good song writing .
cobain was a good writer of pop tunes
those songs could be played jazzy, hip hopish , low key acoustic
country ect and still be cool. a good song can wear any suit . his happend to be punkish heavy.
look back at what was big 10, 20 30 years ago and you freak on all the bullshit that isnt around any more . what is?
good song writin

i found bleach yesterday on tape, bought it for two dollars, and drove around listening to it with a friend. astonishingly, it doesn't sound dated. it sounds better than most underground rock coming out these days, and frankly i think it holds up better than alot of underground rock from those days (i.e. the late eighties).

i like incesticide and nevermind alright but never liked in utero. i think it has alot to do with kurt cobain's drastic change in mood and persona, from someone who was excited to be in a punk band to someone who hated his wife and was addicted to heroin. milk it is the only song i can remeber liking from that album, and still, looking back it seems cheesy or something.

while i can relate to many of the sentiments expressed in this thread, nirvana is not very good. none of their albums are consistently good. their covers were probably the best thing they did, which is fine if you're the lemonheads, but if you're supposed to be the "voice of a generation" or whatever--even an exceedingly lame, lazy one--i think the bar should probably be set a bit higher. so, nay.

i agree re: some of their non-musical exploits. the bass player also managed to wear a SSD shirt in every single picture ever taken of that band.

so when they make a dramatic movie of the week type movie about nirvana, who do you think'll play kurt?

my money's on...

http://www.chud.com/graphics3/culkin.jpg



i have no idea why, but when i click the link, it says the page can't be found. but when i click "refresh", then it shows the picture. i dunno, i think it's at least as interesting as jennifer capriati playing dave grohl.

http://www.tennis-ontheline.com/pics/02mo/02mojc1.jpg



no idea who they'll get to play novoselic. maybe alan ruck?

http://www.bromfieldhall.co.uk/ruck1.jpg

i think nirvana is a good band. i think the main thing that hit them off was that they had good songs. good catchy songs that people could put into the catogory of "punk rock" (whatever that is). timing i will admit had to do with it but not as much as they say.

i am a big nirvana/kurt cobain fan. after not listinging to their music for a while, i feel i am more attracted to the story then to the actual music. i think kurt is a colorful character that people can look at as an idol even though he died by his own hand.

overall-
bleach-yes, yes, yes. pure grunge power
nevermind-1/4 the songs are great live but record sucks because of production.
incesticide-yes, alot of great songs that were try nirvana that every1 wqas not too fond of.
in utero-my favorite nirvana album. great recording that actually brought me to this site and steve albini.

Me and some friends were at the bar like 3 weeks ago and my friend asked what band it was that got us into music seriously. I didn't batter for a second when I blurted out Nirvana. In fact after I said my answer everyone else changed theirs to Nirvana. If it wasn't for them I personally would probably be listening to Slipknot right now instead of Charles Mingus. Nirvana opened the doors for me to find out about music. Plus they totally changed everything for 'alternative rock'. I mean yeah, we got stuck with Better Than Ezra but we also got Radiohead and Queens Of The Stone Age without having to really hunt for two great bands. Sonic Youth(just giving credit where credit is due) got Nirvana their deal and Nirvana got super huge.They opened the doors to major labels signing not crap some of the time, and took lesser unknown bands and sometimes very different bands on tour with them unlike say the Family Values Tour which is a bunch of shitty bands playing the same kinda dhitty music. They are also the undisputed kings of taking 'indie rock' and its general aesthetic to the majors. Kurt would almost always wear a t-shirt featuring a band that he respected at some major televised event. That alone got Flipper's reunion album on a major. It might have gotten Daniel Johnston on a major, I'm not sure of when he got signed. They more or less controlled their output. Nevermind doesnt sound as great as it could've but given their inexperience in that situation and the fact that they just signed to a major it is an awesome record. The whole thing with Albini and Geffen sucked but in the long run the record is almost completely intact to the original recordings. I mean two songs got remixed. They were both singles too. Kurt had the incite to think that maybe their fans wouldn't totally embrace Steve's ethic when it comes to how a record should sound. I know that at the time Steve was totally against them doing this because of the contract they had (not sure if it was verbal or written) but when you're dealing with the bullshit known as being on a major then I think it was a good compromise. I'm gonna end my rant now but Nirvana made me a Sonic Youth fan which instantly tripled my record collection because I then looked at what they were saying about bands. Kurt was awesome but I'm glad he's dead because he might have started making shitty music and no one needs that.

aaron wrote:while i can relate to many of the sentiments expressed in this thread, nirvana is not very good. none of their albums are consistently good. their covers were probably the best thing they did, which is fine if you're the lemonheads, but if you're supposed to be the "voice of a generation" or whatever--even an exceedingly lame, lazy one--i think the bar should probably be set a bit higher. so, nay.

Wasn't that the point of the band (or grunge/punk rock in general) - not to be very good and or consistent...? 'expressing' yourself (there was a lot of that in the 90's) - that's what apealed to the generation, not the fact that Kurt Cobain was an unorthodox musician...

Angry_Dragon wrote:Kurt was awesome but I'm glad he's dead because he might have started making shitty music and no one needs that.

Very "incite"ful.

lolz

Speaking of Nirvana's extra-musical stuff, thanks to Nirvana I experienced one of those rare moments when generational politics actually seem to be a real thing, not a lot of Gen X / slacker cliches. I saw them at the Warfield in San Francisco on the first leg ot the "Nevermind" tour. I had just graduated from college a few months earlier and moved from the Midwest to SF (cue opening "Teen Spirit" chords, connoting cynicism, irony, sarcasm, etc.). The night before the show, Bill Graham died in a helicopter accident (on his way back home from a Huey Lewis show). The Warfied was part of the Bill Graham Presents empire, so all the staff there were wearing black armbands on the night of the show. Nirvana came out and opened with "Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam" ("Don't expect me to cry...", etc.). Maybe that was their standard opener at the time, but still--it certainly resonated.

I'd be lying if I said the show itself blew me away. Like an idiot, my general attitude toward Nirvana at the time was "they're no Husker Du." It took a couple months before "Nevermind" sunk in, but when it did, I couldn't believe I ever doubted it. Though Tim's right--the production sucks, and seems to suck more with each passing year.

One other Niirvana comment--"Sliver" is a perfect song.