warmed up, to set things in motion, not necessarily to finalise end-product.

Examining the songs recorded during each month’s recording sessions that point becomes fairly clear. From the January 1988 recording session only two of the tracks recorded made it onto Bleach and only because they couldn’t be improved on. Prior to Incesticide only a couple of other tracks were tossed out as compilation filler. January 1990’s Sappy was famously abandoned, of the seven songs from January 1991 only Aneurysm and Even in his Youth were officially released but only on a single, January 1993 only yielded Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol as the European bonus track for In Utero and January 1994 didn’t emerge until that glorious posthumous day not much shy of a decade later.

So! There we go…Start your 2014 the Nirvana way – start something in January. Go forth and make it so…

Christmas…And Every Best Wish to Nirvana Fans One n’ All

Strewth December goes by on spiked trainers…

Highlights of the year?

Just found this up online – the red bass guitar? That’s Pat – once upon a time member of Yellow Snow, one of the first bands to ever play alongside Nirvana way back at the Community World Theater, on drums is Bob – a charming and mellow fella – and closest to us is John Purkey formerly of Machine and Subvert among others who was queried by Kurt Cobain as a potential Nirvana drummer and who set up the show at Legends in 1990 with Melvins, Nirvana and the Rhino Humpers. My highlight of the year was sitting in the basement you see on this video watching the band play for me. I was looking for my song of the year, Dharma, by Sleeper Cell which I finally have on CD-R (package arrived the other day) but found this clip instead.

Other good musical moments? Adam Harding’s take on Do Re Mi was wicked too – likewise the dreamy Dumb Numbers debut. The Soundgarden Screaming Life/Fopp reissue finally emerging was nice to see. There’s a band called Sam Kazakgascar who may count as the release that most surprised this year – I wasn’t sure what to expect but this was genuinely different stuff, loved it.

Where next in general? Well, here’s hoping the Cobain twentieth anniversary year features something of note. I’ve a few plans of my own but I’ll just keep plugging away at them and tell all once I’ve reached the necessary critical mass – hate talking about things before they’ve come true just in case they don’t…We’ll see.

Have a great Christmas and catch y’all soon.

An Addition to the Information on the Cobain Statue in Aberdeen

This entire blog is a hobby, not a job (despite the hundreds of hours that have gone into it.) Some Internet commentators seem to feel they have an absolute right to say whatever they want, however they want, to whomsoever they wish…I’d say that having that right and being intelligent with it are very different things and I’d rather be smart than right. That means that though I make observations on things related to the overall theme of this blog (i.e., the band Nirvana) I don’t claim to hold absolute truths, nor to be making authoritative and dictatorial judgments – I can be wrong and I’m very happy to say so. I believe I do have a right to comment on any and all publically available information, art, music, ideas, concepts, people, etc., plus the right to defend those comments and views if I believe them to be true, but I don’t have to slavishly follow anyone’s claims or diktats because everything here is written independently – I report only to myself…Therefore I simply try to adhere to the rule that if I get something wrong, or something was/is untrue, then I correct and make it clear and make a sincere and earnest apology. I think it’s a sign of adulthood being able to take criticism and bow one’s head, raise one’s hand and say “yeah, that was me, sorry.”

Anyways! Soooo…A lady called Jennifer Stewart very kindly commented on the blog post from way back in September regarding the Kurt Cobain statue in Aberdeen and she has a very welcome perspective given “this artist…is my mum. A beautiful soul…”

Jennifer explained that Krist Novoselic has since muted his initial discomfort with the statue and has indicated his appreciation of her mother’s efforts – that people acting creatively is the crucial piece. She also states that there were negotiations to attempt to place the statue in the Aberdeen Museum of History but they couldn’t reach an accomodation on the subject of what do with any revenue from memorabilia/postcards featuring the statue; ““she wanted to work a deal for free memberships for kids at our local YMCA.”

(As a sidebar, you note the giant fan directly in front of the statue? It’s a real quality move – Cobain apparently played the majority of his In Utero tour shows with a giant fan aimed directly at his head – you see in Live and Loud when his air blows back off his face? That’s it right there. A nice lil’ bit of authenticity.)

She further pointed out that the artist has a statue “now deemed a United States public monument in Fort Totten in Queens” (I believe this one? http://www.monumentsandmemorials.com/report.php?id=1895) which forms a tribute to the firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11. Jennifer explained the artist made an attempt to donate relics from Station House 10 to create a tribute within the museum in Aberdeen but, again, they didn’t reach the desired agreement – ah well. So! That’s something fresh and interesting and I hope I’ve shown due respect to the artist and to Jennifer.

Incidentally on a nice rainy day, this Aussie gentleman took a few more shots of Aberdeen sights, thought it might be interesting to ya:

Kurt Cobain’s Aberdeen

Also, it turns out that Aberdeen High apparently offers a Kurt Cobain Visual Arts Scholarship won in 2012 by Kristen Carson (yay Kristen! Well done!) and offered ever since 1994. The official description is that the applicant must be a “senior student who has taken an interest in visual art – does not need to be an art student – Must submit 8-10 ORIGINAL works of art – one medium only or a combination of 2D and 3D.” I can imagine Mr. Cobain actually, maybe, just about, being pleased that he might be remembered for his art as much as for music…

http://thedailyworld.com/sections/news/local/aberdeen-high-awards-scholarships.html

Cobain Nearly Turned Down Grohl’s Participation in MTV Unplugged?

http://loudwire.com/kurt-cobain-nearly-banned-dave-grohl-nirvana-unplugged-concert/

Conversational treats from MTV To we faithful denizens of the Internet age… My feeling is that the description of Grohl nearly not playing is overstated – can you honestly imagine a prominent TV performance of Nirvana taking place with one third (or one quarter depending on your rating of Mr Smear’s position – to be fair, he was pretty well a full member at least soon after this) of the band absent…? Kurt Cobain was a man newly enlightened to the intrusive tittle-tattle of the media and how things might appear and what people might say to such a public division. It’s just a guess but I’m not sure it’d be worth the potential disruption to peace and quiet.

What it does reveal, however, is that even at this late stage Cobain was concerned about how the band looked and sounded to an intense level of detail. While his desire to spend time in studio had completely disintegrated, he was certainly paying a keen eye to business when the band had to make it happen. That awareness of public attention also occured at the Live n’ Loud performance – another well choreographed, carefully chosen piece of work. Getting his drummer new sticks was vital.

Similarly, it indicates his deep awareness of the activities of ‘HIS’ drummers in the desire to soften Grohl’s sound even if it meant doing so against his will – it shows a degree of ownership over the performance of the drummers that had continued throughout his career. He had dictated the terms of involvement to his first couple of drummers (excluding Dale Crover), had criticised and denigrated Chad Channing’s performance then finally found a drummer with the muscle he required…Until that muscle and heft of performance was a problem.

Still, I can’t imagine the talk of dispensing with Grohl for the night was more than that – talk, grumpy mutterings…There’s a world of things said that never happened.

Kurt Cobain, Identity and Sexuality

Kurt Cobain on Identity

This floated around about a month ago, generally focused around a single quotation “I even thought that I was gay.” The problem being that it’s not the crucial point of what he’s discussing.

To be gay, to be homosexual, is specifically an expression denoting sexual orientation and the romantic and/or sexual linkages resulting from it; for Cobain to be gay would have meant describing himself as romantically or sexually attracted to men. He doesn’t do this. The full statement is “I even thought that I was gay, that it might be the solution to my problem, although I never experimented with it.”

This section of the conversation was an extension of an overall discussion of his family difficulty, his difficulties fitting in at school, his difficulties forming social bonds to other males, his hatred of the way women are treated by a society that continues to promote misogyny. What he’s discussing is teenage identity rather than sexuality. His rejection of the traditional male formulation of self – i.e., expression via sports, via exclusively male activity, via the desired or actualised subjugation of women and a sense that they’re just another form of sporting achievement – is what leads to the “there’s something different about me” teenage blues in the case of Mr. Cobain.

What’s interesting though is his idea that self-defining as gay would have been an improvement in his circumstances – like receiving a pass allowing him to opt-out of the norms he was rejecting; defining oneself sexually in order to escape a sense of being in some way warped and being attacked for it. Of course he retreats from this – being known as an openly gay male would, I imagine, have been a fairly hazardous experience. It shows a distinct shortcoming in Cobain’s knowledge and understanding of homosexuality that he seems to be adopting his ‘abusers’ beliefs as his own – they think that his absence of desire for traditional male pursuits and attitudes makes him gay and teen Cobain, instead of saying that they were wrong and he obviously wasn’t gay it was simply that he didn’t agree with them, he says “maybe they’re right.” It’s a telling indication of the internalised values Cobain had learnt growing up and had been unable to shed at the point in time he was discussing.

It’s also a curious indication of his views on the purpose of identity; identity to be adopted as a veil to keep others away and to avoid being criticised. The idea is one in which being gay is a way for him to be ignored, to not be thought of as simply weird or wrong. Later in life he’s described as such a pleasant, decent and funny guy by those he knows but is often considered taciturn and socially withdrawn by others who only casually come into contact with him – again, becoming known for this allows him to evade and avoid exposure and discomfort. Similarly, toward the last year or so of his life, having discovered that withdrawing just led to increased intrusion into his private affairs – he tries the same thing, to adopt a positive identity and to say positive things, again, as a way of simply keeping people at a distance from his real thoughts and feelings.

In the case of teen Cobain, rather than arguing for the virtues and value of his beliefs and way of being – it seemed an easier solution, at least at one point, to just say “yeah, I’m gay, whatever you say.” For later Cobain there was still this tendency to use identity as a form of hiding.

Nirvana Film in the Works…

http://www.rocknycliveandrecorded.com/2013/11/soaked-in-bleach-a-new-movie-about-kurt-cobains-death.html

While I was up in Aberdeen I first heard of ‘Soaked in Bleach’ coming into being. As far as I’m aware it’s an extension/recapitulation of the theories around Kurt Cobain’s death with Tom Grant involved. I’ve no greater thoughts on it at this point, the intention was to spray the film’s title onto the bridge in Aberdeen under which Cobain used to hang out. We’ll see what emerges here!

Oh, a friend of mine gave me this one “for a quiet news day”. It’s an indication of what the civilising effect of familiarity, of age, does to a sense of rebellion or wildness – we all get civilised and someday we wear our former symbols on an office casual day. Heh!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thearchers/posts/Wear-Your-Old-Band-T-Shirt-To-Work-Day-with-BBC-6-Music

Building Cobain Presence in Aberdeen

http://kbkw.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6234

Another element added to the mix in Aberdeen. Nothing more added on this front yet, I’ll be curious to see what this is. Nice to see a guy who valued himself as more than just a musician, as a true artist, being appreciated by such a span of local artists.

Might have said this the other day, I remember a copy of MAD Magazine back in 1994 saying “teach more singers to mumble like Kurt Cobain so there’ll be less incomprehensible lyrics to memorize.” It’s a neat quip – still makes me smile…And of course there’s far more to say.

The stereotype of the guy who mumbles then screams underestimates the amount of work Cobain put into exercising his vocal abilities – all the unusual touches. The early period prior to fame in particular is loaded with different voicings and attempts to take his vocals to unusual places. Side B of Incesticide was already a showcase for a range of approaches, something like Blandest is an interesting experiment, Fecal Matter goes gruffly punk but still sees him speaking in other voices and tones, the acoustic tracks like Clean Up Before She Comes/Don’t Want it All are another angle, the way few songs even go a whole verse without a shift in pitch or peak…It’s a beautiful thing that he pulled off Do Re Mi right at the end when I’ll admit to feeling the startling vocal changes had gradually fallen for quite some time. In a way what makes Do Re Mi a definitive Cobain performance is that he does something that people perhaps wouldn’t expect him to do when really, if they were reacting to his songs rather than the perception of his songs, the unexpected vocal tweak or twist is precisely what was most crucial and most representative of him as a voice.

Friday addition: a little more on the artist’s intentions for the mural plus kinda fun reading local news for the Aberdeen/Hoquiam/Gray’s Harbor area:
http://kxro.wordpress.com/2013/11/

Something in the Way in my Opinion – Plus Ukulele Teen Spirit…

To be very fair, this is far more listenable than one would expect – instrumentally the change in tone is pretty intriguing, the bridge into the chorus benefits from the clock-like approach of the multiple ukuleles and the harmonised vocals….Anyways, thought it’d lend something different to your day. Enjoy.

In other thoughts of the day, I find the process of creation intriguing. Inspiration isn’t ‘magic’, it isn’t necessarily so beyond exploration or regular human experience that threads of thinking can’t be identified. In the case of Mr. Cobain, there’s been a debate over on LiveNirvana the past couple days about a YouTube clip called ‘Excuse’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q45a0m0MZ_U), go read the thread, it’s entertaining and I don’t wish to repeat it.

What it’s reminded me of though is the level of ambition Cobain exhibited with regard to his vocal performances. Focusing purely on his acoustic efforts, there’s significant variety in the performances ranging from the wonderful double-tracking effect on Clean Up Before She Comes, to the gothic vocalising on Don’t Want it All, the narcotised story-telling/scene description on Polly accompanying the background effects and thudding ‘suitcase’ drums, the way each line peaks on Opinion prior to the humming chorus lines, the solemnity giving way to the beautiful chorus of Something in the Way…His willingness to test his own voice, to rarely settle for monotony across an entire song.

It isn’t a huge revelation but one element I’ve been musing on recently is the visible connections between songs performed at certain times of his career. Essentially if an idea or approach was on his mind there tended to be more than one song in a certain mode or utilising a certain style or technique. At its most direct there’s Cobain’s admission that Dumb was written as an extrapolation from Polly, the punchy pop of Been a Son and Stain – or the lyrical unities between certain songs like Been a Son, Stain and Even in his Youth all of which arose around the same era.

Which brings me to the slimmest glimmer of a connection. I simply wondered whether I should think of the humming in Opinion and Something in the Way, two songs that arose in the same spell of song-writing in summer-autumn 1990, as two examples of a single brief vocal experiment. All i’d be suggesting is that these two songs happened to fit a particular mode he worked with briefly in which ending the chorus line, the song’s title line, by humming was something he was toying with. It also impresses me that he would put so much into such a tiny element of a song – the low/high humming on Opinion or the double-tracked harmonies that conclude Something in the Way…Cobain may unfortunately have come to bear the mantle of the ‘slacker’ generation but there was nothing slack at all about how much work he clearly put into testing and experimenting with even the smallest things he could do with his voice.

Nirvana In Utero Deluxe Editions at Two Months Distance

Wondered how everyone was feeling about their Nirvana In Utero deluxe and super-deluxe editions now there’s been time for it to soak in?

In the run-up I was pretty contented – some material I’d never heard, a potentially intriguing remix job, the Litt/Albini originals of a few pieces, the one surprise instrumental from a rehearsal, the bonus footage pieces. I’m very much on the glass half-full side of things, especially given I know it was feeding a hole that can never be filled meaning that anything that emerges was, and is, welcomed and appreciated.

At this point…Well, I’d still rate myself satisfied – the remastering was perfectly decent and I see no great reasons for anyone to complain about the slight ‘pumping up’ of the original album, the remix had a few points of intrigue, the bonuses made sense and Live and Loud is still a quality performance – love the long outro…More of this kinda chaos please!

But. On the other hand, I admit the randomness of including certain instrumentals and not others, of including certain early takes and not others…That definitely grates on me. When all the additional material is filler for fanatics hearing that someone somewhere has decided that certain material is ‘even more filler than other filler’ and that I’d definitely not want to hear it…It’s just irksome. I’m trying my best to think of it as the equivalent of the hierarchy of eBay, then second hand and charity shops, then finally bric-a-brac stores and carboot sales – that there are differing levels among pieces someone gets rid of but still…Unless an outtake is unavailable or genuinely wrecked I’ve no idea why one outtake should be deemed of any greater value than another.

Also, the 2013 remix did disappoint – I was hoping to hear far more wrenching changes to a greater number of songs. Instead, a few peaks do stand out but too few to fundamentally alter my listening experience or to distinguish the remix greatly from the original album. I’ve tried it with headphones, I’ve tried it with the original album playing alongside…Ultimately I think one problem may be that an exercise like this being in the hands of music producers/engineers fails to recognise the difference between the aural depth heard by those experts versus what might be distinguishable to an untrained individual who can’t isolate the audio tracks and doesn’t have such sensitive hearing. I was hoping for more. I’d have been more than happy, as an experiment, to hear them drop out backing, chop vocals, restructure songs…Isn’t it funny? I’m happy to consider sacrilege so long as it made for something fresh!

Ultimately there’s a touch of realisation to the whole experience, for me. The reason that there are not many deep cuts or intriguing diversions on the release is simply because that absence is a realistic portrait of what was going on in terms of Nirvana in the 1992-1993 period. Nirvana entered the studio in October 1992 and did barely one day’s work, they managed at most two days playing together as a band in January 1993, then in February they hammered out the album and all additional takes and so forth in, at most, a single week. This wasn’t a band taking time to evolve, develop or experiment with their songs – they were walking in, hammering out takes, then heading home where Cobain might work on something to order the band to do next time they got together. The compilers of the In Utero twentieth anniversary releases had the unenviable task of fleshing out a mildly depressing period of time for Nirvana and I feel they did so subtly (for example, the pieces in the Super-Deluxe book that emphasise the business and product aspects of an album) and accurately (in terms of the overall paucity of revelations or substantially different material.)

It does make me wonder though, whether Courtney Love has plans for the remaining tapes of Cobain demos given there have now been several occasions between 2009 and 2013 for further use to be made of whatever remains in that archive. On the one hand it makes me think that the rift opened way back in the early 2000s has never even reached the point at which she’s involved in any of the anniversary releases. On the other, it still lends me hope that there’s more to be made of material from her side of things – material that isn’t sitting with the label, or with Krist and Dave, or in the bands of Nirvana’s various producers.

That’s what I feel fans really have to look forward to; more Cobain material, a lot less Nirvana releases of real note.

The Camera Lies: Cobain in Photos

I’ve said it before, I’m not a big fan of genuflecting over endless photos of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.
It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the work that goes into surfacing shots of rare shows and moments in the life of this band. The kinds of photos I’m referring to are the close ups and front-on shots of Cobain’s face – they leave me cold because they serve a fundamental lie.

The purpose of a photo is to bring an onlooker closer to a moment that has past, whether a piece of their own history or someone else’s. The belief, with photos of Kurt Cobain, seems to be that this is about communion with the soul of the man himself – a way of growing closer to an understanding of him and a sympathy with his experience of the world. I would argue most of it is, instead, about projection by the onlooker and/or photographer and nothing at all to do with Cobain.

The Mona Lisa is a prime example – what was the woman thinking? The answer is that, actually, the image captures nothing. It’s impossible to verify if the famous smile was actually present (think about it, over the period of time the artist took to capture the image did the model truly maintain a single uniform facial expression for ten minutes, thirty minutes, hours on end?) or whether it was simply what the artist wished to portray or represent to us – his invention entirely and one that should make us ask not, “what was the woman thinking?” but “what was the artist thinking?” Likewise, even if we assumed that it was a true representation of the physical expression of the model it brings us no closer to verifying her actual emotional state; most people have a ‘photo face’ that they put on when a camera is pointed at them – what we may be seeing is the model’s false face adopted because of the present of an artist’s brush. And, again, even if we accepted that this face was indeed a direct translation of what she was feeling at that moment in time its a tragic voiding of the complexity of a human being to reduce them down to a single face at a single moment – when that model left the room we don’t know if she looked relieved, if she laughed to see herself in paint, or if she cried over a distraction we can’t see because all we have to go on is what the artist commissioned, paid for and chose to represent. We’re not seeing truth, we’re seeing a selected and mediated (un)reality.

The same goes for photos of Kurt Cobain. I read one photographer stating that one of his famous shots of Cobain staring wide-eyed into the camera, in his opinion, captured a moment of nakedness, vulnerability and honesty…Crap. Studying the sea of Cobain photos what is clearest to me is that this was a man extremely uncomfortable to be brought to a location specifically for people to commit an act upon that had no purpose other than to let people gaze at his face. His facial expression isn’t unhappy, it isn’t sad or soulful – it’s a deliberately blank canvas, it’s a tease even, a case of him saying “look into my eyes, believe what you like, I’m telling you nothing.”

This matches with his distrust of the press and, indeed, most of the trappings of his superstar status – he didn’t enjoy people prying into his life so I believe it’s equally unbelievable to think that a man who famously lied to and/or concealed things from interviewers would simultaneously reveal himself utterly to a cameraman. It leads me to recall the moments on stage when he pursued the TV cameras and forced them to cut out because he waved his penis at them, or the moments when he spat on the lens, or the decision in the Come as You Are video to conceal faces.

Look again at the weight of Cobain images out there and note how often it’s obvious that he’s faking or forcing a smile – the most likely explanation for those moments is that he’s been asked to smile by the cameraman, same as one would be asked at a wedding or other occasion. I’m definitely personally projecting here – I’m constantly told “smile” in photos and I simply can’t react because it’s a demand for a false and fake reaction. What I say is always the same, “talk to me or say something funny – I’ll smile immediately”, the real human contact is needed in order to capture a natural photo, I can’t pretend. In the case of Cobain, there’s the photo of him holding up a can of spam to the camera – caught acting, his smile is natural because he’s not trying to smile, his own focus and desire is to show the can. Similarly, the photo of him sat on the floor exhausted with a hand to his head and apparently crying seems real but was something he got over swiftly. All the most popular Cobain pictures (https://nirvana-legacy.com/2012/11/11/the-most-popular-kurt-cobain-photos/), the iconic Rolling Stone shots (including the one that graces With the Lights Out), show nothing, say nothing, give no insight other than a refusal to engage with the camera. It’s a dead face and what he’s sharing with ‘us’, the viewers, is no emotion at all thus voiding the supposed purpose of all these pictures floating around the world and gracing magazines, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Tumblr, whatever.

The threefold purpose of photos, in my opinion, is to verify an occurence, to be appreciated as art in its own right and/or share an experience. The former case is served by photos such as those of Cobain’s trip to hospital in Rome in March 1994, confirming something occured and illustrating its telling and retelling – the picture is nothing on its own without the story. The artistry of the photographer’s art, to me, is served by shots like the frenetic photos from the International Motor Sports Garage that capture the blurred reality of bodies in motion – the Bleach cover likewise is a wonderful combination of anonymity and recognisability – it’s a great identity shot and Sub Pop aligned brand image. The final point is served by the concert shots of Nirvana on stage and, of course, is most meaningful for those who were at a particular occasion – a personal memory. For those who weren’t ever physically present it hints and tantalises at the visual component of the live experience; video may more accurately capture a dynamic occasion but it erases a lot of the imaginative potential of listening to a recording and studying photos then filling the gap with what the mind conjures. People underestimate how much the photographic image is a physical spur to fantasy – frankly I don’t think we like to admit how much of day to day life is about reacting to imagined and potential realities and futures.

It’s why I find ‘selfies’ so tedious. They’re the equivalent of the grating barking of a dog, an endless declaration of “I’m here!” “I’m here!” “I am here!” Humans with so little to do they’re reduced to endless repetition of content-less presence; mannequins. Fake people.