glitter_n_gore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
glitter_n_gore) wrote2019-04-16 09:21 pm
glitter_n_gore) wrote2019-04-16 09:21 pm
BLEACH: Reaching Nirvana 30 Years Later
I've been a casual fan of Nirvana for most of my life. They've been in the periphery of my little world for as long as I can remember, but I never dove all the way in. In 1989, when their first album, Bleach, came out, I was 6. Much more into sparkle ponies and mermaids than punk rock. I don't regret that--sparkle ponies and mermaids are consistently rad, after all--but there's no way I would've understood this music back then.
Still, I grew up in the '90s. Nevermind wasn't exactly hard to find. I've always known who they were. I generally liked their songs. I flat-out loved the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" once we actually got MTV at home and I could see it. Once, I had a confrontation with a high school classmate who was giving one of my friends a hard time for restringing his guitar. (He was left-handed.) I got up in this kid's face and said, "You know who else switched their guitar strings? Paul McCartney! And Jimi Hendrix! AND Kurt Cobain!" He brushed me off with, "Yeah yeah--has been, overdose, suicide, who cares?" "SHUT UP they're LEGENDS!" was my response. Or something like that. I don't know if my friend remembers me defending his honor like that, but I like to think he appreciated it.
And yet, I never felt like Nirvana was, or ever could be, "my" band. I couldn't even tell you why.
So hear I am now, coming up on my thirty-sixth birthday, and I decided that my present to myself this year (I'm allowed one) would be Bleach. Since it's the early, indie album, I expected it to be kind of ragged and grating. Y'know, where you can hear the groundwork of what they'd do later, but with a lot of rough edges. Because that's how most of my other first album purchases of bands I like have gone.
Yeah--no, this was love at first listen.
Since yesterday, I have listened to Bleach in its entirety three times. More accurately, I listened to it up until "Love Buzz," stopped there and replayed that one song two more times in a row, listened to the rest of it, then went back and listened to the first five tracks again. And today, I listened to the whole album twice. It is my new FAVORITE THING EVER and I feel like I should play it in a dark, dark room with lava lamps and incense burners shaped like dragon skulls.
(1993 Live and Loud performance of "Blew," first track on the album, which immediately made me start grinning like a fool.)
This reminds me a little of Black Sabbath's Paranoid, which is another reason I don't think I would have gotten this before now. I needed to become familiar with all the other greats from the '60s and '70s to get what's happening in the background of this album. This is a flavor of punk I didn't even know existed. Granted I'm much more familiar with metal and New Wave, but I can hear those influences in the guitar tones and chord progressions, and I love it.
It's not just an amalgamation of all the bands Kurt Cobain was listening to himself. It's dark, growly, and completely unique. Maybe this is what "grunge" was supposed to mean this whole time. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone else, but what I'm getting at here is my overall impression of who Nirvana, and Cobain, really were musically was . . . not incorrect, exactly, but incomplete. I've had Nevermind in my collection for many years now, and I like it just fine, but it didn't knock me over the way Bleach is doing now. I haven't felt this way about an album since I bought Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance fifteen years ago. (The "lol, emo losers" crowd won't get this, but the rest of you will understand the weight of that statement coming from me.)
What even prompted me to do this, apart from nostalgia, grief, and a vague sense of wanting to mark the passage of time? I'm not sure. I got lost in a YouTube rabbit hole and at some point stumbled over this performance of "Endless, Nameless"--one of many the official channel has been uploading over the past two weeks:
(1991 Seattle Paramount performance. FYI, that song is a hidden track on some, but not all, copies of Nevermind. Not mine--I checked--so I guess I need to buy it again.)
Listen: I feel like I've gotten pretty good with the words. But words are so limited. How can I possibly convey what watching this particular performance made me feel? Music is so personal and subjective. Maybe you won't feel the same. It's so loud, raw, and chaotic it's like witnessing a musical exorcism. But then about 2:10 in, they switch to this delicate, haunting melody, just for a minute. At that moment, it felt like something inside me unclenched. And I knew I needed to take a closer look at this music.
That's why I'm so excited and overwhelmed right now. Because this Nirvana? This can be "my" band. Maybe they have been all along, and I just needed time to figure that out. Better late than never, right?
(Cross-posted torhoda_rants.)
Still, I grew up in the '90s. Nevermind wasn't exactly hard to find. I've always known who they were. I generally liked their songs. I flat-out loved the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" once we actually got MTV at home and I could see it. Once, I had a confrontation with a high school classmate who was giving one of my friends a hard time for restringing his guitar. (He was left-handed.) I got up in this kid's face and said, "You know who else switched their guitar strings? Paul McCartney! And Jimi Hendrix! AND Kurt Cobain!" He brushed me off with, "Yeah yeah--has been, overdose, suicide, who cares?" "SHUT UP they're LEGENDS!" was my response. Or something like that. I don't know if my friend remembers me defending his honor like that, but I like to think he appreciated it.
And yet, I never felt like Nirvana was, or ever could be, "my" band. I couldn't even tell you why.
So hear I am now, coming up on my thirty-sixth birthday, and I decided that my present to myself this year (I'm allowed one) would be Bleach. Since it's the early, indie album, I expected it to be kind of ragged and grating. Y'know, where you can hear the groundwork of what they'd do later, but with a lot of rough edges. Because that's how most of my other first album purchases of bands I like have gone.
Yeah--no, this was love at first listen.
Since yesterday, I have listened to Bleach in its entirety three times. More accurately, I listened to it up until "Love Buzz," stopped there and replayed that one song two more times in a row, listened to the rest of it, then went back and listened to the first five tracks again. And today, I listened to the whole album twice. It is my new FAVORITE THING EVER and I feel like I should play it in a dark, dark room with lava lamps and incense burners shaped like dragon skulls.
(1993 Live and Loud performance of "Blew," first track on the album, which immediately made me start grinning like a fool.)
This reminds me a little of Black Sabbath's Paranoid, which is another reason I don't think I would have gotten this before now. I needed to become familiar with all the other greats from the '60s and '70s to get what's happening in the background of this album. This is a flavor of punk I didn't even know existed. Granted I'm much more familiar with metal and New Wave, but I can hear those influences in the guitar tones and chord progressions, and I love it.
It's not just an amalgamation of all the bands Kurt Cobain was listening to himself. It's dark, growly, and completely unique. Maybe this is what "grunge" was supposed to mean this whole time. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone else, but what I'm getting at here is my overall impression of who Nirvana, and Cobain, really were musically was . . . not incorrect, exactly, but incomplete. I've had Nevermind in my collection for many years now, and I like it just fine, but it didn't knock me over the way Bleach is doing now. I haven't felt this way about an album since I bought Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance fifteen years ago. (The "lol, emo losers" crowd won't get this, but the rest of you will understand the weight of that statement coming from me.)
What even prompted me to do this, apart from nostalgia, grief, and a vague sense of wanting to mark the passage of time? I'm not sure. I got lost in a YouTube rabbit hole and at some point stumbled over this performance of "Endless, Nameless"--one of many the official channel has been uploading over the past two weeks:
(1991 Seattle Paramount performance. FYI, that song is a hidden track on some, but not all, copies of Nevermind. Not mine--I checked--so I guess I need to buy it again.)
Listen: I feel like I've gotten pretty good with the words. But words are so limited. How can I possibly convey what watching this particular performance made me feel? Music is so personal and subjective. Maybe you won't feel the same. It's so loud, raw, and chaotic it's like witnessing a musical exorcism. But then about 2:10 in, they switch to this delicate, haunting melody, just for a minute. At that moment, it felt like something inside me unclenched. And I knew I needed to take a closer look at this music.
That's why I'm so excited and overwhelmed right now. Because this Nirvana? This can be "my" band. Maybe they have been all along, and I just needed time to figure that out. Better late than never, right?
(Cross-posted to
rhoda_rants.)