tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/kurt-cobain-9681/articles
Kurt Cobain – The Conversation
2021-09-16T20:07:26Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167108
2021-09-16T20:07:26Z
2021-09-16T20:07:26Z
Friday essay: Nevermind 30 years on – how Nirvana’s second album tilted the world on its axis
<p>For many of us back in 1991, it felt as if the planet tilted slightly further on its axis when Smells Like Teen Spirit — the lead single from Nirvana’s Nevermind album — began to dominate the airwaves. The song’s compelling fusion of blast furnace punk, whimsical melody and inscrutable lyrics was unlike anything else commercial radio had embraced up to that point.</p>
<p>Friday September 24 marks the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2021/bbc-music-mark-30-years-nirvana-nevermind">30th anniversary</a> of the release of Nevermind. Materialising apparently out of nowhere, within four months the album had shoved its way to the top of the US charts, dislodging Michael Jackson’s Dangerous in January of 1992. It did almost as well in Australia, reaching number two.</p>
<p>Nevermind has gone on to become a recording phenomenon, with over <a href="https://www.mtv.com/news/1671298/nevermind-nirvana-album/">30 million</a> copies sold. Nobody saw this coming, not least the band’s record company. John Rosenfeld, who worked for Nirvana’s label, Geffen, at the time of its release <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4229236/">has said</a> they originally projected sales of 50,000.</p>
<p>Nirvana formed in 1987 in the logging and fishing town of Aberdeen, Washington. Featuring guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter Kurt Cobain, bass player Krist Novoselic, and new drummer Dave Grohl, Nevermind was Nirvana’s second album — the first for a major label.</p>
<p>Instantly identifiable by its cover image of an infant swimming toward a fish hook baited with a dollar note, it included three more frenetic-cum-fragile singles — Come As You Are, Lithium and In Bloom — as well as two haunted acoustic tracks — <a href="https://www.openculture.com/2019/07/how-kurt-cobain-confronted-violence-against-women-in-his-darkest-song.html">Polly</a>, a repudiation of sexual violence, and the cello-bathed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSjcS-N224">Something in the Way</a>, which alluded to homelessness.</p>
<p>A range of factors converged to draft Nirvana into the mainstream with Nevermind. Certainly, the quality of the songs helped.</p>
<p>So did Teen Spirit’s incendiary video, which conveyed generational antipathy through robotic cheerleaders, a swarm of convulsive teens and a wizened school janitor (Cobain having held down just such a job for a short time). Producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace were also vital, applying precisely the right amount of gleam to the band’s coarse-grained, jet engine roar.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTWKbfoikeg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Significant, too, were the many post-punk musicians who in the 1980s shaped what Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad subsequently termed a “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Come_As_You_Are/qrSDPW6G5ZIC">shadow music industry</a>”. This underground faction of American bands — Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and others — forged a crucial alternative, do-it-yourself aesthetic pathway through the ultra-conservative Reagan-Bush era.</p>
<p>Sometimes important art takes time to inject itself into the bloodstream of the culture. While the Velvet Underground are now acknowledged as a pivotal force in early rock music, at the time their records had limited critical cache and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-velvet-underground-mn0000840402/biography">sold poorly</a>. With Nevermind, however, audiences caught on quickly, leaving cultural commentators scrabbling to hook on to a hurtling zeitgeist.</p>
<h2>Three stars from Rolling Stone</h2>
<p>Bass guitarist Novoselic has since spoken derisively of the many journalists who initially mocked Nevermind before later claiming “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Mojo_Collection/W5iXGwAACAAJ?hl=en">they loved it from the start</a>”.</p>
<p>In hindsight, this seems slightly exaggerated. Some publications did completely overlook the record at first. A few came in with fists flailing: the Boston Globe referred to it as “<a href="https://metro.co.uk/2016/09/24/20-things-you-may-not-know-about-nirvanas-nevermind-6143804/">moronic ramblings</a>”.</p>
<p>Others, though, were prescient in their praise. Melody Maker’s <a href="http://www.collapseboard.com/nirvanas-nevermind-20-years-ago/">Everett True</a> prophesied Nevermind would “blow every other contender away”. </p>
<p>Renowned author Greil Marcus expressed a <a href="https://www.artforum.com/print/199203/greil-marcus-real-life-rock-33602">surprising preference</a> for Nirvana’s murky debut album Bleach, while Chad Channing, the drummer replaced by Grohl to make Nevermind, complained the record’s major label sheen wasn’t true “grunge”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Nevermind album" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420396/original/file-20210910-15-1bazwh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Now considered a classic, Nevermind divided opinions on its release.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the most revealing response came from Rolling Stone magazine, whose initial reviewer Ira Robbins was one of the smarter music writers of the time. He concluded that Nevermind found Nirvana “at the crossroads — scrappy garageland warriors setting their sights on a land of giants”. The magazine’s editors hedged even more bets by adding a <a href="https://observer.com/2016/09/howling-in-the-abyss-the-improbable-success-of-nirvanas-nevermind/">three-star rating</a>, the rock press equivalent of consigning a record to eternal mediocrity.</p>
<p>Rolling Stone eventually yielded to popular sentiment. In 1992 there was a revised four-star review. Then, in 2004, Nevermind’s standing was upgraded even further: a five-star ranking in that year’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_New_Rolling_Stone_Album_Guide.html?id=t9eocwUfoSoC">Rolling Stone Album Guide</a>. This followed on from 17th place in the magazine’s 2003 <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-156826/">500 Greatest Albums of All Time</a> list, putting it up there with Highway 61 Revisited, Are You Experienced? and Marquee Moon.</p>
<p>Robbins, too, seemed determined to set the record straight as soon as the opportunity arose. For the 1996 edition of his <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Trouser_Press_Guide_to_90s_Rock/Onjb9IowkbsC">Trouser Press Guide</a>, the review of Nevermind — one of the longest in the entire volume — deemed it “the Rosetta Stone of 90s punk-rock”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kurt-cobain-and-the-search-for-a-sincere-rock-star-25335">Kurt Cobain and the search for a sincere rock star</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By the 1990s, music criticism was changing. A glut of available recordings — nowadays an overwhelming deluge — coincided with further fragmentation of the rock genre both in style and format. At the same time, publications like Rolling Stone were increasingly seen as tied up with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/853694?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">traditionalist, patriarchal</a> notions of popular music history.</p>
<p>Kurt Cobain voiced the alienation of a marginalised youth who couldn’t care less about the old rules. His group’s music was nowhere near as unorthodox as, say, that of close friend Dylan Carlson’s influential drone-metal project <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MamWooW3dLA">Earth</a>. But Nevermind was a subversive assault upon the rock elite from within: a big guitar sound without the big-dick attitude.</p>
<h2>Into the stratosphere</h2>
<p>We’ll never know exactly what sent Nirvana into the stratosphere while artists of comparable brilliance didn’t transcend their relatively minor standing. After all, in the 1980s quite a few of us in Australia were convinced each new <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jun/08/the-go-betweens-10-of-the-best">Go-Betweens</a> record would be the one to spark global domination. </p>
<p>Similar could have been said for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrFOb_f7ubw">Public Enemy</a> circa 1991, or for <a href="https://greilmarcus.net/2015/08/24/sleater-kinney-americas-best-rock-band-070901/comment-page-1/">Sleater-Kinney</a> (like Nirvana, hailing from the Pacific Northwest) a few years after. </p>
<p>No doubt Cobain himself would have conceded being a white, all-male, US-based guitar-bass-drums outfit (albeit one from the seamier side of the tracks) gave them a leg-up on these and many other contenders.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/redefining-the-rock-god-the-new-breed-of-electric-guitar-heroes-80192">Redefining the rock god – the new breed of electric guitar heroes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cobain’s amalgam of influences was expansive, from the Raincoats, Iggy Pop, Ian MacKaye and REM to <a href="https://radicalreads.com/kurt-cobain-favorite-books/">Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs</a>. He wasn’t above raiding the classic rock fortress for ideas, but also excavated deep below in search of subterranean misfits to emulate. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Boston’s Pixies were the main forebears of Nirvana’s trademark quiet-loud-quiet sound. As it happens, I recall The Happening, an extraordinary Pixies song from 1990, giving me the same kind of this-could-be-the-one jolt that Teen Spirit did a year later. Yet one is regarded as a historical turning point, the other an obscurity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LB3kZCI5abQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Wherever the alternative banquet began, big business and media were always going to be quick to gatecrash. As Nevermind broke, the corporate vultures weren’t just circling: they’d already flown in to commence tearing the last morsels from the skeleton of post-Reagan America.</p>
<p>As journalist and political analyst Thomas Frank noted in his important 1995 essay <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/alternative-to-what">Alternative to What?</a>, by the time of Cobain’s 1994 death by suicide, the commodification of rebellion was complete. For the ultimate proof, Frank pointed to a cynical MTV advertisement found in the business sections of certain newspapers and magazines. It featured an image of a grunge-styled youth along with the caption: “Buy this 24-year-old and get all his friends absolutely free”.</p>
<p>Corporate scavengers aside, Nevermind continues to stir fans and critics. Its history continues to be told, and many of the sharpest (and best written) recent takes are by Australian writers. </p>
<p><a href="https://overland.org.au/2021/04/kurt-cobain-martyr-of-authenticity/">Josh Bergamin’s</a> recent note-perfect analysis sets Nevermind’s success within contrasting milieus of generational disillusionment and executive greed, arguing Cobain and many of his fans engaged in radical acts of political resistance.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/nevermind-how-i-found-freedom-in-nirvana/">Cristian Strömblad</a> uses the context of growing up in suburban Brisbane to tell of how Nirvana helped open up new aesthetic worlds.</p>
<p><a href="https://overland.org.au/2016/09/one-baby-to-another-twenty-five-years-of-nevermind/">Tiarney Miekus</a> explores perennial death-of-rock narratives in light of “the big dumb accident” that was Nevermind.</p>
<p>Conversely, wardens of the conventional rock canon still emerge to disdain the achievements of alt-culture’s “anaemic royalty”. In one resentful, ridiculous critique of the album on the <a href="https://www.classicrockreview.com/2011/08/1991-nirvana-nevermind/">Classic Rock Review</a> website, J.D. Cook concluded Nirvana was “only popular because of Cobain’s suicide”, implausibly overlooking the two-and-a-half years of international acclaim preceding that grim epilogue.</p>
<h2>A beginning</h2>
<p>To me, Nevermind wasn’t a peak. It was a beginning. Nirvana was a stunning band and Cobain by all accounts a dedicated, intelligent, yet supremely troubled individual whose life always teetered on the chasm’s edge. Until his death partly stalled the show – the imperatives of consumerism ensuring the band’s ghost would continue to post a profit regardless – the music kept getting better.</p>
<p>Cobain’s craft evolved as success lured his social conscience further into the open. This is palpable on the In Utero album (1993), in songs such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-deMfnLtMI">Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TsqlT0rfJI">Rape Me</a> (the latter later distorted by those who hid behind a controversial title to evade its prescient, victim’s-eye view of sexual abuse).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4TsqlT0rfJI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Once Nevermind raised Nirvana’s media profile, Cobain continued putting forward positions on different political issues (for instance, after they appeared in drag for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgKEjNBHqM">video to In Bloom</a>, he told an interviewer that “at least it brings the whole subject of homosexuality into debate”).</p>
<p>The band’s social justice stance was made abundantly clear in the liner notes for the 1992 compilation Incesticide, which warned sexists, racists and homophobes would not be welcome to sweat in their particular mosh pit. They also contributed a “leftover” of exceptional quality, a song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC2A4IQNHss">titled Sappy</a>, to the 1993 AIDS fundraiser album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/no-alternative-mw0003427986">No Alternative</a>.</p>
<p>The group even did its best to subvert MTV’s rebellion-into-cash mentality at their November 1993 Unplugged in New York appearance. The show featured gut-wrenching versions of the best tracks from In Utero (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dcIPGzxsl8">Pennyroyal Tea</a> and All Apologies) and a touching three-song gambol with underground mentors Meat Puppets. Topping it off were surely two of the most remarkable cover versions ever performed: David Bowie’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8">The Man Who Sold the World</a> and Lead Belly’s <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/in-the-pines-song-kurt-cobain.html">Where Did You Sleep Last Night</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hEMm7gxBYSc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Today, Nirvana’s iconic stature is only confirmed by it being caught up in two of America’s pet modern-day farces: the conspiracy theory (some still claim Cobain’s death <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/kurt-cobain-file-released-by-fbi-27-years-after-his-death/2506248/">was murder</a>) and a multi-million dollar lawsuit (the child depicted on Nevermind’s cover is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58327844">currently suing</a> the band and others for damages).</p>
<p>As for all that voice-of-a-generation stuff … well, Nirvana’s appeal was hardly universal: they meant something to plenty of people in places like New York and Sydney, probably a lot fewer in Addis Ababa or Tehran.</p>
<p>Nor is the ultimate cultural significance of Nevermind easily pinned down. In that context, it is worth remembering that two other major US events of 1991 — the videotaped beating of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/524744989/when-la-erupted-in-anger-a-look-back-at-the-rodney-king-riots">Rodney King</a> in Los Angeles and the Luby’s Cafeteria <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/twenty-three-diners-massacred-at-texas-restaurant">mass shooting</a> in Texas — didn’t exactly portend epochal change in racial equality or gun control.</p>
<p>Nevermind didn’t change the world. But for a while it helped some of us believe the world could change, and that is enough.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dean Biron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nevermind was a cultural phenomenon, though many critics missed its significance at the time.
Dean Biron, PhD in Cultural Studies; teaches in School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79432
2017-09-20T02:05:58Z
2017-09-20T02:05:58Z
My favourite album: Hole’s Live Through This
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184159/original/file-20170831-22574-pymwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>For someone who spent her youth living in small towns in regional Australia, Hole were the accessible end of the early 90s feminist moment in rock music (along with L7). And by “accessible”, I mean not sonically, but as something I could access at all. I could read about Bikini Kill in the music magazines at the local newsagents but actually finding their music to listen to was a lot harder. </p>
<p>Hole, and Courtney Love, I already knew, from their earlier album <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL0W4E0yR_s">Pretty on the Inside</a>. Live Through This came out in 1994, and was on the one hand, a raw, angry, feminist-inspired, riffy, grunge noise, but on the other, well-produced enough, and with enough hooks and memorable tunes, to stand out from the crowd and get stuck in your head. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qEnVKdqbAY0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The elephant that’s always in the room with this album is the circumstances of its release. It remains almost impossible to disentangle Love’s entire career from her association with Kurt Cobain. </p>
<p>By attaching herself to rock’s man of the moment, having a child with him, and then steadfastly continuing to refuse to behave, Love became the new Yoko Ono, reviled by fans, critics and Dave Grohl alike. Every uniquely gendered insult that could be thought of was directed her way – starfucker, golddigger, he probably writes her songs for her, it’s her fault he’s addicted, and most damningly BAD MOTHER.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184156/original/file-20170831-9921-8u6iyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Courtney Love, Frances Bean and Kurt Cobain in September 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fred Prouser/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The surprise of Live Through This was its overwhelmingly positive reception in the face of tragedy. Cobain killed himself a week before the album was due to come out. It turned out to be a perfect soundtrack for the grief and disbelief of the Gen X-ers who had just lost their hero.</p>
<p>From the lyrics - which could only be read as rejected attempts to reach out to someone struggling to survive the effects of celebrity – (from Doll Parts: “yeah they really want you, but I do too”) to the title to the perfect way the rage permeating the album intersected with Love’s surprisingly well-received performance of the rock widow, even now it is difficult to disassociate Live Through This from Cobain’s death.</p>
<p>In many ways though, this is unfair. Live Through This is an album I come back to because it is full of well-crafted and super-catchy but angry, biting, songs that – and this is important – I can shout along with when the mood takes me (or, let’s be honest, at karaoke). </p>
<p>Many of the songs on Live Through This show absolute mastery of the grunge “soft-loud-soft” dynamic that was so effective for many of the genres’ best known bands, particularly the opening pair of tracks <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH_rfGBwamc">Violet</a> and Miss World. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mS1Ckczz0LQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The lyrics throughout deal unapologetically with women’s issues, from rape (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2NZhXoEu6o">Asking for It</a>) to motherhood (Plump), even through to Love’s critique of the Riot Grrrl movement in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4vs2drW_Hc">Olympia</a>. Many of the songs are about relationships with other women, including difficult ones, rather than love songs about men.</p>
<p>Courtney was by no means the first woman to create women-centric music, but she was one of the first I came across (small country towns, remember?) That I later tried to start a band was in part thanks to not just Love’s role modelling on Live Through This, but bass player Kirsten Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel’s. (That I was terrible at it was entirely down to me.) </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eC-V14JPPqs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>It is such a good album that I feel confident in saying it would be regarded as a classic even if Cobain was currently trying to make a come-back with a reformed Nirvana after years of dodgy, experimental solo projects.</p>
<p>But as much as judging art purely on its own merits sounds like a nice (if unobtainable) ideal, and as nice as it would be to find a way to assess Hole without having to refer to a man who wasn’t in the band, an appreciation of Live Through This is in some ways enhanced by knowing what the band was up against to create the album.</p>
<p>Love was a woman who not only did the things she wasn’t supposed to do, but kept doing them in the face of whatever fate or other people would throw her way. To say she has always done this with grace and in sensible ways would be lying. But despite everything, she is still a feminist icon to me. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RD9xK9smth4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There is still something inspirational in a scrappy, messy, sometimes self-destructive diva who is visibly ageing but also really visibly trying not to age. Because who among us isn’t sometimes a mess, and who can claim they really aren’t just a bit self-conscious about their growing wrinkles? (Especially after being presented with the flawless visages of Beyonce or Gal Gadot as our current crop of feminist icons.)</p>
<p>Hole might not have lived up to the expectations placed on them, but Live Through This still speaks of potential - particularly feminine potential - being unlocked in new and exciting ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Kurt Cobain killed himself a week before this album was due to come out. It became a perfect soundtrack to Gen X’s grief and with its raw, angry, feminist-inspired, grunge sound, remains a classic.
Catherine Strong, Senior Lecturer, Music Industry, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79105
2017-06-08T19:26:31Z
2017-06-08T19:26:31Z
Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172830/original/file-20170607-5408-x8zd0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">90s sister Sophie Lee in Patricia Piccinini's
Psychogeography 1996, printed 1998
from the Psycho series 1996.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Optus Communications Pty Limited, Member, 1998 (1998.252) © Patricia Piccinini</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field. Kurt Cobain in a greenhouse. Van Gogh took <a href="http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/death.html">two days</a> to die. Cobain’s shot was more effective. On a chilly, wintry morning in Melbourne, there are far more people lining up at the NGV for the Van Gogh exhibition than there ever will be for an exhibition on the 1990s. This is only fitting. A world travelling exhibition – <a href="http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/van-gogh-and-the-seasons/">Van Gogh and the Seasons</a> vs the press call for <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/every-brilliant-eye/">Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s</a>. Outside, the line for Van Gogh snakes in a well ordered fashion onto the causeway. In the other gallery up the road, there’s only me and one other guy. Perfect. I wouldn’t expect anything less because it’s not possible for it to be less. A reality a 90s kid like me has learnt to deal with. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172860/original/file-20170608-5408-7123y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kurt Cobain and daughter Frances Bean in 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some movements travel in ubiquitous ways. Others explode like fireworks in a black sky and then creep into the rest of your life influencing far more than they’re ever acknowledged for. And here I am caught in the moment. The Impressionists vs the DIYs. The Starry Starry Nights vs the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Cultural-Elites-New-Generationalism/dp/1864483407">Gangland</a> freefall. A generational condition author Mark Davis described in 1997 as a “virtual gerrymander” of the ideas market. The 1990s alternative cultural movement creeps through my brain. In many ways it has defined me. My sensibility (resilient); the way I operate (untethered); my morality (questionable). The 1990s is the forgotten decade of the 20th century. The Lost Decade, as it is fittingly referred to by burnt out Japanese economists. But perhaps the resurgences are becoming more frequent.</p>
<p>Every Brilliant Eye is certainly contributing to a wave of recognition of this decade. Since 2015, nearly every major global media outlet has run an article declaring a revival of 1990s pop culture, articles less centred on ideas than the easy symbolic markers of drugs and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/mar/11/90s-are-back-how-to-get-the-look">fashion</a> – ecstasy is back, flannos are back – the headline of “They Might be Dad’s Now” an exemplar of completely missing the point. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, this move from NGV curator Pip Wallace is timely. Before I left my hotel on Swanston Street to visit the show, Double J announced it was dedicating the whole week to 90s music. Online, someone who clearly lives in the suburbs now too described Courtney Love, as “totally committed but easily distracted. Fiercely intelligent and painfully self-aware”. Middle finger down my throat. Is this the best musical decade of all time? Next question.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cH_rfGBwamc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The first thing I want to do once I’m inside Every Brilliant Eye is make something. Mash something up. Scratch something out in a piece of plastic, stitch my name in an old dress, slap a slogan down just to undo it. There are good reasons for this. The exhibition appears to be loosely split into a series of rooms. The first is about being rowdy and unpopular, the political stuff people wanna say but usually don’t: grunge, happenings, the collision between art and performance and music. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172827/original/file-20170607-29614-1a7c82y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second space is quieter and more about feel; abstract emotions, textures, tactility, and the last – a supersonic blast of room, the gay nightclub of my dreams, an in-your-face contemplation of the beauty and danger of who and how and why we might like to fuck. In all three stages, there’s work from some big names – the moody, muted photography of Bill Henson, Patricia Piccinini’s surreal brainscapes featuring twisted 90s sister Sophie Lee, the intricate botanical plumbing of Fiona Hall and Scott Redford’s unco babes chopping up surfboards. Names synonymous with contemporary Australian art, all producing rich and varied work in the 1990s, even if they were not really young Gen Xers but their big brothers and sisters.</p>
<h2>Mix tapes, Bic pens and zines</h2>
<p>The first room comes at me like someone’s upended all the drawers in an inner city share-house and maybe transported it in go karts or the dirty boots of <a href="https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1990-Ford-Escort-Pictures-c299">Escorts</a> to whatever collective happening space was scraping together the ability keep to its doors open. No one much cared about all this detritus in the 1990s but now it’s on plinths. </p>
<p>Vinyl and limited edition zines encased in glass and worshipped like the lovely, fragile artefacts they are. A single mix tape marked “For Starlie” conjuring late night drives through suburban streets where the faint flicker of Neighbours glowed on every telly and we glided past with the lover of that week, listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain or Died Pretty on loop.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/07oZHDgPiqo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Even the titles of the artworks and the written language appearing sometimes within them appeals to the twentysomething girl in me, reading like psalms I’ve forgotten how to say. “Love and Death Are the Same Thing” reminding me of how our days in the 1990s were heavily punctuated with poetry and song lyrics – guys in bands quoting Rimbaud while pulling cones, friends scrawling out their minds and hearts in public diaries, one of my poems printed on the inside cover of a CD. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172868/original/file-20170608-15949-1oqglth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Pounders/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s as if I’ve been thrust back into the language of a time by a team of demented phenomenologists armed with Bic pens and ink jet printers, VHS players and tape recorders – innocuous phrases that could be refrains from David Lynch movies or Nick Cave and Bad Seeds album covers, notes left to me on the fridge by my flatmates, the kind of statements that only make sense when I’m staring at the ceiling or a dripping tap for a really long time and am really, really out of it. “The Artists Fairy Floss Sold on the Merry Go Round of Life” and “Someone Looks at Something”.</p>
<p>Model for a Sunken Monument is a highlight. Ricky Swallow’s brilliant, giant melting pot of a head, Darth Vader looking like he’s made out of Lego and rising out of (or disappearing into) the floor – depending on your equilibrium or perspective. Swallow is one the youngest artists in the exhibition and his preoccupations with pop culture reflect that difference. Nearly every other artist featured here was born in the 1950s or 1960s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172841/original/file-20170608-25764-ng9umd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ricky Swallow, Model for a sunken monument 1999.
synthetic polymer paint on composition board.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Joan Clemenger Endowment, Governor, 1999 © Ricky Swallow, courtesy Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most weren’t in their twenties in the 1990s but edging towards or making a living out of being established. In liner notes written elsewhere about Swallow’s work (he’s also made art out of BMX bikes and playful nods to ET), there’s a kind of reluctant nod to his ability – but of course, they say, here Darth Vader is empty, hollowed out. A defeated vessel. Not really. If you graduated high school in 1990 you know Darth Vader is never vacuous. It’s the same kind of misconception levelled at another featured artist Kathy Temin, who visual arts commentator Jeff Gibson once described as “the worst nightmare” of conservative critics because her preferred sculptural medium was soft fur.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172853/original/file-20170608-23590-dgj561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kathy Temin at the show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom D. Watson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kathy credits her break and her ability to keep showing work in her formative years in Melbourne in large part to curator and gallery owner Rose Lang and the now infamous Gertrude Contemporary arts space. And it’s the work on loan from this gallery that really gets me. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172870/original/file-20170608-26932-200p32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two pieces shot on dodgy hand held video. Punchline by the so-called DAMP collection of artists and Player Guitar by A Constructed World - both staged for the first time in 1999, as if in a desperate effort to ward off Prince’s prophecy about the end of the world.</p>
<p>In the Punchline video, a series of interventions occur in a gallery when a meltdown between two lovers gets out of hand and the punters are not sure what the real story is. This is pre-9/11 art, where everyone gets into it and no one goes default anti-terrorist. Player Guitar gives the exhibition some much needed audio muse – people live are invited to play the double barrel electric guitar while watching the people who did it last time. Yeah. Everyone’s in a band. Everyone’s made it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172855/original/file-20170608-24647-xihvtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Constructed World, Jaqueline Riva and Geoff Lowe, Player guitar, 1999, 2017.
electric guitar, amplifiers, sensor, chair, video camera,
colour video, sound, duration variable
Collection of the artists, Paris</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom D. Watson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Gertrude Contemporary scene as featured here is emblematic of underground movements of a kind everywhere from Tokyo to Seattle to New York. The interesting thing about the 90s is that the DIY aesthetic mashed up against developing technologies. The advent of the internet meant such movements were as much about pressure cooker of geographical isolation in the first half of the decade until they absolutely weren’t in the last.</p>
<p>In the 90s, you didn’t necessarily have to survive on the trickle down effects, the half-hearted drip feed, of bigger more powerful arts and cultural machines in major cities. People got into making shit and playing in bands and writing poetry on pokies in small towns and spaces off the beaten track, in small pockets all over the world. Hire a video camera that weighs a ton – send it to a party instead of yourself. Check. Crash a rich friend’s party and steal an amplifier. Check. Start a multi-arts centre above a fish and chip shop on the Gold Coast. Check.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172866/original/file-20170608-23590-gc4z7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adam Cullen Australian 1965-2012, Everything is low impact 1999.
enamel paint and fibre-tipped pen on canvas
152.1 x 213.4 cm</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Joan Clemenger Endowment, Governor, 1999 (DC1-1999)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 1990s alternative artistic ethos was infectious because you didn’t need an address or rich parents to fund your warehouse space or your magazine. All you needed was will and creativity and attitude and maybe a good survival instinct. Because, of course, many of these individual forays and collective ventures were ill fated but even when they did die, as some people and places sadly did, they’d contributed in ways we’re only just beginning to understand. That arts centre that smelled like overcooked calamari came and went but some of the names you now know walked through the door there, just like they did at Gertrude. </p>
<p>Even if, when I visited the latter place this week, they were preparing to <a href="http://www.gertrude.org.au/news/">move out to the sticks</a> (well Preston South). Apparently not even a good combination of nostalgia and relevance can save you from sky rocketing real estate values and a street in Fitzroy reeking of bespoke custom made furniture and high end, high shine homewares. In an article for <a href="http://www.artnews.com/2015/01/29/90s-art/">Art News</a> on the enduring influence of the 1990s on contemporary art, Linda Yablonksy says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In fact, the Nineties took place on what now seems an intriguing distant planet, when the art world didn’t cater to money in the same way that it does today.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Striped Ts and Drugstore Cowboy hair</h2>
<p>A week before I found myself in the bird’s nest of the NGV, I’d schlepped up the Pacific Highway to a 1990s reunion in Brisbane’s West End - the first time I’d hung with many of the people I’d spent the formative part of that decade with in over 20 years. </p>
<p>The artwork in Every Brilliant Eye reminded me of the scratchy non-digi photos we posted on the Facebook event page to mark the reunion. We look comfortable clumped on roadsides, backs up against the walls of buildings, sprawled on lounge room floors or other people’s beds. We’re obviously waiting for things. Daybreak, trains. The future. The delivery of mates or sticks. Burnt toast. Unhurried. Half bored and poor.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/puXEHhZgXaY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>We wanted to be in Wim Wenders’ movies without realising we were Wim Wenders movies, everyone impossibly beautiful only because we were impossibly young. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097240/">Drugstore Cowboy</a> hair. Striped T’s and unlaced Docs. The kids in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Elephant</a> even though it hadn’t been made yet. Grunge back then was retro and futuristic because it didn’t know it was – grunge was retro with a ripped edge, the future, in a tripper’s eye. The 1990s – the stuff that had already happened or was about to happen – with holes in it.</p>
<p>And I guess that’s the beautiful charm and familiarity of this exhibition. Everything feels like you did it, like you might have seen it before, and you drift around with your mouth open, grateful, like a big blue whale everyone’s forgotten about in a sea of lovely plankton. Yes, I think my friend Karen made fur balls and crazy mobiles out of Spotlight knocks offs and pill packets too. Yes, it seems someone has made an artwork out of my friend Peta’s tights. And if you don’t recognise all of this where the hell were you?</p>
<p><em>Every Brilliant Eye is at NGV Australia until October 1.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 1990s was once the forgotten decade of the 20th century but no longer.
Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74920
2017-03-30T01:28:30Z
2017-03-30T01:28:30Z
Can an album still define the times? Oh Well. Whatever. Nevermind.
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A cross stitch recreation of Nirvana's classic album cover by Mr X Stitch.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jamie Chalmers/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 1991. In the basement nightclub Green on the bottom of the Land’s Office building in Brisbane city I’m late and most of my friends are already inside. I can’t see anyone I know in the smoky haze and the club looks different. Hundreds of posters hang from the ceiling – a baby swimming under water with a hundred dollar note floating in front of its face. Nevermind Nirvana. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162794/original/image-20170327-21248-vlcxsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=676&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of Nevermind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guille.17/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve heard of Nirvana – I’ve listened to Bleach – but I haven’t yet sat in lounge rooms passing around a six shooter with the lights out, the faded sepia wash of the Smells Like Teen Spirit film clip crashing over me, I haven’t yet taken to dance floors to head bang as if I just got awarded a weapon in an unofficial army. That sense of war and saturation will come later, in a matter of months. </p>
<p>I say hi to the DJ. He’s jumping around to the Pixies – high, expectant, weird. Not unusual. He hands me a copy of Nevermind on tape and shrugs. Free merch. Something he’s never done before. And that ambivalent gesture says something. In 1991 my friends and I think we’re caught up in a groundswell, an alternative moment, a grunge aesthetic that has spread organically, in a street way, from Seattle and landed like a hand scrawled message on the tide. In a way this is true. </p>
<p>We’re in bands (sort of), we know what Sub Pop is and we’re into rock and roll lineages thrashing around to the obscure before it’s ubiquitous. But here, in Green, something else is also going on. These posters and free tapes are a prelude. A message being sent around the world about one band – Nirvana – and what they represent by the same record companies that will in the end milk the guts out of alternative rock until it’s homogenised and pasteurised, until it’s not dead exactly but has become a watered down, less edgy version of itself.</p>
<p>Not because the music changes. The music doesn’t. But because the sense of otherness and ownership we’re experiencing gets appropriated to the point of no return and the alternative space has been de-territorialised. How do you tell a guy he can’t come into a club because he’s wearing a suit? How do you explain what happens when the jocks and cheerleaders you’re satirising in your Smells Like Teen Spirit film clip don’t punk out gradually as the frames roll on but stay the same and sing along, eyes wide open to all your songs not knowing what they mean? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTWKbfoikeg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Two very different crowds in nightclubs and mosh pits wanting to spit on each other. The mood getting more aggressive than it was ever meant to. On the liner notes of Insecticide, a compilation album released by Nirvana in 1992, Kurt made this plea to fans: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us… Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It didn’t work.</p>
<p>Nevermind continued to rise long after its release. On the 11th January 1992 it pipped Michael Jackson’s Dangerous for the Number 1 spot in the US. With five charting tracks it still ranks <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1671298/nevermind-nirvana-album/">in the Top 10</a> of the Billboard Chart’s longest running albums of all time. </p>
<p>Six months after the album’s release, Colgate-Palmolive paid US$670 million to acquire Mennen, manufacturers of the Teen Spirit perfumes. At the height of the band’s fame, there were ten variations of Teen Spirit including Sweet Strawberry and Pink Crush. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/152444/8_reasons_nirvana's_'nevermind'_is_the_most_important_rock_album_of_all_time">a 2011 article for AlterNet</a>, Julianne Escobedo Shepard suggested Nevermind not only encapsulated the mood of the 90s but that the disaffection at its core was emblematic of the late capitalist future we were experiencing in the new millennium. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Other albums might have influenced the sound of music in certain ways … but none of them changed the culture at large so vastly, so roughly and so immediately … the strange epoch we’re stuck with now is both a reflection and a result of the way Nevermind affected us; we are living the chaotic meaninglessness the album prophesied, even more than the shitshow that was the 1990s. If Nevermind was an existential statement, we’ve been blasted into the apocalypse.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A seismic shift in the culture</h2>
<p>Cut to 2017. One year after the 25th anniversary of the release of Nevermind – when most media outlets run with stories about “what ever happened to that baby on the Nevermind album cover” and you can buy a Nirvana t-shirt on the Shein clothing app for three Australian dollars. These facts do not dilute Nevermind’s importance.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162808/original/image-20170328-21243-163vzqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cross stitch recreation by Mr X Stitch in full.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jamie Chalmers/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Popular culture is always in the process of recycling itself – Docs are back, Sonic Youth are back, Nirvana are back. Flannelette shirts are back. Tweaked for the times and in play until some other kind of retro symbolism replaces them. </p>
<p>The iconography that does travel is important however, on another level. It represents not just the things that might easily make money for faceless corporations. The reconfiguration is also about the signifiers that trigger desire for a new generation and nostalgia for those who think they may have been there before. Everything is here. Irony, connection, another version of a life. A life you half lived or might have wanted to in another time. The product might be a distillation but the source is still real. </p>
<p>Does seeing a 19-year-old in a Nirvana t-shirt walking the streets in the 21st century really obliterate the visceral experience of seeing Kurt Cobain vomiting over the side of the stage at Festival Hall in 1992 only to pull back at exactly the right moment to continue wailing into his microphone and attacking his guitar? These affects are and always were happening simultaneously and do not necessarily cancel each other out.</p>
<p>The dominant ideology might suppress the working class by manipulating their impulses but people vote with more than just their Visa cards, they vote with their feet and their memories and their hours. </p>
<p>Since publishing <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11365230-the-casuals">The Casuals</a>, a memoir which is in part a chronicle of the grunge era, I’ve had some critics suggest that my friends and I were caught up in nothing more than a marketing manoeuvre – a bunch of middle class, suburban rich kids caught slumming it in the grunge soup. There’s probably some truth in that – but the reason we wanted to identify as alternative is more convoluted and not something we woke up and decided because someone told us to. The iconography and symbolism of grunge was, as the closing refrain of Smells Like Teen Spirit implores – a denial.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2QU7mjrT6aE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Post-eighties repudiation and anti-excess. Dirty out of necessity and working class. Most grunge kids I knew came from poor families but within each subset of goths, alternative rockers and techno heads there were some kids you might have considered rich. That didn’t matter – these were kids with whom we shared a kindred sense of rebellion and disaffection.</p>
<p>They’d had the blazers in high school we could never afford and the five cabbage patch kids but the difference was they’d wanted to burn them. The anti-establishment vibe was something you could glean in a glance and a few well timed phrases. As Nirvana so prophetically suggested, it was something you could smell. </p>
<p>The alternative movement was about rejection of an ideology that excluded us in the first place. An outsider culture not as aggressive as punk, not as drippy as hippy culture but something moodier, characterised by the drugs of choice, pot, acid and heroin and the way the music moved, something fast and something slow, all at once.</p>
<p>Curiously the same charge of blind commercialism is not often levelled at the UK punk movement of the 70s. This isn’t because aspects of punk never went mainstream or were never slung down the shiny lengths of haute couture catwalks. </p>
<p>The difference is, when the appropriation of Nirvana happened, the puff went right out of the music industry balloon. I was driving with my family when I heard about Kurt’s death on Triple J. I remember staring out at the suburban streets, numb, knowing this wasn’t just the end of him but the end of something else. I’d lost some friends too by that stage and the 90s was starting to reek. The thrill had gone and when it drained the fun went quickly. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162809/original/image-20170328-21254-1kp2ibl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nirvana graffiti, Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kurt’s death inadvertently heralded not just the end of grunge as we knew it, it was also emblematic of a seismic shift in the culture. In 1991, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/nevermind-19911128">Ira Robbins in Rolling Stone magazine</a> predicted the kind of sneering praise that would follow Nirvana’s unprecedented level of success for an alternative act. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>More often than not, ambitious left-of-the-dial bands gallantly cling to their principles as they plunge into the depths of commercial failure. Integrity is a heavy burden for those trying to scale the charts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went on to say that Nirvana were quite clearly “setting their sights on a land of giants” and we all know how that ended. By 1994, Cobain was dead and the music industry was head first inside the start of a dramatic collapse. The rise and fall of two emblematic giants – an unlikely symbiotic reaping Kurt no doubt would have revelled in. A year later Microsoft would ship Windows ’95 and the rest, as they say, is history.</p>
<h2>A slippery, post-truth era</h2>
<p>Today even the most cynical music critics agree that artistically, Nevermind stands the test of time, whether that assessment is based purely on sales or influence or aesthetics.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162797/original/image-20170327-21254-2xg0qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kurt-shaped bling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erich Ferdinand/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kurt’s face bounces back. Like the best crash test dummy, he keeps returning, a big hole in his head, sure, but still there, staring back at us from all kinds of screens not in play when he was, bobbing around in the back seat of a car you can barely remember driving looking sometimes like a girl, sometimes like a guy. When he erupts back into the frame you don’t necessarily want to switch him off. Kurt’s an old lover you’d still kiss. A teacher you don’t want to punch in the face. A trash-bag junkie you still don’t mind being associated with.</p>
<p>There are many reasons why Nevermind tracked the way it did. Mostly it was pre-mobile phone, pre-internet period where MTV and the subsequent power of the film clip still had big sway and the channels of dissemination were more tightly controlled; the medium was still the message.</p>
<p>The big, white, corporate rock structure was hanging on to control and Nirvana proceeded to mess with it. An end game personified by the dyed blonde hairs and dead skin in Kurt and Courtney’s greenhouse and plunging profits at Universal, EMI and others. In the 1990s, popular culture was more insular than it is now. </p>
<p>Ask anyone you know to name an album they think defines the first or even the second decade of the 21st century and getting an answer more than two people can agree on is extremely difficult – the work would have to be transcultural and global and gender fluid. </p>
<p>In this slippery era of post truth it would have to be defined by multiplicity, fluidity, trans-everything – the album would have to traverse all kinds of demographics, collapsing genres, hybridity and fusions.</p>
<p>The only thing we can really know for sure is that big, white, machine culture doesn’t grip quite as well as it used to and even in a Hollywood version of the world, the moments an album does hold sway and for whom are shorter, less pervasive, more fleeting. Something Kurt wouldn’t have minded, surely.</p>
<p><em>Sally Breen will lead an academic discussion on important issues at the intersection of music, writing and social commentary at the <a href="http://www.rockandrollwritersfestival.com/2017program/">Rock & Roll Writers Festival in Brisbane on April 1</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nirvana’s Nevermind was emblematic of the 1990s. But in today’s fragmented digital age, can anyone nominate an album that defines the first or second decade of the 21st century?
Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/40040
2015-05-04T20:55:33Z
2015-05-04T20:55:33Z
Before watching Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, you need to understand the artist’s three sides
<p>The new documentary Montage of Heck takes a fresh look at the life and career of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who, while only in the pop limelight for a shade over two years, remains one of the most iconic figures in rock-music history. </p>
<p>In an effort to correct some of the myths that surround Cobain, director Brett Morgen opens a window onto Kurt’s private world, providing at times intimate glimpses of the rock star’s personal life.</p>
<p>But to better understand Kurt Cobain and his songs, it’s important to realize that there are at least three Kurts to consider. </p>
<p>The first is Kurt the rock star, an image Cobain quite consciously crafted, the side of his persona that he sometimes called “Kurdt.” This is the one most listeners associate with him: the brooding poet, the artist filled with punk-rock anger and aggression who resisted and loathed fame. Kurdt would often make up fabulous stories in interviews, some loosely based on facts (he claimed to have once lived under a bridge), others fabricated in a spirit of playful absurdity (though sometimes journalists failed to recognize the joke). Kurdt was the defiant punk artist who flashed his middle finger at the status quo. It was a role Kurt loved to play.</p>
<p>The private Kurt, by contrast, seems to have been ambitious and driven. While Kurdt disdained fame, Kurt energetically pursued it. </p>
<p>Once Cobain became a star, he suffered under the new pressures and burdens that came with it. But when asked once in drug rehab why he didn’t just travel far away to escape the spotlight, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Payy47wH6XY&feature=youtu.be&t=14m3s">he responded</a> that he was afraid his fans would forget him. Cobain biographer Charles R Cross <a href="https://youtu.be/Payy47wH6XY?t=45m31s">observes</a> that at several points in Kurt’s career, he consistently chose the path to fame and wealth, when he could have chosen otherwise. (Of course, “Kurdt” would then complain bitterly.)</p>
<p>The third Kurt is Cobain the creative artist. Any objective survey of Kurt’s writing, songs and paintings reveals an enormously creative mind. In contrast to the career-driven Kurt and the mopey Kurdt, the creative Kurt was an unrelentingly playful personality that delighted in fanciful juxtaposition of images, poked fun at societal roles and stereotypes, and engaged in an almost constant game with language. This Kurt had a particular fascination with following seemingly sensible premises to absurd extremes. </p>
<p>The famous lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit are as good an example as any: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here we are now, entertain us</p>
<p>A mulatto</p>
<p>An albino</p>
<p>A mosquito</p>
<p>My libido</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Looking out onto the hormone-infused dancing at a teen party, Cobain follows “mulatto” with “albino,” playing on the number of syllables and ending vowel. If skin pigment is what linked those two words, whiteness suggests having one’s blood sucked out, which generates “mosquito.” But a mosquito penetrates the body (and sucks), and that leads to “libido.” The subsequent transformation of “hello” into “how low”“ continues the logic and the wordplay. </p>
<p>This kind of songwriter’s game with rhymes is reminiscent of the bridge to the Beatles’ Taxman, the verses of Leiber and Stoller’s Little Egypt and any number of songs by Cole Porter.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many Cobain commentaries mistakenly confuse these distinct elements of Cobain’s personality. The most common error – and the basis for the myth Montage of Heck hopes to dispel – is conflating Kurdt and Kurt. </p>
<p>There is nothing necessarily inauthentic in a performer creating a mask as Cobain did; Bob Dylan and others have done this for decades. That the private Kurt contrasts with the public image he projected, then, does not mean that fans have somehow been duped or that Cobain has been dishonest. The public image is an extension of Cobain’s creativity – another dimension of his imagination that he based on himself, not unlike a character in a semi-biographical novel.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80335/original/image-20150504-8397-5z2dmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artists often project pubic images that clash with their private selves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://orig02.deviantart.net/0061/f/2015/121/b/0/fancis_n_kurt_by_dnftt2014-d8rrnpb.jpg">DNFTT2014/deviant art</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The often unnoticed – but perhaps more serious mistake – is confusing either Kurt or Kurdt with the creative Cobain. It’s all too common to find Cobain’s personal biography breezily read into his lyrics, the attitudes projected by the brooding Kurdt blended into their meaning. </p>
<p>While it’s clear that Cobain’s sometimes sad and desperate personal life was the source of many of his songs, the songs themselves go far beyond personal anger, complaining, sorrow and confession. </p>
<p>Instead, his songs reach for something beyond his own experience: sometimes he’s simply enjoying the craft of songwriting, playfully engaging with the rich history of pop that he knew and loved.</p>
<p>It’s through viewing Cobain in the broader context of pop songwriting – which includes its techniques and history – that one discovers a fascinating artist of considerable breadth and depth. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4kUK-5mbuK0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Covach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It’s important not to conflate and confuse Cobain’s varying personas.
John Covach, Director, Institute for Popular Music, University of Rochester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/25335
2014-04-07T13:23:06Z
2014-04-07T13:23:06Z
Kurt Cobain and the search for a sincere rock star
<p>The noise around the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death is a reminder of the importance still granted to iconic dead rock stars. Cobain, it seems, is as important to current teenagers as he is to those who have kept his memory alive since the heyday of grunge.</p>
<p>Just as people of my generation inherited the posthumous fame of long-dead icons such as Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix, so current teens grow into a musical understanding in which figures such as Cobain or Jeff Buckley are as real as any contemporary star. Recordings, photographs, videos, celebrity and mythology all ensure that icons live on for subsequent generations. Those same young fans also get Morrison and Hendrix, of course, along with Joplin, Vicious, Smith and the rest of the canon of the doomed.</p>
<p>Cobain stands out, too, as an icon of authenticity, the kind of artist who fans and critics like to crown as the last true rock star. Rock mythology loves ends as much as beginnings, the retrospective as much as the revolution. There’s nothing more satisfying for a certain train of thought than to emphasise the notion that something has definitely ended, that things can never be the same again.</p>
<p>What goes between the beginning and the end is what messes us up, something Cobain was painfully aware of. His interviews, song lyrics and messages to audience members were haunted by the impossibility of achieving truth and sincerity, of always being in danger of selling out, falling short, being uncovered as a fraud.</p>
<p>Fame and wealth didn’t help, of course. As Jonathan Freedland observed in the days following Cobain’s suicide, in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/from-the-archive-blog/2014/apr/05/kurt-cobain-an-icon-of-alienation">a piece recently republished by The Guardian</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Generation X-ers are meant to be the slacker generation, yet here was the slacker-in-chief living the yuppie dream: married, padding around a $1.1 million luxury mansion with a garden for his baby daughter to play in, and Microsoft and Boeing executives for neighbours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other recently collected memories of Cobain, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-billie-joe-armstrong-beck-and-more-remember-kurt-cobain-20140405">we find Neil Young voicing anguish</a> that he couldn’t reach out to the troubled star to show him how to live with the doubts, play the game and survive. Young has had his fair share of dealings with the anxieties of authenticity over a long career, veering from commercial success to seeming career suicide, while still persevering.</p>
<p>It is not surprising to find both Cobain and Young taking starring roles in Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor’s 2007 book <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Faking_It_The_Quest_for_Authenticity_in.html?id=O-266DVNBWIC&redir_esc=y">Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music</a>. By placing Cobain at the start of the book alongside the blues artist Lead Belly – one of whose songs Cobain performed during Nirvana’s famed <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/nirvanas-tense-brilliant-em-unplugged-in-new-york-em-20-years-later/282040/">MTV Unplugged show</a> – the authors seek not to strip Cobain of his claims to sincerity, but rather to show just how impossible it is to live up to them. There’s nothing like public exposure to drain the possibility of being true.</p>
<p>Impassioned claims to truth have long been prime components of popular music, though they take a number of different forms. It may involve truth to some kind of established template or ideal: the authentic blues guitarist or folk singer. Or it could be truth to oneself, to an artistic vision that breaks from all templates in pursuit of individual style. </p>
<p>What binds these quests for truth is the sense of conviction; the musician must be seen and heard to be “real”. Artists such as David Bowie and Bryan Ferry made this clear in different ways with pastiches of the rock star image, adopting poses, masks and aliases. They were still convincing, though. In showing their audience that artifice is ultimately a way of unveiling the artifice of others, they may be the most honest of all.</p>
<p>“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” These words of Oscar Wilde’s were appropriated by Todd Haynes for his film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120879/">Velvet Goldmine</a>, in which a harsh spotlight is trained on the superficialities of the glam rock era and a Bowie-like figure is sacrificed on the altars of fame and wealth. Being oneself, being the one that others want to see, or see themselves being: these tensions remain at the heart of the popular music’s politics of authenticity a century after Wilde, 40 years after Ziggy Stardust and 20 after Kurt Cobain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25335/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The noise around the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death is a reminder of the importance still granted to iconic dead rock stars. Cobain, it seems, is as important to current teenagers as he is to…
Richard Elliott, Lecturer in Popular Music, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/25276
2014-04-04T06:52:19Z
2014-04-04T06:52:19Z
Could Nirvana really be about to replace Kurt Cobain?
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTWKbfoikeg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Smells Like Teen Spirit.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Could Nirvana really be about to replace Kurt Cobain? This month marks the <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-decades-on-what-remains-of-kurt-cobain-24897">20th anniversary of his tragic death</a> and also the induction of Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (April 10). Since bands inducted into the Hall of Fame play at the ceremony itself, it is no surprise the internet is aflame with rumours since the recent tweet from the band’s former bassist, Krist Novoselic, that <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/music/hints-that-nirvana-may-perform-kurt-cobain-songs-during-hall-of-fame-induction-20140404-363bx.html">seemed to indicate he has been practising Nirvana songs</a>. </p>
<p>This seems to run contrary to the previous comments by former drummer (and now Foo Fighter) Dave Grohl that Nirvana songs were, “sacred ground”, but could the fact that the Hall of Fame induction is to be conducted by Cobain’s friend Michael Stipe suggest a change of heart?</p>
<p>Whether it happens is one issue – we’ll see on the night – but just as interesting is the question this raises about authenticity and reverence for musicians. Can Nirvana be Nirvana without Cobain? </p>
<p>Paul McCartney’s live shows have long featured Beatles songs, but with a noticeable skew towards those on which he was the primary composer: he avoids “John” songs. Other musicians are less reticent. Queen have played occasional live shows as “Queen + Paul Rodgers” (with the latter taking the unenviable task of filling Freddie’s shoes), and of course both Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones have continued despite losing original members. </p>
<p>According to music psychology theory, this lack of authenticity ought to reduce the audience’s enjoyment of the show. Research shows that people tend to instead prefer the prototypical version of any artistic object. </p>
<p>We find it easier to correctly classify prototypical versions of things (e.g., a chair with four legs, not three) because we recognise them more easily, and this makes it easier for us to operate within the day-to-day world. To put this in crass terms, it confers an adaptive advantage if you can correctly and quickly recognise the furry object running quickly towards you as a dangerous sabre-toothed tiger rather than your pet cat. </p>
<p>Similarly, we prefer the best-known version of a group’s line-up because it is easier to recognise and classify. You are hard-wired to like the “classic” line-up of a band because it rests on the same psychological trick that stopped your ancestors from being eaten by mammoths.</p>
<p>But even the notion of authenticity itself is subject to changes in fashion. The current popularity of “new folk” mirrors the Celtic pop movement of the 80s and the American folk movement of the 60s in suggesting that sometimes audiences demand the real thing, but will at other times accept the “diet” Hollywood version.</p>
<p>Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, or Freddie Mercury, though, are clearly special cases. The fact that Nirvana, The Beatles or Queen simply <em>can’t</em> ever reunite means we’re prepared to overlook the lack of authenticity and will happily settle for second best. </p>
<p>Tribute acts, such as The Bootleg Beatles, illustrate how even an impersonation of the real thing can be good enough simply because it reminds us of how great the original was. And that to me sounds like a great reason for Novoselic and Grohl to recruit a stand-in singer for the Hall of Fame induction. </p>
<p>It might not be the real thing, but it might also be close enough to remind us just what we are missing.</p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-decades-on-what-remains-of-kurt-cobain-24897">Two decades on, what remains of Kurt Cobain?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Could Nirvana really be about to replace Kurt Cobain? This month marks the 20th anniversary of his tragic death and also the induction of Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (April 10). Since bands…
Adrian North, Head of School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24897
2014-04-02T19:46:32Z
2014-04-02T19:46:32Z
Two decades on, what remains of Kurt Cobain?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45368/original/vf3xy3xh-1396410308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even if he wasn't your bag, Cobain's afterlife will have caught your attention. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erich Ferdinand</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few years ago a student of mine turned up to class wearing a T-shirt that had Kurt Cobain’s <a href="http://www.datejesus.com/sermons/cobain/suicide.html">suicide note</a> printed on it. I recognised it straight away - I suspect many people around my age spent a period of their youth examining that document looking for answers that would never come. The student, on the other hand, didn’t actually know what it was she had on; she just thought it was a nice design.</p>
<p>Death is often thought of as our final destination but, in the case of dead celebrities, it can be the starting point of hundreds of new stories as the memory of the person and their image are fought over, given new meanings and put to new uses. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45357/original/bkwwy3nj-1396408805.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CoolValley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That even something as intensely personal and important as a suicide note could be reduced to someone else’s fashion statement shows the strange places this process can take us, and also sometimes makes it difficult to not feel somewhat cynical about it.</p>
<p>In the lead up to the 20th anniversary of his death this week (April 5), it would be easy to bemoan the ways Cobain seems to have been gradually hollowed out and pressed further and further into a generic form, interchangeable with any number of other dead rock stars. </p>
<p>The way references to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club">27 Club</a> are thrown around in the media whenever another young musician dies (even if they aren’t exactly 27) and the way the similarities between the members of this group – Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse among others – are emphasised, and their differences downplayed, shows one way in which this interchangeability happens.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44877/original/fk52p8hp-1395893123.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">hyoin min</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can also see this occurring in some of the strange uses this cardboard cut-out version of Cobain is put to. He turned up recently in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/kurt-cobain-john-lennon-and-tupac-shakur-star-in-dutch-beer-ad-20140325">an advertisement for beer</a> and has in the past also been [spotted in shoe commercials](http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20040249,00.html](http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20040249,00.html). </p>
<p>In both cases, Cobain is simply one example in a line-up of dead icons – the beer ad also features Elvis and John Lennon, and the shoe ads repurpose Sid Vicious and Joey Ramone to sell their wares. </p>
<p>In this way, Cobain’s name and image can be swapped out for a whole variety of other people in these sorts of contexts without the conveyed meaning changing at all.</p>
<p>It would also be easy to concentrate on how we have recently seen the final steps in the incorporation of Cobain’s band Nirvana into the conventional rock ‘n’ roll canon – and indeed the civic establishment – in a way that once would have been very difficult to imagine.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45367/original/bt9jccm3-1396410211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Vadilonga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On April 10, Nirvana will be officially inducted into the <a href="http://www.rockhall.com/inductees/">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame</a>, at the same time as acts such as Hall and Oates and Linda Ronstadt (and, to be fair, harder acts like Kiss as well). </p>
<p>This gesture sees the band completely embraced by the mainstream of rock they once declared themselves against. When Nevermind (1991) knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the US charts it was seen as the symbolic destruction of the old order of music by something new and exciting, but now both acts sit happily in the Hall together.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44874/original/k4r5qyst-1395892695.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fan lights a candle a decade ago, on the 10th anniversary of Cobain’s death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barry Sweet/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, we have also seen the towns of <a href="http://www.aberdeen-museum.org/kurt.htm">Aberdeen</a> (where Cobain was born and grew up – and which he was not complimentary towards) and nearby Hoquiam (where Cobain briefly lived before relocating to Seattle) competing to be the town to represent Nirvana. </p>
<p>On Cobain’s birthday in February this year, Aberdeen had its first <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/washingtons-aberdeen-marks-first-annual-kurt-cobain-day-9139515.html">Kurt Cobain Day</a>, while on April 10 Hoquiam will mark <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/nirvana-day-to-be-celebrated-in-hoquiam-washington-20131226">Nirvana Day</a>. That the anti-social, drug-addicted Cobain can now be used as a marker of civic pride is another example of the many meanings associated with him now that wouldn’t have been considered during his life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44878/original/hqdctttw-1395893224.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kurt Cobain lunch box.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Song</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such events are, of course, not simply markers of pride but are based around the fact there’s money to be made from dead rock stars. Increasingly, entire tourism industries are being built up on the remains of the famous deceased. Aberdeen’s mayor recognised this <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/aberdeens-kurt-cobain-day-features-weird-crying-statue-20140221#ixzz2wr6VyqY4">when he said</a> of Kurt Cobain Day that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We hope this is just as big as Graceland eventually.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44884/original/md35cmtr-1395893634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simmr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of this is to say Cobain’s image has been completely coopted by commercial forces. There are still plenty of voices that protest these representations, including fans, music journalists and people who knew Cobain. They point to the knowledge we have about the living, breathing man to argue for ways of remembering him that seem more true to who he was. </p>
<p>Many of the news reports of the events and ads discussed above are critical of the way these representations of Cobain just didn’t get it right.</p>
<p>But attempts like these to push back against “incorrect” representations of Cobain rely on a different set of well-used stories centred around “authenticity” in art. The notion of Cobain as a tortured soul ultimately destroyed by the same commercial forces that are now still using him to make money is in many ways an image as two-dimensional as the figure that is being used to sell beer. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45371/original/s2dkh9mh-1396410635.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Becraft</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To blithely assume “he wouldn’t have wanted it this way” ignores both the reality of a Cobain who during his life actively pursued his goal of making it in the music industry and the tendency for once anti-commercial artists to change their tune as they age (see <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/watch-bob-dylans-super-bowl-commercial-for-chrysler-20140203">Bob Dylan’s recent Super Bowl ad</a>. </p>
<p>Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, Cobain’s bandmates, are both turning up for Nirvana’s induction into the Hall of Fame, and given that they were all part of the anti-establishment ethos of grunge together it’s not crazy to suggest Cobain would have done the same.</p>
<p>The many Kurt Cobains that now circulate serve a purpose for the groups that use them, whether it be to make money, give people a sense of pride in their town, or to maintain an identity as a fan of rebellious music. </p>
<p>Twenty years after Cobain stopped being able to have a say himself there are more ways to think about him – and more arguments about these – than there ever were during his lifetime. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A few years ago a student of mine turned up to class wearing a T-shirt that had Kurt Cobain’s suicide note printed on it. I recognised it straight away - I suspect many people around my age spent a period…
Catherine Strong, Lecturer in Sociology, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.