Nirvana Legacy

The Bataclan and Jesse Hughes

J’Accuse Jesse Hughes

Doesn’t time fly? Here we are in late May and it’s been ages since I last posted. Many apologies, a full month of ill health, final preparation on the Thurston Moore book I’ve been working on, plenty of my real job to do, a lot of real life.

The attached piece written for Words & Guitars is…Well, I’m less temperate or mellow than I’d be ordinarily. Jesse Hughes of the Eagles of Death Metal made a batch of comments about what happened at the Bataclan in Paris last year. Why does it bother me? Because this is friends of mine he’s talking about, these are people I love and care for that he’s calling terrorists when they’re just as upset or worried by it as anyone else. The day I see Jesse Hughes take responsibility for crimes committed by white Christians is the day I’ll suggest that the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are anything other than individuals getting on with their lives as, unfortunately, the usual ragtag bunch of idiots present in any society or group ruin it for the majority.

Here’s the letter shared by one Muslim survivor of the Bataclan attack:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/24/jesse-hughes-eagles-of-death-metal-paris-attacks-bataclan-survivor

And here’s the piece regarding the gentleman who saved several hundred lives that night:

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/02/05/465551737/in-france-a-quiet-hero-belatedly-comes-to-light

Cobain on Cobain Video: Nirvana and the Media

The second interview piece filmed by Omnibus Press. Basically I wanted to yak on about Nirvana/Cobain’s relationship with the press – how it isn’t as one dimensional as is often portrayed, that’s there’s a clear evolution and progression in how the band relate to the media.

The first spell is simply one where, like any new band, they’re barely noticed – a few lines here and there, a quote or two. Likewise Cobain isn’t singled out – it’s almost always the band as a whole being interviewed because the underground isn’t as prone to ‘superstar syndrome’. During the next spell, the majority of media activity happens around touring, snatched time here and there – with the band complaining that there’s not enough of it, that Sub Pop aren’t doing enough to arrange interviews for them. Nirvana’s media activity continues in this off-on tour/off-tour cycle until into 1991 when Geffen are doing a tad more and Nirvana’s status as a major label act (and increasingly one of the top draws in the underground) garners them more attention.

The explosion in late 1991, as you might expect is where things get crazy. The band have to try to find a way to cope with it and they, very sensibly, begin to divide-and-conquer. They’re increasingly interviewing with different people all in the same venue, it’s the only way to accommodate the quantity of attention – and they really do try to accommodate everyone. They’re a courteous bunch and they do their best until it becomes simply too overwhelming.

The nature of the attention influences what occurs at this point. Previously, they’ve mainly been talking to people from fanzines or the music press who possess a fair idea what’s on in the underground – sometimes people who have their own bands (like Paul Kimball who was in Landsat Blister and Helltrout). After September 1991 there are magazines calling who would never have dirtied their hands with anyone Nirvana call their friends, who wouldn’t have bothered with Nirvana until ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ set things on fire. The band are increasingly less inclined to handle these requests except where they have to.

Cobain retreats. This is where the stereotype of the ‘difficult’ relationship with the media commences – and it becomes the dominant story simply because it occurs during the phase of peak attention. It overlooks the years where Nirvana (and Cobain) wanted more attention; it overlooks their attempts to speak to everyone – there’s just too much. Add on Cobain’s troubles plus the media’s natural urge to separate the front man from the rest of the band (the standard media ‘rock god’/’guitar hero’ stereotype plays best where its one person with everyone else in the background) and then recall that late 1991 is the heaviest spell of touring and performing Nirvana have ever embarked on – the exhaustion and desire for peace in 1992 makes a very human sense.

Novoselic shoulders a lot of the duties, the rest of the band speak up and shield Cobain from the attention. The band try to find some good in their situation so increasingly try to use their podium to share the spotlight with favourite bands and artists. A little further down the line they’ll start to talk up good causes too.

But the real game-changer is the attacks on Cobain’s new-found family in Autumn 1992. It brings him out of his media exile because he needs to use the media to launch his counter-offensive. This is when Azerrad is brought in to write the ‘official’ biography, this is where he starts talking to a few more journalists at major newspapers and lifestyle magazines.

1993 is much the same – interviews on tour in South America, In Utero promotion is very much a group affair, then 1994 is another drop into silence…

Nirvana: Topping ‘In Utero’ – What Would Have Been Next?

I’d like to thank Mitchell for popping up and asking me to speculate on Nirvana’s next direction in light of the material shared on ‘Montage of Heck’ – if I did the math I suspect we’ve now seen more of Nirvana’s leftovers than we did original songs while the band was actually a living entity. Do they, plus other rumours tell us anything about what ‘the next Nirvana album’ may have been?

Ultimately, after all this time, the answer is still “we know nothing.” While preparing ‘Cobain on Cobain’ I was delighted to be permitted access to the full 40TV video footage of Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl being interviewed (in two different settings) while in Portugal in February 1994. It’s a fun piece, they’re enjoying themselves, then there’s a moment where they look sheepish, where the high spirits fall away:

Interviewer: I’ve heard that you’re going to release another album in several months. How will it be deeper or more poppy than this one?

DG: I don’t know. We’re still trying to figure it out. We’re just experimenting. Might be really weird.

Interviewer: But have you already composed songs or not yet?

DG: A few.

KN: Few, yeah.

DG: Just a couple. We’re still — we don’t know what we’re going to do yet either. It’s kind of — it’s up in the air right now. Still a mystery. To us.

They move on swiftly to talking about Grohl’s work with the Backbeat band. They’ve no desire to halt the cavalcade, but this is a huge contrast with late 1991 when Nirvana were all confidently claiming that they had the next album plotted out and ready to release in ’92. This time ‘a few’ becomes ‘a couple’. They have no plan at all for a new album – not even a vibe they’re thinking of following. In Sandrine Maugy’s interview with Dave Grohl a few days later in Paris, they talk about everything but the idea of new music from Nirvana isn’t even mentioned. There’s nothing here.

The more one looks, the more things recede into fuzziness. Michael Stipe is clear that he invited Cobain to join him and R.E.M. in March 1994 simply because he was scared about Cobain’s state of mind – it wasn’t a plan for a collaboration, it was a musical intervention. The idea that Stipe was about to halt R.E.M.’s own album recording plans for ‘Monster’ in order to record a fully-fledged body of work with Cobain is simply unreal. R.E.M. were in studio in February, booked in again for early April – there’s no time.

Similarly, the ‘Lollapalooza Tour EP’ idea is supposedly the next Nirvana product meant to emerge after the ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ single – again, however, there’s nothing except an ‘idea’ for a release, no substance at all. Interviewing members of Geffen management for the ‘I Found My Friends’ book they were clear there was nothing they recall even discussing at the time. The label’s hottest property’s supposed new release wasn’t worth remembering because it never existed.

What about ‘You Know You’re Right’ though? It’s a demo, a good one, but still a demo. There’s obvious work still to be done to create a credibly releasable song. Its status comes posthumously not because it was album-ready/release-ready at the time. Pat Smear has suggested he was told he could add parts to it but as nothing happened even he is unwilling to confirm that the song was deemed complete. It is true that on ‘Nevermind’ and on ‘Bleach’ Nirvana used older recordings from previous sessions (‘Polly’, ‘Floyd the Barber’, ‘Paper Cuts’ – ‘Downer’ was a later bonus) but it seems that was a decision taken during album sessions, not a deliberate plan. It makes it unlikely ‘You Know You’re Right’ was something being placed in the can ready for later.

And ‘Do Re Mi’ suffers from the shadow cast by MTV Unplugged. Though a titanic performance, that session was a contractually obligated TV format Nirvana was required to adhere to if they wished to perform. It therefore says nothing about Nirvana’s own intentions though they were flirting with acoustic segments for a time in 1993. Nirvana’s albums are over 90% electric all the way – the idea of a new singer-songwriter direction, though alluring and possible, isn’t substantiated by any evidence. ‘Do Re Mi’ itself was unlikely to remain in its unadorned bedroom demo form – when Cobain strains for a note it sounds more like the technique he uses on other home demos to indicate where he’d be adding a scream to the final amplified version.

People point back to Cobain leftovers to claim the band could have cobbled together a complete work, forgetting Cobain’s strong pride in his work, his deep consideration of the final form and selection for each album. ‘Old Age’ was long abandoned – a gift to his wife so no longer even a Nirvana song. With ‘Talk to Me’ there’s, so far, no evidence supporting rumours it was played in ’94 though there is clear evidence that it was so uninteresting to Cobain and the band that in the numerous sessions from spring 1992 onward, all those concerts too, they didn’t even attempt it. ‘Opinion’ and the original ‘Verse Chorus Verse’ had gone missing years earlier too. The use of 1990-1991 songs for early 1993’s ‘In Utero’ is well testified; but is poor evidence for other resurrections.

There are other places to look for potential songs, of course, the https://nirvana-legacy.com/category/unreleased-n-posthumous-nirvana/ thread on here is loaded with them. The unknown rehearsal instrumental added to the In Utero deluxe was so dashed off no one involved had even remembered it existed. Then there’s the ‘unknown’ song that gets played twice in late 1993 and at the January 1994 session – now that, at least, is a credible new Nirvana song but it’s still only a minute-and-a-half shred. Alongside ‘You Know You’re Right’, however, it certainly lays to rest the idea that Cobain was abandoning the effects pedals and volume. Heck, Nirvana didn’t even play MTV Unplugged, unplugged.

One could look to his various home demos with Courtney Love to tease out future works:

The Key Category of Missing Kurt Cobain Songs: Love Collabos

Except nothing seen so far has been a truly credible new song – they’re whimsical games. There’s little to see so far though I look forward to the eventual archive release.

Others hold out great faith for Cobain giving up being the guiding force in Nirvana and letting Dave Grohl shoehorn some songs in – to be fair, at least he had the material:

Dave Grohl and Songs for Nirvana

Again though, I just don’t see it. This was Cobain’s fiefdom – he might take the odd idea, try the odd b-side, but handing over a percentage of an album to his drummer? This wasn’t a democracy.

On the bright side though, Nirvana were quick, disciplined workers in studio – there’s no reason to claim they weren’t capable of jamming together a bunch of songs over the course of 1994-1995 in the way that ‘MV’, ‘Gallons’, ‘The Other’, ‘I Hate Myself’, ‘Milk It’, ‘Serve the Servants’ and so forth don’t seem to have existed until late 1992. These were talented and experienced musicians.

…But the question “what do the demos currently available show?” The answer is they show Cobain had one unknown song he was tinkering with; he had ‘You Know You’re Right’; he had ‘Do Re Mi’. Three datapoints isn’t enough to draw any kind of pattern. The ‘Path to an Album’ posts (https://nirvana-legacy.com/?s=path+to+an+album) suffered from that same point – that the past isn’t a perfect guide to the future. It’s speculation.

And it’ll always be speculation, which is kinda fun isn’t it?

Kurt Cobain: ‘Screen’ and ‘When You’re Older’

These’ll likely come down soon but, for now, a couple of quick shreds of unreleased Kurt Cobain demos taken from this:

It’s a fan made compilation of Kurt Cobain’s known solo acoustic demos, spoken word pieces and experimental takes. The pieces that I haven’t heard as yet are ‘On a Mission from God’, ‘Speed Ambiance’ plus ‘Intro + Tuning’.

‘Cry Baby Jenkins’ has been around a while – but added to the material on the Montage of Heck soundtrack and the other pieces here, I’m always stunned how underappreciated Cobain’s efforts as a story-teller and writer are. This, like ‘Aberdeen’ or ‘Rhesus Monkey’, show a man interested in the sounds his voice will make, the way he can alter how he pronounces sentences to give different effects – most of what he does in terms of speed, pronunciation, tone, is all deliberate. There’s now enough material available to testify to Cobain’s efforts as a spoken word artist – that in the late Eighties his potential destination wasn’t necessarily Top 40 music stardom, that there were other angles he was pursuing at the same time, multiple directions.

The ‘squeaky voices’ tape manipulation phase – while irksome to many – deserves note. There are now half-a-dozen or more tracks where he’s pursuing this angle. His sister has spoken of how much it entertained Cobain, that this was something that gave him pleasure. It may not be as easily consumed as his verse-chorus-verse guitar work but as a curious diversion, as an aspect that went unseen until recent posthumous releases, it’s interesting to me. ‘When You Are Older’ is as good a name as any for the piece above – and yes, I chuckled at it. There seems to be an audience for it – this is Cobain as entertainer, as someone trying to please people. It’s a warming little sketch of him at ease.

‘Screen’ meanwhile is an early version of ‘Old Age’ with certain lines of lyrics already in place. There’s not much else to note except for his regular tendency to have the structure and melody in place long before the lyrics are pinned.

Cobain: “sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces”

http://www.jessicaadams.com/2016/02/25/your-pisces-side

Today I wanted to share a piece by one of the contributors to ‘Cobain on Cobain’ – and someone I’m delighted to count a friend – Jessica Adams.

Jessica’s interview with Cobain came out in Select in 1992 from an interview that took place on January 23. She kindly permitted me to include the transcript of her phone conversation with Cobain in the book. I’ll let her take up the story:

“Talking to Kurt Cobain on the phone was a complete fluke. I was supposed to be interviewing Dave Grohl, but at the last minute I heard Kurt’s rather croaky voice in my ear. It is a total joy to be able to share the interview after all these years. I always wanted to give the cassette tape to his daughter, Frances, to prove to her that he had a dry sense of humor and a good heart and that he wasn’t a tormented creature as shown in the media. Kurt was very kind to me in the interview, and I feel bad about the photograph they used on the front cover of Select and the way the piece was written up. Writers can’t control editors or art directors. The piece sensationalized his illness, and to this day I feel guilty about the fact that he trusted me enough to share his memories of recording Nevermind, only to have those memories misrepresented in the published piece, which bore my name in the byline. Just another small letdown in what must have been a sea of letdowns for him, at a time when he was so vulnerable. I was very lucky to see Nirvana in Sydney, and the band was so powerful and so affecting, I have to admit I have not been able to listen to
Nevermind since. I literally have not heard it since that year. Wherever you are now, Kurt,
know how loved you are and how important you are—especially to women, for whom you
always took a stand.”

Jessica worked as a freelance writer at Select and other music magazines before turning to novels, including the bestselling Cool For Cats based on her time writing for rock newspapers. She works as an astrologer for Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar and also works as a medium. Jessica is also the editor of AMMP, the Australian Music
Museum Project, where you can hear her original Kurt Cobain interview online.

Kurt Cobain in Australia

I’m a huge fan of the work Jessica has put into the Australian Music Museum Project – Australia has had a remarkably active, and very original, music scene for decades yet this is the first time there’s been a concerted attempt to document it. Even better, the work is being conducted in cooperation with the bands and artists concerned, not as an official deification, entirely as an attempt to capture the lives and works of the people who made it happen. Definitely a project worth a lot of respect.

All the best Jessica, and all the best to the AMMP!

Why Do We Still Care About Kurt Cobain?

I was invited to sit down at the offices of Omnibus Press and to discuss things on my mind while preparing the Cobain on Cobain book.

The thing I’ve always asked myself is, “I was a Nirvana fan at age 13 – why is it something I still bother talking about at age 35?” The obvious answer is that I’ve always felt that people return to their youth to find elements of comfort and contentment – Nirvana being part of mine. It’s the root of much of my musical taste, it was the start of something for me – a fire set somewhere inside.

Here I talk more widely about what Cobain represented, where he came in the history of rock music, why he’s still so loved and why he – not just his music – his perceived so warmly. Why does Kurt Cobain matter in 2016?

I noticed that ‘Cobain on Cobain’, the U.S. hardback edition, is available via other national Amazon sites with the U.K. paperback to follow in March:

UK – http://goo.gl/cvkOt4

Germany – http://goo.gl/Tr769V

France – http://goo.gl/nKbBmN

Canada – http://goo.gl/unhyah

Cobain on Cobain: Interviews and Encounters

2016; quite a year so far…An immediate apology for the pause in the blog – life, real life. I moved house from London to Bristol hauling 12 years’ worth of belongings accumulated between January 7, 2004 (23 years old) and January 30, 2016 (35.) Gradually returning to normal rhythm and rhyme…

…And in amidst it, on February 1, Chicago Review Press released “Cobain on Cobain: Interviews and Encounters.” I was invited back in early 2014 to act as editor for the volume, part of the publisher’s ‘Musicians in Their Own Words’ series. Their desire was a reasonable one; to create the single most comprehensive go-to compilation of interviews with the band. Professional translation where necessary, thorough translation, appropriate context…I had to pause and consider it.

Money wasn’t an issue. Writing about music is sub-minimum wage measured against the hours put in, plus I have a real job which means I only write – and only WANT to write – about things I love. Music publishing has suffered in the new era of ebooks and Amazon uber-alles; the advance was low – minus 15% (rightfully earned!) to my dear agent, minus 40% tax – but sufficient to cover the cost of the half-a-dozen translators needed, the licenses to reprint purchased from journalists and media worldwide, the legal rights…

What was on my mind though was what could I do with the book idea? What would really intrigue someone like me who has read so many of the interviews before? I took a weekend sketching how my desires. First, lost and unseen interviews – what was out there that had sunk without a trace back in 1988-94? Could I find anything at this late stage? Second, had the journalists, radio stations, TV stations kept their cassettes and their videos – did the conversations that only appeared as excerpts still exist in full form? Finally, Nirvana were on tour so much once fame hit – they toured the U.S. twice after September 1991 but they toured Europe three times, Asia-Pacific once, plus the three gigs in South America – what existed that had never been read by English speaking audiences?

Those paths intrigued me – but there was something lacking. I’ve read three compendiums of Nirvana interviews plus a few for other artists. They just don’t work for me if they’re simply a grab of articles lumped in together. What I chose to do was to sketch out the ‘timeline’ of Nirvana’s life – tours, releases, major incidents and events – to provide the structure. I loved the idea of trying to build a volume in which each interview took place as close as possible to the key moments in the band’s life and Cobain’s life. I wanted to see them reacting to, and speaking about, things as they happened because here we are all these years later saturated in posthumous commentary and revision. I wanted to get back to the real moment – I guess that’s something that steered me on ‘I Found My Friends’ too.

So! I agreed to do it. I’m pretty proud of the results. One pleasing discovery for me was that one gentleman early on would only allow his interview to be used if he was allowed to introduce it – because he felt the interview alone lacked context. I agreed…Then realised what a wonderful thing that was. Normally interviews consist of an anonymous name firing questions, then a famous name responding – it’s flat, a touch dead. The introduction gave the interview real context, a human experience, a sense of the time and place in which the conversation was taking place and how it felt to be there. I started asking each and every interviewer if they would be so kind as to provide an introduction and I was honoured that they all did.

The U.S. version is above, it’s out now and available in hardback pretty well anywhere you can find music books – it’s just under 600 pages long.

The U.K. edition is coming in mid-March.

http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/cobain-on-cobain-products-9781613730942.php

As for me, well, that’s a million words and 430 articles on Nirvana-Legacy.com, one self-published book, plus the ‘I Found My Friends: the Oral History of Nirvana’ volume. It’s been a wonderful experience and I can’t imagine working on another Nirvana book anytime – bringing more of other people’s memories and experiences into the world has been great…Time for a break from spreading the love of and enjoyment of Nirvana.

There was also the ‘Nirvana Tour’ (https://nirvana-legacy.com/?s=Nirvana+tour) plus getting the ‘No Seattle’ release out…It’s been a wild ride 2012-2016…I’d never have imagined I’d end up writing about the band that’s meant most to me in the world or meeting so many great people, or seeing/hearing/reading so much fascinating stuff.

Ethan Gold’s Nirvana Cover (and My New Year Ramblings)

I’ve been rather enjoying this – really controlled, well-weighted vocal performance then the fun of hearing the familiar shapes of the song twisted through another instrument. It’s fun! My feeling is that Nirvana’s discography is full of very adaptable songs, quite stripped down shapes that lend themselves well to alteration and aural surgery.

It’s part of his ‘Bedroom Closet Covers’ series – but there’s also an album ‘Songs From a Toxic Apartment’: this is the video for ‘They Turned Away’

And one for ‘To Isis Sleeping’ – a mellower tune with a rather charming video

So! There’s been no posts the last few weeks – is it really touching three weeks since New Year…? It’s been a busy 2016 so far. Long may it continue.

My main rambling has been a piece for Words & Guitars:

Never Ever Gonna Get Old: on the passing of pop stars

I had been intending to soften it but ultimately, what the hey. I’m not denying that age has some lush perks (I enjoyed 27-30 more than 16-27 and I enjoyed 30-35 more than anything before) but we’re living in a fascinating era where, in the next decade to a decade-and-a-half, we’re likely to witness the deaths of most of that generation of musicians who became superstars in the Sixties. An entire origin is about to vanish – and not in photogenic ways. Bowie has done an amazing thing by not just focusing on death in a defiant ‘The Show Must Go On’ way, or an accidental “doesn’t it seem poignant now,” way – but by wrapping his entire last project in the image and words of being a dead man walking. A stark, harsh and honest last mode.

I confess I ended up bored witless of the media coverage of Bowie – it was so cheap. It’s hard not to believe that various news departments were rubbing their hands together with glee; “quick! Crack out the archive images for a clickbait gallery! Start trawling for unrevealing tribute quotations from famous names! Open up a livefeed and shovel the punters’ own sh** back at them!” There’s a Viz feature called Tony Parsehole that pretty much smashes the art of the empty-hearted obituary: http://viz.co.uk/tony-parsehole-remembers-amy-winehouse/ and a lot of the endless commentary has followed this model – a few flaccid references to “oh he really changed a lot – oh he wore some outrageous clothes,” all showing, gloriously, a complete lack of engagement with the topic and an absolute determination to hit deadlines and get something up fast. There was little dignified about it all. I’m not saying that many of the comments and articles weren’t heartfelt but there was little that indicated an engagement with Bowie’s work or that offered anything radical in depth – it was a parade of articles saying “isn’t it sad?” Nothing more. Which is unfortunate when Bowie himself ended with such a spirited and revelatory musing on the approach of mortality.

Next month we see what would have been Kurt Cobain’s 49th birthday – odd to think of him as just 20 years shy of the age Bowie and Lemmy departed at.

A Curse on Your House: Universal’s Failings with ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck’

I don’t do clichéd kneejerk criticism of record labels. Labels deliver the benefits of scale to artists and handle all the elements individuals usually want to shed in order to retain time to create. Labels are a valuable component of the ecosystem of getting music out. Major labels exist in a difficult industry. Computer games, for example, command vastly higher prices and far higher abilities to garner ongoing income as players pay for upgrades/add-on/extras. Increasingly people are feel (wrongly in my view) that music should be near free, then feign outrage when asked to pay more than a token amount, while shelling out far greater sums on clothing brands and tech accessories. Music is a volume business. By that I mean there’s vast competition (anyone can start a label), a high supply of ‘product’ to the market (anyone can make music and distribute it to some extent), high commodification (it’s ultimately no different than buying inexpensive underwear – pick one, pick another, there’s always another ‘brand’ to suit your taste and no reason to be loyal to a particular label) and low predictability of success.

The only way to survive is to keep cost low (minimize advances and upfront expenditure), keep risk low (invest in artists with a sound/style/approach – i.e., product – that’s similar to what has succeeded before), then blast out a range of material in order to see what ‘wins’ – before pumping support in behind the winners while letting the ‘also-rans’ sink naturally. It’s simple logic of survival and it’s precisely what happened with Nirvana ‘Nevermind’ – 50,000 copies of the record pressed initially, tour plans involving mid-sized venues in Australia and the Far East, all designed to gradually build the band’s profile and turn them into another ‘Major-indie band’ selling a couple hundred thousand at most (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., etc.) The pressure has simply increased.

I spent last week from 9am Monday through early afternoon Friday (including two exams and a couple hours of homework a night) being trained on the ‘Managing Successful Programmes’ (MSP) methodology. Ignoring the consultant-speak and corp-language, the underlying point of it is to say that when you’re trying to deliver an objective, there needs to be a carefully critiqued initial plan, with numerous checkpoints permitting observation of the plan from multiple angles in order to allow people to shout out “this isn’t going to work like this! We need to change!” There’s been a massive failure of proper management at Universal in relation to the ‘Montage of Heck’ release.

I’ll go further and say that Universal, on a professional level, should feel pretty ashamed of the work done around ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – the Home Recordings’. It’s no secret I’ve hugely enjoyed the 31 track full release as envisaged by Brett Morgen. For me, in my view, it’s a good record. But my personal enjoyment is pretty irrelevant; it isn’t the same as commercial success or satisfied audiences. Reports last week claimed negligible sales and one of the lowest ever charting positions for a Nirvana/Cobain release and, I feel, the reasons have very little to do with the music on the release and almost everything to do with choices taken at Universal.

Firstly, I’ve said this before, the film this release is accompanying came out in January-April 2015 – that’s where the peak of affectionate, warm, widespread coverage took place. Releasing the associated soundtrack over six months later meant there was no way to sustain that peak – the audience and media alike were weary after an entire year of Cobain/Nirvana coverage related to the film. It meant having to attempt to ‘re-heat’ interest after only a short break. It also relegated the soundtrack to an after-thought, something with no greater status than the DVD/Blu-ray issue of the cinema/TV film – a secondary product. On the PR/Marketing front Universal has successfully executed a strategy designed to ‘strike’ only once they’ve deflated the sense of excitement, positivity and expectancy around ‘Montage of Heck.’ Timing matters and this was foolish.

Why have they done so? Well, in my opinion, it’s about the ‘Christmas market.’ The decision was taken to wedge what – until now – has been a solid, reliable source of high revenue into the final quarter of the year (same as Nirvana’s ‘Incesticide’ release in 1992.) The commercial choice to schedule the release independently from the best moment in terms of PR/Marketing has undermined their goal. This suggests a senior-level decision imposed on the teams responsible for executing the release itself. With no one empowered to question the intelligence of that choice, all the teams could do is react to a fait accompli. What has the result been? They’ve apparently decided to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the release while failing to recognize or value the crucial point of a music release – content.

One approach visible is an appeal to specific music-buying demographics without taking the time to gain real comprehension of those audiences. The key exhibit is the release of the cassette edition cottoning on to the ‘indie-cool’ trend of the month. Yet they failed to understand the cassette trend is mainly about getting a short-run souvenir of one-off live events and happenings, having 1 of 200 copies all handmade and hand-designed by a lo-fi one-person operation – it’s about uniqueness, rarity and personal touches. The ‘Montage of Heck’ cassette, by contrast, is a zombie resurrection of mass-produced, generic pre-recorded cassettes and thus has nothing to do with what people are buying cassettes for. The decision to release a cassette – aping a low-selling minority trend – would be a bizarre decision on commercial grounds, which suggests that it was a move driven purely by a desire for publicity. It’s a bad move by the PR/Marketing team based on low intelligence regarding the market or the trend they’ve copied. It also failed to garner any significant notice from media sources because ultimately no one cares about a novelty feature.

The cassette reinforces a sense in which the music is being deliberately treated as an irrelevance to this release. The cassette is a ‘trinket’, a toy. The focus has been on format. For some reason, someone took the lesson that it was the magnet on the front cover of the ‘In Utero’ box-set or the prettiness of the ‘Nevermind’ box-set that made people buy it. Dead wrong. Music products are purchased for the contents which, in the case of the ‘Nevermind’ and ‘In Utero’ box-sets were the CDs of ‘Live at the Paramount’ and ‘Live and Loud’ respectively, each accompanied by substantial, high gloss and well-done supporting books in each case. There was a further deeply odd attempt to wrap ephemera around the release. If you ordered the CD direct from Universal then you could get a ‘limited edition’ art print of one of the record covers – which translated as something I could do on the top-of-the-range printer at work.

The format issue rears its ugly head again when confronted with the ‘standard’ and ‘super-deluxe’ editions of the ‘Montage of Heck’ release. The ‘Standard’ release is an utterly arbitrary slicing n’ dicing of the 31 track edition – it’s neither fish nor fowl. It mostly removes the audio experiments, but it also hacks off ‘What More Can I Say’, ‘Bright Smile’, ‘Burn the Rain’, ‘Rehash’, ‘Do Re Mi’, ‘She Only Lies’ turning a one CD set into…Errr…A one CD set? It spoils the montage effect of the ‘Deluxe’ for no apparent reason except to make it shorter with a lunkheaded “well if it’s half as long then we’ll charge this – if they want the other half then…” mentality.

The ‘Super-Deluxe’ meanwhile is entirely redundant. Again, a note has been made of the ‘record collector’ demographic without understanding that the audience in question will purchase something because of rarity value (a quality the ‘Montage of Heck Super Deluxe’ doesn’t possess), because of the presence of content that’s otherwise hard to get, historical value and at a specific sensible commercial price point. I’ve bought one record this year costing over £100 and I did so because it’s one of only 100 copies in the world, it’s a Thurston Moore record and I collect his stuff avidly and it also supported the equipment fund for the Café Oto venue so I didn’t mind seeing it as a donation. The ‘Super-Deluxe’ bells and whistles are not what a record collector looks at to justify a purchase and it would have to mean more than “a puzzle with collectable storage container, movie posters, postcard and bookmark”. These extras appear to have been chosen to keep costs down while allowing for mass production hence just as the cassette made this look like a novelty, the ‘Super-Deluxe’ extras make the release look cheapskate, miserly and penny-pinching.

Ultimately, all music released in exchange for cash is a commercial product – there’s a compromise all the way down the line. In this instance there’s been a major miscalculation of price point for the U.S. market. To make a comparison, the Bob Dylan ‘The Cutting Edge’ archive release recently came out in three versions which, on Amazon U.S., are currently: 2 CD for $16.59 ($8 per disc), 6 CD for $106.39 ($17 per disc), then there’s the 18 disc limited edition at BobDylan.com for $599.00 ($33.00 per disc.) The step-up in quantity of music understandably leads to a step-up in the price point – likewise, the associated bits and pieces step-up with the 18 disc version containing a 170 page book unavailable anywhere else (as opposed to the 6 disc version’s 120 page book), 9 mono 45 RPM 7” singles, a strip of film cells from a print of the ‘Don’t Look Back’ film. There’s a logical increase and the quantity of music rockets each time; 36 songs, 110 songs, 379 songs. For the ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck’ soundtrack U.S. audiences are being expected to pay $11.29 for 13 songs (not unreasonable) but $117.99 for 31 (deranged.) By contrast, in the U.K., the 31 track CD is £10.29 ($15.51) on Amazon. The price points are utterly illogical and are, understandably, deeply upsetting to U.S. fans. The removal of the ‘deluxe’ option from the U.S. market has destroyed the incentive for purchase, forces fans to order on import from abroad – or more likely has turned them off so much that they’re not willing to bother acquiring it legally because the price point makes the release look like a scam.

The issue with the ‘Standard’ is that it chops the music in half for no discernable reason – cherry-picking 379 Dylan songs down to a core of 36 makes rational sense; releasing ‘Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ in a two disc edition with a live show then a three disc with a load of studio demos has a logic; releasing a five disc version of Soundgarden ‘Superunknown’ with demos, rehearsals, 5.1 sound version, then a curtailed two disc set makes sense. In the case of ‘Montage of Heck’ where’s the justification in turning 74 minutes of music into 40 minutes of music? Great albums are underwritten by a logic of flow, message, storyline – it’s as if people read musical statements in the way they would fiction. The same goes for compilation, a simple, easy to comprehend division of music is necessary – something people understand when making a quality judgment on a purchase.

The ‘Super Deluxe’ suffers the same fault – the step up in musical quantity from 14 to 31 tracks doesn’t justify a price point that jumps ten-fold. Likewise, in an era where many DVDs are already packaged with the Blu-ray (and vice versa), the presence of both the U.S. DVD and Blu-ray release doesn’t advance the case for the ‘Super-Deluxe’. Nor does the presence of a threadbare set of extras to the DVD. Nor does the presence of a book that’s already been released and purchased by anyone with sufficient fan urges to want it. The ‘Super Deluxe’ is a mess. Cassette, but no vinyl – why? DVD and Blu-ray when anyone buying the latter already feels the former is redundant while anyone wanting the former feels the latter is unnecessary meaning everyone who buys the release is getting something they don’t want. A book that had already been seen six months earlier. There’s nothing here justifying the egregious price-tag given the DVD/Blu-ray is just $14.70 and the book is $23 – the idea that the cassette, ‘Deluxe’ CD and extras make up $80.29 of value is ludicrous and can be seen as such by anyone with a calculator and third grade math skills.

Having made errors of timing, audience, format and pricing Universal have compounded them all by deciding to miscommunicate and mis-sell the product. It’s been notable that, in recent interviews, Brett Morgen makes clear that the ‘album’ he’s referring to is only the 31 track release – that’s what he created. Other decisions were taken by the record label to cash in on what could have been a solid-seller. Morgen spoke to near every newspaper, culture supplement, music magazine and online source six to twelve months ago regarding the film meaning that hauling him back out to act as spokesman for the release – which he then makes clear has been festooned with baubles and chopped in half completely independently of his involvement – is odd, who was left he hadn’t already spoken to? The sense of weary repetition, in a fast-changing music news landscape was a poor choice by Universal’s PR team. It would have been better to go with press releases and new statements from the label (in the same way that the inlay of the ‘Deluxe’ release has been written by someone within Universal).

There was a quite bizarre failure to comprehend that music fans now operate on an international level when it comes to the consumption of news even if they mostly still buy music at a national level. Fans across the world were confused by the emerging messages; “no ‘Deluxe’ edition in the U.S.,” “no ‘Super-Deluxe’ outside of the U.S.” The same week the release was coming out I was contacted by a fan from Europe who still thought the only way to get the full 31 track release was on the ‘Super-Deluxe’ and that he’d have to import it from America. I did exactly the same and initially ordered the ‘Super-Deluxe’ from Canada before cancelling it once I realized that the 31 track was available in the U.K. but not in the U.S. I made clear back in January that I was definitely going to buy the cinema tickets, the DVD, the book, the soundtrack – that I’m the kind of obsessive who would buy anything they put out – but even I spent two weeks deflated and a bit despondent because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get the 31 track without going to massive expense to buy a box of junk from another continent that I didn’t want. I buy from abroad regularly, but only for things that are hard-to-find or difficult-to-get. To know that the only reason I would/would not receive a part of the release was because of a management decision at Universal felt like a slap in the face.

So my heart goes out to fans in the U.S. who really have been shafted by Universal. The decision to simply eliminate the ‘Deluxe’ in that market leaves U.S. fans with just the ‘Standard’ (half pack) or the egregiously expensive and unnecessary ‘Super-Deluxe’. It’s an actual insult to music fans forcing them to either order from abroad or to just give up and refuse to be taken advantage of by a record label with such a fundamental lack of respect or courtesy for them. I can understand why the release has been so poorly received when people have had the option of simply and easily purchasing the core music at a fair price. To ask them for over $100 for just 17 more tracks (35 minutes of sound) while trying to force them to buy a second copy of a book they already have and two formats of a film (so one of which they won’t want), plus some card/paper ephemera…Wow, now that’s gross. European fans, meanwhile, are unable to get the DVD extras thanks to another arbitrary choice within the management chain.

I’ve got two degrees from Cambridge University and I still found Universal’s communication strategy confusing and the market segmentation offensive. It managed to turn someone who genuinely liked the film and was feeling pretty positive about the whole ‘Montage of Heck’ campaign into someone unsure whether to bother at all. The effect on fans less friendly toward the film and soundtrack has been to stoke irritation and outright anger, again, serving to undermine the good will and good spirit that stokes sales and makes people want to part with their cash.

Finally, I mentioned mis-selling? I went into four or five music stores in the last fortnight and not one of them is stocking ‘Montage of Heck’ in the Soundtracks section. It has been pitched as one of the most major releases of the year when it’s explicitly (and very effectively) an audio accompaniment to the film. Instead of allowing it to be measured against other soundtrack releases, it’s being measured against major living artists’ key statements to the detriment of the originality and generosity of the soundtrack. Most soundtracks are a hodge-podge of previously released music maybe with some ragbag demos or live material tossed in (re: the ‘Amy’ soundtrack accompanying the Amy Winehouse documentary this year.) The ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – the Home Recordings’ soundtrack is a fully conceptualized collage combining multiple forms of Cobain’s creativity into a single cohesive statement. It’s generous in terms of length; presence of truly unseen, unheard and unreleased material; freshness of its take on the subject’s work. It’s head-and-shoulders over most soundtracks. But saddled with undue expectations, the kind of release formats reserved for all-time classics, the treatment and release schedule intended for a modern artist’s magnum opus – it has garnered unfair criticisms of sound-quality and pop-quality. A low-key treatment emphasizing that it was a soundtrack – or timing so that it was seen more clearly in the context of the film – would have been of huge benefit to the release. Instead the over-pitching and over-selling has helped kill it stone dead. Nice one Universal.

So, smart-arse that I am, it’s easy to poke holes in something – what would I suggest would have fixed it? OK, well, the ‘Montage of Heck’ campaign running from late in 2014 through the release of the book in spring 2015 had an underlying coherence – the soundtrack should always have been a part of this. The TV and cinema showings worked because they offered legitimately different ways of experiencing the material. The book was fine (though not outstanding) and, again, made perfect sense. The Soundtrack should have been released in April 2015 thus making it an integral part of this multifaceted project. This would have had the advantage of piggybacking on the massive amount of media coverage, almost all extremely positive, garnered by Brett Morgen’s extensive interview load. The release should have consisted of one thing only; the ‘Deluxe’ 31 track disc exactly as it is – nothing more, nothing less. A single worldwide format, a single worldwide release date with the simple low-key visual image Morgen was right to emphasize; the sensation of a quiet day in the tiny town of Olympia, in a cheap apartment, with an ambitious and artistic guy who loved making music and having fun with the possibilities of sound. If there was a determination to create some kinda ‘uber-package’ at a higher price point then it would have needed (a) an exclusive book, perhaps a large-scale art volume purely showcasing Cobain’s artwork to allow it to standout versus the mash of interview/film art/Cobain art present in the existing book (b) additional music content. A version with an exclusive book would have allowed for a small rise in price to cover CD and book. To jack it any further there would need to be something unique only to the deluxe – not a clue what. A DVD with no interviews consisting solely of self-filmed material by Cobain? A compilation of pre-released Cobain home demos all compiled into a single disc? A compilation of Cobain’s non-Nirvana forays with other artists and labels (e.g., his work with The Go Team, the Burroughs hook-up, the material with Earth, his minor contributions to the Melvins, the Lanegan version of ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ from 1989…)…? Ultimately the 31 track disc works and it’s good as it is – I’d have left it there.

Addendum: Spoke to a friend in the U.S. who, on the day of the release, drove round Best Buy, Target, Wal Mart, an independent record store and Barnes and Nobles only to find that none of them were stocking the Super-Deluxe so, even though he was willing to pay the $130 dollars, he couldn’t get it anyway. Eventually someone told him he could only get it online. Another disappointed customer left with a sour taste in his mouth thanks to truly poor communication and bad distribution from Universal. It’s just so sad. I love the ‘deluxe’, well worth what I paid, delighted to hear it…But all of this poor management? Groan.