the cobain connection

i try to do everything with the best intentions. i'm not always succesful, but i try. the best way to judge beauty is through the eyeballs.

a lot of discussion on kurt cobain today. he died on april 5, 1994 (had to look it up, don't know off the top of my head) which was just last week fifteen years ago. fifteen years. fuck. nobody in class really remembered it, which is totally understandable, since I was 13, and most of my classmates were under the age of 10. so why does the music of nirvana puncture the lung of time? so many other great bands came out of that era... mudhoney (on right now, really loud), alice in chains, soundgarden, screaming trees! (of course pearl jam) most of the people who saw these bands live at the places that would let them play are thouroughly middle-aged and mellowed. grunge didn't really permeate into wisconsin until 1996 or 1997, and then only by way of pearl jam after they had already released their best music. minneapolis had a scene, but nobody my age could drive, so we were stuck with our dads' old who and zeppelin records, stacked on a base knowledge of beatles, stones, and dylan. not an unrespectable musical lineage, but unrevolutionary by mid-90's standards. i didn't even understand nirvana or mudhoney or soundgarden until i moved to seattle at 19.

what am i even talking about? oh yeah- that urge to pick up a really loud guitar and turn the amp up until is is buzzing, and then making the neighborhood shake with angst. but more than that- how about doing it with an acoustic guitar with a cover of where did you sleep last night? now we are getting back to leadbelly, who was way more magical and important than paul mccartney can ever dream of being. so i connect cobain to those kinds of musicians- the ones who come from the corners, and who can't really do anything but play their music. usually, it kills them. (robert johnson. jimi hendrix. jerry garcia. mozart. chopin. charlie parker. some lives are measured by heartbeats, and some are measured by the number of notes you have played. if any one of these guys had played even one more note, i'm pretty sure the world would have shook itself apart.)

the transfer of emotion to music and back to emotion again. it happens when the guitar or saxophone or harpsichord becomes part of your brain. jimi hendrix really did think through his fender strat. just watch him play. i wish we had video of chopin. there might be some of charlie parker? i'm not sure about that. it is impossible to tell where their bodies end and the music begins. hands to strings to the air to our ears. and from there, where does it go?

in a lot of ways, cobain is a version of thoreau. i even think that old henry david would have dug a little nirvana every now and then.