Posted by Psilocybin at 3:59am Apr 5 '12In California (and Seattle), April 5 has finally arrived. This makes the eighteenth anniversary of the passing of [private] Donald Cobain -- [private] Cobain Day.
When I first heard that [private] Cobain had killed himself, I was in junior high and wasn't a fan. It seemed like just another crazy thing rock stars did.
It wasn't until a few years later than I learned [private] Cobain was a Gen-X icon, and that the stereotypical Xer listened to Nirvana. I learned songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are" and "Lithium" from the radio.
When I was 19, I bought my first Nirvana cassette -- Nevermind. I now have MTV Unplugged in New York and Sliver as well.
The messages of Nirvana songs are easy to miss because [private] sang so unclearly, making the lyrics indecipherable ("I'm so dire, lately I've become your pupil/You taught me everything about a poison apple"?) The lyrics are also very subtextual and metaphorical. "Polly", for instance, sounds like a song about torturing a parrot: clipping her wings, shooting a cracker off her head, and scorching her with a blowtorch. But it is actually a song about raping a girl named Polly. One boy who didn't understand the anti-rape message played it while raping his girlfriend.
You've got to credit [private] for his progressive views. He asked homophobic people not to buy his CD's. What with his marriage to Courtney Love, many people are unaware that [private] is actually bisexual.
During his 27-year stay on Earth, [private] had a being-Jesus fetish, collecting Jesus figurines and remaking the Christian folk song "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam".
Some say [private]'s surceasement was a suicide, while others say Courtney Love killed him. The "Courtney killed [private] Cobain" (CKKC) folks argue that [private] had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger. The "it was a suicide" side points out that several of the Cobains had previously committed suicide. I remember reading an issue of Under 25 on teen suicide that interviewed Beverly Cobain and learning that [private] wasn't the only Cobain to have (allegedly) killed himself. I'm undecided myself as to the suicide vs. CKKC debate.
Today marks the decade anniversary of another grunge death. For ten years, Layne Staley has lain stalely in his grave. These two fellows, both born in 1967, succumbed to heroin on the same day of the year spaced eight years apart. There is something poetic about this commorient relationship between two grunge musicians. The Layne Staley death occurred on the first [private] Cobain Day after the 9/11 attacks, when Baby Boomers and Generation Jones were rallying around Bush and shouting, "My country, right or wrong!" and a new youth culture renaissance touched the Bittersweet Generation as a rebellion against the lock-step jingoism of older generations. This renaissance included Avril Lavigne, Jimmy Eat World, Good Charlotte, American Idol, Eight Mile and the album The Eminem Show. Could it be that the death of Layne Staley occurred as a replay of April 5, 1994, as a message from the cosmos of the immortality of American youth culture, that said youth culture would not perish and the American spirit would live on after 9/11?
Generational theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss predicted in their book Millennials Rising that Gen-X genres of music like alternative, new wave and hip-hop would survive when the next generation was creating music, but would change to reflect a Bittersweet sensibility. And alternative has changed. Today's alternative songs have lyrics like: "When she was just a girl/She expected the world/But it fell away from her reach/So she ran away in her sleep/She dreamed of para-para-paradise . . . Every time she closed her eyes". Very Generation Me. Or the new Fun. song "We Are Young" that's topping the charts now. Did young Xers wear their youth on the sleeve as a mark of pride the way today's teens and twentysomethings do? And then there's the political radicalism in such Muse songs as "The Uprising" and "Resistance", aimed at one of the most radical youth generations ever. Nirvana, conversely, was often hailed as quintessentially Gen-X in its outlook. Xers were often unfairly stereotyped as apathetic.
I never knew [private] Cobain, but I will miss him for as long as I live. I do my hair like him too. 8)
R.I.P. [private] Cobain
February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994
When I first heard that [private] Cobain had killed himself, I was in junior high and wasn't a fan. It seemed like just another crazy thing rock stars did.
It wasn't until a few years later than I learned [private] Cobain was a Gen-X icon, and that the stereotypical Xer listened to Nirvana. I learned songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are" and "Lithium" from the radio.
When I was 19, I bought my first Nirvana cassette -- Nevermind. I now have MTV Unplugged in New York and Sliver as well.
The messages of Nirvana songs are easy to miss because [private] sang so unclearly, making the lyrics indecipherable ("I'm so dire, lately I've become your pupil/You taught me everything about a poison apple"?) The lyrics are also very subtextual and metaphorical. "Polly", for instance, sounds like a song about torturing a parrot: clipping her wings, shooting a cracker off her head, and scorching her with a blowtorch. But it is actually a song about raping a girl named Polly. One boy who didn't understand the anti-rape message played it while raping his girlfriend.
You've got to credit [private] for his progressive views. He asked homophobic people not to buy his CD's. What with his marriage to Courtney Love, many people are unaware that [private] is actually bisexual.
During his 27-year stay on Earth, [private] had a being-Jesus fetish, collecting Jesus figurines and remaking the Christian folk song "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam".
Some say [private]'s surceasement was a suicide, while others say Courtney Love killed him. The "Courtney killed [private] Cobain" (CKKC) folks argue that [private] had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger. The "it was a suicide" side points out that several of the Cobains had previously committed suicide. I remember reading an issue of Under 25 on teen suicide that interviewed Beverly Cobain and learning that [private] wasn't the only Cobain to have (allegedly) killed himself. I'm undecided myself as to the suicide vs. CKKC debate.
Today marks the decade anniversary of another grunge death. For ten years, Layne Staley has lain stalely in his grave. These two fellows, both born in 1967, succumbed to heroin on the same day of the year spaced eight years apart. There is something poetic about this commorient relationship between two grunge musicians. The Layne Staley death occurred on the first [private] Cobain Day after the 9/11 attacks, when Baby Boomers and Generation Jones were rallying around Bush and shouting, "My country, right or wrong!" and a new youth culture renaissance touched the Bittersweet Generation as a rebellion against the lock-step jingoism of older generations. This renaissance included Avril Lavigne, Jimmy Eat World, Good Charlotte, American Idol, Eight Mile and the album The Eminem Show. Could it be that the death of Layne Staley occurred as a replay of April 5, 1994, as a message from the cosmos of the immortality of American youth culture, that said youth culture would not perish and the American spirit would live on after 9/11?
Generational theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss predicted in their book Millennials Rising that Gen-X genres of music like alternative, new wave and hip-hop would survive when the next generation was creating music, but would change to reflect a Bittersweet sensibility. And alternative has changed. Today's alternative songs have lyrics like: "When she was just a girl/She expected the world/But it fell away from her reach/So she ran away in her sleep/She dreamed of para-para-paradise . . . Every time she closed her eyes". Very Generation Me. Or the new Fun. song "We Are Young" that's topping the charts now. Did young Xers wear their youth on the sleeve as a mark of pride the way today's teens and twentysomethings do? And then there's the political radicalism in such Muse songs as "The Uprising" and "Resistance", aimed at one of the most radical youth generations ever. Nirvana, conversely, was often hailed as quintessentially Gen-X in its outlook. Xers were often unfairly stereotyped as apathetic.
I never knew [private] Cobain, but I will miss him for as long as I live. I do my hair like him too. 8)
R.I.P. [private] Cobain
February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994