Nirvana Legacy

Nirvana: Lollapalooza Tour EP 1994

I’ve muttered on about Lollapalooza before, this is just a very brief addition to the topic. I noted that Perry Farrell and the organisers hadn’t been asked about it. A few brief attempts to contact Mr F didn’t get far so I just popped a question on Twitter – land of those incapable of making an extensive or wide-ranging argument or luxuriating in a flow of words (a comment on the medium not Mr F I assure you – he’s a sharp guy!) Anyways, just a minor addition to the store of Nirvana knowledge but he did reply with the following:

Not a major addition, more a touch more chronology indicating that the band did accept – after one of their usual bursts of word play and teasing. I shouldn’t credit Cobain with all light plays on words but it does hint that he either was involved, or that he had allowed someone to go ahead and agree on his behalf even if he had only the slimmest intentions of going ahead with it. The silence is just fairly typical passive-aggressive North-West behaviour – best not to reply than to offend by saying something someone might not like or might come back on. It was suggested to me the other day that this is a fairly common characteristic of the area – a bit like how I was once told that the Japanese would rather move office and disconnect the number than say no to you on a phone call. As I’m British and therefore make weasling out of blunt honesty a core part of my average day I can definitely sympathise.

I’d simply been curious regarding what point in time the invitation had been made – this is still up for grabs. I’ve never been a fan of the idea that Cobain plotted his end over a lengthy period of time and I was wondering whether the invitation was made in late 1993 or whether the band received the invitation in the spell from February onwards when he seems at his worst. Ah well, nice there are always questions.

http://thegits.com/?page_id=3459

Even in amidst the peaks and troughs of his troubled final year, Kurt Cobain’s basic decency remained on display. Reacting to the news of the brutal rape and killing of Mia Zapata the band used their weight to ensure that there’d be a good audience for the benefit that allowed Mia’s friends to begin the private investigations into her death that ultimately led to finding the murderer.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/gits-drummer-blasts-nbc-for-exploiting-mia-zapatas-death-on-tv-20140114

After a crazy time in which band members and male friends were the obvious first suspects, during which the police investigators questioned the role played by whatever Mia happened to be wearing that day in her fate (for the record and though I’m sure it doesn’t need stating, rape is not a crime that relies on someone dressing for the occasion – it’s about power and opportunity. The physical vulnerability of the victim versus the physical strength of the attacker plus the availability of a suitably discreet venue are the key factors – the attractiveness or otherwise of an individual is why you date them not why one forces an unwanted sexual act on them. Anyways, I digress…) and nothing seemed to be moving. An awful lot of money, an awful lot of work went into solving the crime and it took over half a decade to reach a result. Simultaneously, the hopes and dreams of an up-and-coming group of musicians were broken; they lost a beloved friend and also their own day-to-day lives were irrevocably altered as the chance to play, tour, record and progress as a group (and as a job that gave them their living) was whipped away. It’s understandable that the entire incident was extremely wounding to those involved and that reprising it comes with pain that must be considered.

That’s all context though – I think I’ll let individuals at the heart of this speak for themselves.

Happy Friday comrades!

http://fiberglassjacket.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/lets-get-gitsploitation-straight.html

A fun and entertaining sideline presented to me by Jeremy Keene – thank you fella! At about the three minute mark of this neat little interview with Duff McKagan there’s a mention of the famous room at the Marco Polo Hotel. Duff points out the echo of a song by punk band GBH:

The thought therefore occured that maybe the room was wrong but there’s definitely no fifth floor or room 526 at the motel – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a knowing echo. Cobain’s work is strewn with puns on other words and twisted meanings. It’s an intriguing possibility that, even when at his lowest, there was room for a sardonic smile when it came to choosing the room.

I’ve mentioned before how the final months of Cobain’s life are filled with echoes of his past – that he seems to have been looking backwards – a 1984 punk track isn’t out of place at all. Examples? Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam had been played only twice after its heyday in 1991 until it reappeared at MTV Unplugged; similarly Where Did You Sleep Last Night had cropped up only once or twice a year since 1989 before becoming a landmark TV performance for the band; in 1994 only two new songs featured in Nirvana set-lists but one was My Sharona by the Knack – a band Cobain had pointed to back in 1991-1992 as a comparison for Nirvana- while the other was My Best Friend’s Girl by the Cars, played at Nirvana’s last show and reputedly one of the first songs he ever learned; the suicide note reference to ‘dear Boddah’ tying to a childhood imaginary friend; calling his grandfather out of the blue, for the first time in ages, just to talk. It made sense too that key tour partners in Europe were his teenage favourites, the Buzzcocks, and perennial supporters, inspirations and Aberdeen buddies, the Melvins – his desire to support and see favourites was of course on display but was another part of this apparent cocoon of old comforts. The fact he mainly did it with music and with family is an indication of the twin poles of salvation he’d looked to.

My hangovers have become two day extravaganzas. One day of physical pain then a second day of general emotional vibes and not quite being with it, motivation down, self-criticism up. Apparently this is quite common. Partly it’s age, partly it’s because I don’t drink as often as I used to so my body just isn’t used to it – plus not drinking often means it’s possible to see the depressive effect of alcohol for what it is. Alcohol in itself is a pure substance, but we consume it usually in adulterated forms and imprecisely varied amounts so the body is facing an array of chemical onslaughts. Couple that with the impact of body temperature, pre-existing mood and psychological status, physical health, body mass, efficiency of internal organs, whether one is drinking stood up or sat down, sleep patterns, quantity and/or type of food consumed with it, whether one drinks water…The impact of alcohol in a laboratory can be tested to derive a scientific rule or equation but loose in society it becomes a conundrum of infinite complexity. Most of us have experienced it; the morning after a booze-soaked outing but somehow we’ve survived, or the couple of pints on the way home that somehow leaves the head buzzing the whole of the next day – or the friend who downs beer with abandon but needs carrying home as soon as they touch shots.

I’m always struck that people often have difficulty dealing with ambiguity; in the case of Cobain I’m always struck by people studying photos, looking at video footage, reading observations from others and claiming that the reality of his addiction wasn’t all it was made out to be because he was fine on this occasion or that. As I’m sure most people actually do realise on some level, the fact the impact upon him varied shouldn’t come as a surprise. The fact that in July 1993 he overdosed sometime in the period immediately before going on and was still able to play indicates that he was remarkably functional drug addict able to sing and play guitar despite being undoubtedly under the influence and probably not in anything close to a decent state. On the other hand, The Jesus Lizard have said before that it wasn’t exactly a virtuoso performance – he phoned it in. Not such a disaster that people talk about it in the way they do the January 16th show in Sao Paolo but still a zombified human being. It was both things at once – amazing stamina and well-practised capability, drug-induced sluggishness and lack of energy.

Examining a video and catching behavioural changes resulting from drug use might be valid, but the only thing that could be told from a photo would be skin damage and/or weight gain/loss. Similarly, the indication of off-kilter movement or speech on a video says that at that point in time someone might be having trouble…But it doesn’t extend to suggesting that three days later that was still their ongoing condition – it captures a moment not a trend or a pattern. The video and camera doesn’t lie, people are just asking far too much of it if they expect it to tell all about an individual. The functioning of his internal organs, the chemical impact on his brain, on fluid levels, on lung capacity, on heart rate or vision – none of this can be told without a close up examination.

To make a wider statement about his holistic condition across a period of time means combining evidence and here the evidence is very clear; witness reported overdoses, statements regarding drug use or purchase, photos indicating skin damage (take a look at the shots from Paris in 1994 where makeup was required to cover what had happened to his face), video clips indicating impacted motion and performance, hospitalisation, self-reported usage, the independent decision to seek treatments, reported physical pains and issues that may or may not have been linked to drug use. There’s no debate, given the span of time over which these sources are available, that there was a committed ongoing drug habit of varying intensity with spells of relatively controlled or intermittent usage and periods of heavy debilitating and incapacitating usage. There’s an expectation – born of a focus on worst case scenarios and imagery that sticks in the mind – that he should look like a Nancy Reagan approved dessicated skeleton, preferably with damaged teeth and eyes rolled back. He never did. In some images it’s clear that at age 26 Cobain had grown into his looks, in others he’s looking pretty rough – no one image can tell the tale and there’s no single pattern or path that could be observed in something as blunt as an image.

As human beings in a rapidly moving world, we make mental snapshots that allow us to evaluate and respond at pace; we rarely assess our fellows wholly or completely. Common statements that always make me twitch are “he didn’t look/act like a (insert choice here – pedophile, mass murderer, terrorist, spree killer, serial cheat, fraudster)” as if anything other than a tiny minority of individuals fall into the required image. It’s particularly lunatic because all those items are legally created and contextual descriptions – in a society with no legal age limit for sexual activity there’s no such thing as illegal and therefore immoral activity with a child, in a society that accepts killing in certain situations even mass murder doesn’t mean one wouldn’t invite them for dinner, meanwhile the ability of respectable individuals in smart clothing to egregiously enrich themselves seems to be a boom industry because people judge the clothing, personal grooming, accent and presentation rather than any awareness of internal intent or objective.

The result is statements like “I don’t understand why they’re unhappy – I mean, they’re rich/beautiful/successful/powerful/loved…Ad infinitum.” Again, easy external markers are used as a substitute for any knowledge of the internal emotional and/or psychological condition of an individual. It’s like saying of someone who dies of cancer – “but they looked so healthy,” – our position as external observers of one another gives us no ability to glance inside to that individual’s personal measures of success, personal frustrations or desires. In order to be able to function as a social order, in other words to understand and judge or react to status, position and our potential relationship to an individual, we substitute the things that we can measure at a glance; style, demeanour, brands, employment status and so forth. None of these things show us what the person might be like one minute to a next but they’re the nearest we can get in the quick-study contact most of us experience with one another day-by-day.

In the case of Cobain, he didn’t need to look like a drug addict to be one. And being chemically or psychologically dependent on pharmaceuticals didn’t make him a less moral or less decent person – nor a less functional one. Just as one’s morality exists independent of what one eats for dinner, so did Cobain’s. Anyways, sorry! Afternoon rant over!

For the record, the only thing I’ve ever found truly effective against a hangover is how much water I consume WHILE drinking – I used to drink water afterwards when I made it home but too much at that point disrupted sleep and so forth. Avoid mixing – for it is the devil’s work!!