This is one of those posts I’ve had rattling around my head for a little while and wanted/needed to expunge to see where the writing down of it all might take me. Wanton self-gratification, in other words.

One of the recent threads about Nirvana got me thinking. I know they’re a marmite band, and a lot of people on here don’t greatly care for them. I know that I very much did and do. A lot of that’s because of the records they made, the noise they created. But – quite unusually for me – part of it is also about one of the people who made that noise.

A million words have been spilled by now on Kurt Cobain, rest his soul. Death has frozen him in carbonite, and made him far more a cartoon than an actual human being. There probably isn’t much more one can usefully say about the man. And yet, here I am with a head full of things I want to say, and half an hour to write them down.

I was 13 when Nevermind was released, and I remember vividly my first true contact with Nirvana. I hadn’t yet discovered the music » Continue Reading.