Nirvana

[Oskar]

Well, I have to say that I never paid much attention to Nirvana when they were big, big, big. And even less attention to them after Cobain died. But recently I've heard a number of Nirvana tunes on the radio and I have to say they were a good band. Interesting and different with some pretty melodic tunes. Found myself listening closely to the arrangements and production and both were pretty top notch. Clever mixing of Cobain's voice, and the guitar parts, while not stellar or flashy, certainly filled the role. Overall, a great band in my opinion.
I dunno, maybe I'm just getting older or something but I feel like I found a new band to learn about. Anyone here Nirvana fans?

[J-man]

I'm a Nirvana fan, Kurt was a very talented songwriter, and a great frontman. I know Nirvana get put down a lot, but they are a one of those bands where what is normally accepted as talent is irrelevant, because the combination of it all just worked so well.

Oh and Dave Grohl is an insanely good drummer. 8)

[neocaster]

Originally Posted by J-man

Oh and Dave Grohl is an insanely good drummer. 8)

I agree with all of that, J-Man. I loved Nirvana. It was just good rock music is all. It had lots of my generation's soul in it. I gotta take the Grohl comment a step further though and say that he's an insanely good musician.

[jonzer]

I love Nirvana. I love The Foo Fighters. Grohl is a great musician and an awesome drummer.

If you're a real Nirvana fan you gotta get the box set. It includes a lot of solo acoustic stuff and demos with different lyrics and some different changes. It's an awesome set. It even includes one of Grohl's songs, "marigold".

I think Nirvana's unplugged is what really made me an acoustic guy....and now everything I write is written on acoustic before it gets to my band and the electrics and the amps. The unplugged is great stuff.

Plus, shortly before Cobain died his new favorite guitar was a telecaster.

[Blazer]

I guess you can call Kurt Cobain the Syd Barret of the nineties. And the Foo Fighters the Dave Gilmour version of Floyd of the nineties.

Seriously, I have been a Nirvana fan since day one, and one of my very recent comics I drew was about people like Kurt Cobain. It is a fan comic of the former MTV cartoon Daria, Daria and her friend Jane were two outcasts in the highschool they attended, the kind of kids who found their voice in Nirvana's music.

Here it is.

[DlxNashvilleLuvr]

Nirvana stunk. The masses have been fooled by tons of MTV overplay.

It's just my opinion, but I could be right.

[Blazer]

Originally Posted by jonzer

If you're a real Nirvana fan you gotta get the box set. It includes a lot of solo acoustic stuff and demos with different lyrics and some different changes. It's an awesome set. It even includes one of Grohl's songs, "marigold".

In my opinion their cover of "Seasons in the sun" was Kurt's goodbye, not "Where did you sleep last night"

Originally Posted by jonzer

I think Nirvana's unplugged is what really made me an acoustic guy....and now everything I write is written on acoustic before it gets to my band and the electrics and the amps. The unplugged is great stuff.

I always wondered why MTV never broadcasted "Oh me" when airing that concert, "Oh me" was by far the ost beautiful song they played. (certainly when compared to the original Meat Puppets version)

[Blazer]

Originally Posted by DlxNashvilleLuvr

Nirvana stunk. The masses have been fooled by tons of MTV overplay.

It's just my opinion, but I could be right.

Okay then, let's pretend that Nirvana's Album "Nevermind" never got as big as it did. That would have meant that boybands like The New Kids on the Block still would have been around.

Frankly, that would stink even more.

[DlxNashvilleLuvr]

Hmm...Brittney Spears, Hillary Duff, Jessica Simpson and her much less talented sibling whatsername are all still at the top of the charts. The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync have been hits since Nirvana. Jon Bon Jovi is also still upright, above ground and filling stadiums and making millions. So I guess if Kurt's mission was to clobber all those people he died in vain.

My true taste is `70's rock like Led Zeppelin, the Who, Aerosmith, the Allmans, etc, but even Motley Crue was 10 times better than Nirvana. All I could hear was weak, groany singing, a dull, repetitive riff and nonsensical lyrics. Poor guitar tone, too.

But like I say, it's my opinion.

[J-man]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TBJuuouAGPk

A great rendition of Where did you sleep last night here.


I can get why people don't like Nirvana, they're the sort of band you either love or hate, I guess Dlxnashvilleluvr hates them.

[fendercii]

Originally Posted by Blazer

Okay then, let's pretend that Nirvana's Album "Nevermind" never got as big as it did. That would have meant that boybands like The New Kids on the Block still would have been around.

Frankly, that would stink even more.

He said it's his opinion, don't bother him about it.

I liked Nirvana a lot when I was younger but then I started listening to RATM, Husker Du, and Fugazi so I barely do anymore.

[jonzer]

I see people talk about bands here all the time and I'm not so inclined to go in and bash 'em. I might say something if I think there's something to add. People on the internet who don't like Nirvana act as if it's a campaign to bash 'em.

I respect classic rock from the 70's though I got really tired of it. I liked the 80's, when I was in the 80's but that stuff wasn't ever honest. That's what changed with Nirvana and the some of the others from Seattle. It wasn't about grunge. It was about something that was much deeper than the current offerings of hair metal. It was a step away from punk, a bit more commercial but just as honest and angry, or depressed. Not everything had to be about how big your weiner was or how many chicks you bagged. There was something underneath all that and Nirvana gave it to an audience that was starving for it.

The goal wasn't to kill of hair metal or synchronized boy band pop. That stuff will never die as there will always be an audience without taste....as that type of audience grows up, the group fades away and is replaced by another sugar coated pop act.

If you didn't like his guitar tone, I respect that. To say it was repetitive, then I don't think you were listening. But just like you can't make us Nirvana fans stop liking good music, we can't make you start listening.

[fendercii]

Originally Posted by jonzer

To say it was repetitive, then I don't think you were listening. But just like you can't make us Nirvana fans stop liking good music, we can't make you start listening.

So that makes what we listen to bad? Just because we don't like repetitive garbage? Makes no sense to me :? .

[zombywoof]

Originally Posted by Blazer

I guess you can call Kurt Cobain the Syd Barret of the nineties.

I would not go that far.
No, I am not a fan but I do appreciate the fact that they managed to kill off all those puffy hair bands with the spandex pants posing.

[Aen]

Originally Posted by neocaster

I agree with all of that, J-Man. I loved Nirvana. It was just good rock music is all. It had lots of my generation's soul in it. I gotta take the Grohl comment a step further though and say that he's an insanely good musician.

Grohl also pounded out most of the drums for the most recent Nine Inch Nails record, which is a gem IMHO.\

Did you know that Kurt Cobain got a telecaster shortly before he offed himself, and after a pickup change it was his new favorite?

Originally Posted by fendercii

So that makes what we listen to bad? Just because we don't like repetitive garbage? Makes no sense to me :? .

All music is repetetive, that's what makes it a pattern. To a guy like me, who can hardly hear the lyrics to songs due to my intense diagnosis of production and instrumental technique, NIrvana never osunded repetetive.

Plus, if a song wasn't repetetive, you'd call it noise....

hey, that gives me an idea...

[J-man]

Originally Posted by Aen

Grohl also pounded out most of the drums for the most recent Nine Inch Nails record, which is a gem IMHO.\

Did you know that Kurt Cobain got a telecaster shortly before he offed himself, and after a pickup change it was his new favorite?

All music is repetetive, that's what makes it a pattern. To a guy like me, who can hardly hear the lyrics to songs due to my intense diagnosis of production and instrumental technique, NIrvana never osunded repetetive.

Plus, if a song wasn't repetetive, you'd call it noise....

hey, that gives me an idea...

Dave Grohl also has done some amazing drumming for QOTSA on the Songs For The Deaf album aswell as the tour for that album, and his metal project with famous guest vocalists, including Motorhead's Lemmy, Probot, is equally as impressive.

Krist has remained in the shadows a bit, but as far as I know still has his own projects going on.

And Courtney, well, just check out the gossip mags for the latest on her. :)

[fendercii]

Originally Posted by Aen

Grohl also pounded out most of the drums for the most recent Nine Inch Nails record, which is a gem IMHO.\

Did you know that Kurt Cobain got a telecaster shortly before he offed himself, and after a pickup change it was his new favorite?

All music is repetetive, that's what makes it a pattern. To a guy like me, who can hardly hear the lyrics to songs due to my intense diagnosis of production and instrumental technique, NIrvana never osunded repetetive.

Plus, if a song wasn't repetetive, you'd call it noise....

hey, that gives me an idea...

Ehh... I may have worded that wrong, horribly really. I was just annoyed by what he said really.

Oh yeah... Aen do you go to the JS boards?

[TG]

I'm not of an age where Nirvana meant anything to me when they were going. My teen angst years were the '70s.

But when I listen to their music now I am reminded of the music of John Lennon.
How?
Lennon basically didn't know what he was doing. He had trouble tuning a guitar. Yet he produced songs with classic melodies and complicated timings which give even trained orchestral musicians trouble. He didn't 'figure things out'....he heard it all in his head and 'learned' how to play it. Mozart worked the same way. It's as though they were a sort of channel for the music. And both Mozart and Lennon could be very repetitive, and sometimes even simplistic under what only sounded complicated. Several famous Lennon songs are actually variations of 3 Blind Mice, and some of Mozarts compositions are based around simple children's ditties too. But what they did with those simple tunes...instinctively...was magic.


I think that Kurt Kobain was the same. He had a knack for putting notes where other musicians wouldn't consider with those chord patterns. I think that he was a natural and instinctive songwriter in spite of the grunge attitude and image thing. And he had the same way of using simplicity, repetition and inventiveness as Lennon and Mozart and, like them, he didn't 'work' at it...it just happenned. That's why his stuff gets under the skin of so many people. It wasn't just MTV and marketing.

And, believe it or not...I hear a similar thing going on with Eminem. I loathe 'rap' and the whole hyped-up angry urban image thing, but that guy has a gift for melody and timing. He'd be a great 'conventional' musician and songwriter.


(Bet you all never thought you'd ever hear someone comparing Eminem and Kobain to Mozart. :) )

[Oskar]

while I don't completely agree with this it makes some sense. Nirvana, in my opinion, is really bred from an emotional foundation. I'm not saying that is necessarily good or bad, but rather than sitting down and churning out a coookie cutter song specificially tailored to hit the commercial market (much of today's country & is like that, as is a good proportion of rock), they just created music and it created a life of its own. The Beatles took a similar approach to some of their music, and Lennon certainly was one who wrote pretty simplistic tunes.
As far dismissing a song because it's repetitive is concerned, well, if that's your criteria you're discounting some of the most impressive songs and melodies ever created... Amazing Grace comes to mind.

[TG]

Did you know that Amazing Grace was written by an ex-captain of a slave ship?

[Oskar]

always thought it was that prolific writer of tunes: Anonymous

[TheGoodTexan]

I remember when I was in 10th grade....circa 1988. I was really into Hendrix. The "weird guy" in class gave me a copy of a band that no one had heard of.....Soundgarden: Screaming Life. I LOVED THAT ALBUM. It was so different from anything else that was out at the time.

I tried to turn my friends on to it, but they were too busy learning GnR and Motley Crue licks.

So I really started paying attention to the Seattle music scene and pretty much giving anything out of that area a chance.

Fast forward to August 1991. Pearl Jam: Ten was released. I bought it on street date and began learning every song off of it. Again, I tried to turn my friends on to it, but no one cared.

September 1991, Nirvana: Nevermind was released. I bought it on street date too, becuase I already had their first album Bleach, and was a fan of the music. Again, no one cared.

A few months later, the videos for Alive and Smells Like Teen Spirit went into heavy rotation on MTV and all of the sudden all of my friends were telling me about these bands! I'm like, yeah dude, remember when I .....

But it was all cool. I already had the Pearl Jam album learned by the summer of 1992, so I was teaching the licks to all my friends....which were really just rehased Hendrix licks to begin with.

By the way, that weird guy in class in 10th grade....he was "weird" because he wore Doc Martin boots and plaid shirts. :) Really.