For Dirty Kurdt

20 years ago today my life changed forever.  No other event in pop culture history has even come close to affecting me in the way that Kurt Cobain’s death did.  I came home from school and almost immediately after got a call from my friend Ben.  He says I should turn on MTV.  I did so and it didn’t take long for my heart to completely sink.

I was 12 years old and Nirvana had a pretty strong grip on me.  One of the more surreal aspects of this moment in time is the fact that I was about two chapters into Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana…which is kind of a big deal considering that back then I probably thought reading big books was typically “stupid” or something trite like that.  The news combined with my devotion to the band wrecked my world.  I clearly remember crying like a baby in the shower.  At the time I was grounded for shoplifting, but the punishment was lifted so I could go mourn with the few friends who would “understand”.

Let’s back up for a moment.  When I was 9 (I’ve been obsessive about music for a long time, y’all) an MTV VJ sporting her typical “alternative” appearance simply known as Duff introduced the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.  Like many bands I got heavily into, I initially thought the song sucked total balls.  It’s too simplistic and that guy’s singing sounds like dogshit.  My favorite band at the time was Guns n Roses, a band that Nirvana was the very antithesis of.  It wasn’t until their third single off Nevermind, “Lithium”, dropped that I began to get it.  I picked up a copy of said record soon thereafter and a lifelong fan was born.

Fast forward over a year to the fall of ’93, a time that was the beginning of my mall rat phase in middle school, I stopped in at Tape World to pick out a CD to take home.  And there in the new section only holding enough money to buy one disc was a choice to be made: Nirvana In Utero or GNR’s The Spaghetti Incident.  A more musically experienced fan of both bands could make a simple argument in Nirvana’s favor.  At least if nothing else the GNR album was just a bunch of cover songs (and not all of them did they do so well either).  A year or two before GNR would have been the easy choice.  But not on this day: I went for In Utero and my Nirvana fandom reached a new level.

Then, on April 8, 1994, they found Kurt’s body.  Nothing more was to be done by a great whose work countless fans like myself had fallen head over heels for.  We suddenly had nowhere to go but backwards into Nirvana’s catalog.  I had never heard Bleach or Incesticide at that point.  It didn’t take me very long to get my hands on those albums and that was when I finally experienced Nirvana in their more raw form.  Then I wanted to hear everything Nirvana had ever done: b-sides on single releases, tracks on compilations, live sets, them tuning their guitars at practice…I didn’t fucking care what it was, I wanted to hear it all!

But at a point I realized there was only so much Nirvana out there (keep in mind this is before the box set or even the billions of Outcesticide bootleg volumes that exist).  It was time to dig into Nirvana’s influences and the bands Kurt kept mentioning in Come As You Are.  Sonic Youth became my fave band soon thereafter and they still hold that honor.  I have no one but Kurt to thank for that.  Other bands followed: the Melvins, Black Flag, Germs, Babes In Toyland, Scratch Acid, Flipper, Mudhoney, Bikini Kill, etc.  I sought these bands out simply because I knew Kurt liked them.  He set the bar.

And Kurt’s influence on early teenage me was more than just what music I listened to.  He had his head on his shoulders; he wasn’t some dickhead rock star guy.  He was as real as could be.  He was very vocal about gender equality and standing up against sexual violence.  He was an ally of homosexuals, even once stating that he wished he was gay just to piss off homophobes.  He loved standing up for the little guy and loved pissing off assholes that deserved it.  Growing up in a fairly backwoods area in northeast TN where kids I went to school with still used words like “nigger” frequently, Kurt’s stances were a refreshing influence.  It’s nice to have someone to help you cut through the ignorance growing up.

From there I went my own path, eventually embracing the punk ethos that shaped me further.  But even since those days I can still say Nirvana has been a larger influence on me than any other band that has ever existed.  And what’s funny is, while I often have opinions not of the norm, I know there are thousands upon thousands of other people who can make the exact same statement.  In fact, this is one of the last times that I could legitimately relate to a popular rock band.  There’s a good chance that will never happen again…for any of us.

Now I leave you with a “gift”.  Here’s an early pre-Bleach show I found when looking to see if I could find a live version of my favorite Nirvana song, “Aero Zeppelin”, which happens to be included in this set.  The show takes place in the town of Hoquiam, WA (fun fact: the town’s name translates to “hungry for wood”…insert Beavis & Butt-Head laughter here), a neighboring town of Aberdeen (Nirvana’s place of origin).  There are several songs in the set that have rarely been heard in their live form.

A big reason I wanted to share this show is because it’s often very sloppy and there are tons of technical difficulties plaguing the set.  Every musician in every punk band or perhaps even every rock band can surely relate.  Kinda crazy to think that the band you see here ended being the kind of band that sold millions a mere 3-4 years later eh?  But it’s still great, even if the footage is also a bit hard to watch (you know what else is kinda hard to watch?  Kurt sporting that pony tail…egads!  However, kudos to Krist and his tighty whitey styles.).

Note: the video footage of the show cuts off where there’s still about 20 minutes left of the set.  Sadly I couldn’t find a more complete version on video but here’s the complete audio source as a consolation prize.

Dirty Kurdt: thank you, for everything.