Dec 14

Nirvana

Greatly Appreciated

NIRVANA

 
Nirvana  was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987; drummer Dave Grohl joined the band in 1990.  Despite releasing only three full-length studio albums in their seven-year career, Nirvana has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and important rock bands of the modern era.  Nirvana found unexpected success with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, the first single from the band’s second album Nevermind (1991).  Nirvana’s sudden success widely popularized alternative rock as a whole, with Nirvana being considered the “flagship band” of Generation X.  The band has sold over 25 million records in the United States alone, and over 75 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling bands of all time.  Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, in its first year of eligibility.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Finally, I have a recommendation to go with my confession earlier.  If any of you are still signed up with Netflix, you should add the 1994 film Backbeat to your queue.  It is the early history of the Beatles mostly when they were in Hamburg, Germany and primarily follows Stu Sutcliffe (played by Stephen Dorff), an old friend of John Lennon who was in an early incarnation of the band.  Along the way, you meet Paul McCartney (the two actors who play John and Paul are dead ringers), George Harrison, and even Ringo Starr, who was hanging around the group even though he wasn’t in the band yet.  Actually the words “the Beatles” were only spoken once during the entire movie; John Lennon mostly just called them “the band”. 
 
The idea is that, in those days, the Beatles were the world’s greatest punk rock group, so the band that they lined up to play the music was drawn from the top American alternative rock bands of the day, like the Afghan Whigs, Soul Asylum, R.E.M., and Sonic Youth.  The drummer was Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, who later became the front man for Foo Fighters (sadly, I believe that I read that they have gone on a hiatus).  However, he still hits the skins from time to time for bands like Queens of the Stone Age.  Highly recommended. 
  
(September 2012)
 
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Back when MTV and VH1 used to play music videos, and when I wasn’t watching anything else, I would often have one of those channels on, with my videocassette recorder at the ready, in case a video came on of a song that I really liked.  Particularly when there was a song in “heavy rotation” that I really wanted, I would often have the VCR already cued up, on “hold”, so that I would miss as little of the video as possible.  Sometimes I would get lucky, and I would already be recording a song when another one came on that I wanted as well. 
 
That happened one time with “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age.  The time was back in the Garage Rock Revival period of the early 2000’s, when the White Stripes, the Hives, the Strokes, and several other great retro bands were really getting established.  I hadn’t heard the song before, but the beat sounded good, so I left the recorder running.  That song got to be a real favorite of mine, and I was particularly thrilled when I later recognized Dave Grohl – former drummer for Nirvana and front man for Foo Fighters – on drums in the video (that’s a video cap from the “No One Knows” music video above). 
 
(December 2012)
 
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While bandleader Kurt Cobain wrote most of their music, the first single by grunge pioneers Nirvana was a fairly obscure Shocking Blue song called “Love Buzz”.  Their version of this Robbie van Leeuwen song (Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” only used the first verse and chorus) is included on the band’s little-known 1989 debut album, Bleach.  Cobain often varied the spelling of his name over the years; on this album, he is credited as “Kurdt Kobain”. 

 
(April 2013)
 
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L7 started out as a heavy metal band but had punk rock influences also.  The band’s third album, Bricks Are Heavy came out in 1992 about six months after Nirvana’s Nevermind album became a massive hit; as a result, L7 became identified with the grunge movement that Nirvana launched.  

 

(December 2013)

 

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Patti Smith suffered a series of losses in quick succession beginning with the death in November 1994 of her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, followed by the unexpected death of her brother Todd Smith – her band’s keyboard player Richard Sohl and her early love Robert Mapplethorpe had died four and five years earlier.  She reemerged from that pain more visible than ever; her next album, Gone Again (1996) was perhaps her most self-assured effort and included a tribute to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, “About a Boy”.  The final track is a heartbreaking tribute to her late husband, “Farewell Reel”. 

 

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What brought Tori Amos early attention was an even sparer performance of a true story:  an a capella rendition of her being raped by an acquaintance, and what was going through her head during the ordeal.  The song, “Me and a Gun” was the title song on an EP called Me and a Gun; it is also included on her first solo album, Little Earthquakes (1992).  Her slow-tempoed cover of the Nirvana hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” later became a tribute to Kurt Cobain following his death. 

 

(February 2014)

 

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Nirvana – quite simply one of the best rock bands of the past quarter century – is one of the better known in this list of the Best Theological Band Names by Man in the Woods and the only one that does not have a direct Christian connection.  Nirvana is somewhat analogous to Heaven in the Buddhist and Hindu religions, but just barely. 

 

(October 2014)

 

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Someone put together a backstory for the characters in the Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do!.  Some of the people were entirely made-up; presumably those are the ones who are actually in the film.  Others are famous to one degree or another:  Bob Dylan, Suzanne Pleshette, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats, Timi Yuro.  

 

And then they threw Linda Pierre King into the mix – and that just isn’t playing fair.  Neither one of the CD’s that I have provides any information to speak of about her.  The liner notes in one of them describe her as a quintessential hippie folksinger, and the small picture that is included bears that out.  Now anyone trying to ferret out information about Linda Pierre King has to get past all of the made-up story line about her hanging out in a Greenwich Village club called Beanie’s something-or-other, and then meeting and marrying the so-called King of Barber Shop. 

 

(April 2015/2)

 

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The Sonics are often cited as being among the earliest garage rock bands, having formed in 1960 in Tacoma, Washington with a raw, energetic sound from the get-go. They were a key part of the Pacific Northwest scene that also included the Wailers (not Bob Marley’s band) and Paul Revere and the Raiders; in later years, this part of the country was renowned for the grunge scene of Nirvana and others and the riot grrrl scene of Sleater-Kinney and others.
 
(December 2016)
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I identified Green Day with the burgeoning alternative rock scene of that era; Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind had come out about 2½ years earlier, but there were plenty of bands and artists that I had been digging from well back in the 1980’s, many that I found out about via the late-night MTV program 120 Minutes.  
(June 2017)
Last edited: March 22, 2021