not much more to be said; except...
January 11, 1992: Nirvana's Nevermind reached number one on the US Billboard album charts, replacing Michael Jackson's Dangerous. "...that was the revolutionary tipping point": Cobain's goal for the 1990s "to debase every known form of pop music" had happened.
the spirit of grunge: a retrospective from radio 4. miranda sawyer examines a significant slice of GenX history on this side of the Atlantic - the impact of the commodified and co-opted grunge music and aesthetic. shame it's only half on hour long as it's an astute critique.
(friday 8 april, 1994)
...
And now you are dead.
I was in San Fransisco, driving up the 101 past Candlestick Park when the news came over the radio, LIVE 105 - the news that you had shot yourself.
A few minutes later I was in the city and I pulled the car over and tried to figure out what I felt.
I had never asked you to make me care about you, but it happened - against the hype, against the odds - and now you are in my imagination forever.
And I figure you're in heaven, too. But how, exactly does it help you now, to know that you, too, as it is said, were once adored?
D.
- extract from Letter to Kurt Cobain, in Polaroids From The Dead,
by Douglas Coupland (1996)
with the lights out, it's less dangerous
LB
