Nirvana for Christmas #1 Campaign

My Brother works for William Hill, the betting company, and informs me that they're giving out even odds on Nirvana securing the #1 spot this Christmas, thanks to a facebook campaign to see them take the spot over Justin Bieber, and this year's X-Factor winner. In response, I just feel there is one question I should probably ask...


DO ANY OF YOU RETARDS EVEN FUCKING LIKE NIRVANA?


It's an honest question - Nirvana was never about becoming popular, or making money, and they sure as hell wouldn't be proud to make it to the Christmas #1 spot. In fact, this campaign seems to stand for everything the band despised. And just to top it all off, you know which song the campaign is calling for people to buy?





That's right, Smells Like Teen Spirit. If you're a regular, you'll recall my rantings against the song back in February last year. If you're not a regular, allow me to recant a couple of facts that every casual nirvana fan knows:


Nirvana's first album, Bleach, was not overly successful. For Nevermind, they decided to go in a slightly different direction, with a proper producer and decent mixing. Smells Like Teen Spirit itself was written as Kurt's version of a Pixie's song, with strong overtones of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" thrown in to boot. Kurt wrote it as a popular song - essentially, he wrote the song as a joke, to reflect on the direction the new album was taking. Smells Like Teen Spirit was an example of the extreme he was worried they were being pushed towards with their new sound and rising popularity, and wrote the song, in essence, as an act of rebellion. In effect, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was for 'Nevermind' what 'The Real Slim Shady' was for 'The Marshal Mathers LP'. It was an overly pop-sounding and catchy track, designed to make fun of the genre, and the group's steady path towards it. Nirvana was a raw grunge band, and found themselves falling into the mainstream world of pop music, so fought back with a parody of what they thought of pop. Cobain is known to have despised being made to play the song at live shows, because he hated the fact that Nirvana was being remembered as 'The Band who made that catchy track, Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Though, presumably not as much as David Bowie hated having kids come up to him and say how much they loved the fact he did a cover of a Nirvana song...



Pictured: The Exact look Bowie gave to anyone who said this. Don't even ask what happened to the people who complimented Dylan on his cover of a Guns 'N' Roses song...


So, essentially, encouraging people to buy 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' this Christmas is the biggest "Fuck You" we could give to Kurt Cobain's corpse, short of Courtney Love making a movie of his life with Rob Schneider in the lead role...



Rape Me, my friend...


Nirvana is not the type of band who would want a number 1, nor were they the type of group who would want to win some stupid race like this. But even if they were, they sure as shit wouldn't want 'Smells Like teen Spirit' to be the song everyone bought. Now, I have no idea what Dave Grohl's opinion on the song was, but i know that both Cobain and Novoselic hated it. Why not pick a Nirvana song the group were actually proud of? My vote would be on 'Heart-Shaped Box', but since it's not an overly catchy song, why not 'Come As You Are'? or 'Lithium'? All famous, instantly recognisable songs, but also songs the band actually liked and were proud of. And why stop at Nirvana? Since the band wouldn't have wanted to make it Christmas #1 anyway, why not buy another track from and early 90s grunge band? Hell, why not:






Better yet, why even pick a grunge band? Why not pick a song from an era where getting to the top of the charts wasn't considered a bad thing? Why shit in the faces of great musicians, when others would consider seeing their song reach #1 a great triumph? You know what I think we need to all need to buy to try and get to Christmas #1 this year?



See, it's funny because Kris Novoselic is Croatian...



Voice



Whilst we're on the subject, just a slight redaction I wish to make. upon viewing A Serbian Film for a second time, i realize that, what I had thought was meant to be a twist, and believed to be overly-predictable, was in fact always supposed to be obvious, and was not predictable, but inevitable. I had gone into A Serbian Film expecting a Horror Film along the lines of Saw, and so picked up on the similarities without judging the film on its own merrit. For this, I apologize. The movie is actually better than I gave it credit for, and now I'm worried I'll have to rewatch buffy the Vampire Slayer in case that's actually decent in some way I hadn't noticed before.


Actually, fuck that. that movie was shit.

Smells Like Teen Spirit (Text)

Recently reading “The Story of You Know Who”, a graphic novel by Garth Ennis that has absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter or Lord Voldemort (having come out prior to the Philosopher’s Stone), I was surprised by one specific line of dialogue. The story is about the run up to the attempted suicide of a teenage boy following Kurt Cobain’s death, and the protagonist is a massive Nirvana fan. However, in the scene where he is explaining his love for the band, the song he references is the group’s biggest hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Smells Like Teen Spirit is the song that most people remember Nirvana for - Because it’s catchy. I remember watching Saturday morning kids TV, and the opening instrumentals of the song were used as an introduction to the studio show that came on right after the cartoons. I’ve heard people say that the song captured the feelings of an entire generation, and that it is the most true reflection of the early 90s youth culture to have ever been recorded. But is it?

I remember reading one writer’s outrage at Eric Clapton winning the Grammy in 1992 for the acoustic version of Layla, stating that Smells Like Teen Spirit was the superior song. However, as a fan of both Clapton and Nirvana, I have to respectfully disagree. Whilst it’s true that I was too young at the time to remember the impact of Nirvana, I have become somewhat of a fan in later life, and therefore feel qualified to make statements regarding this topic.

You see, the truth about “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is that even Cobain himself wasn’t that impressed with the song. Now, you may be thinking “so what? Kafka asked for all his works to be burned right before his death because he thought they were awful and never wanted them to be read”, or at least you will be if you were trying to think of another great artist who hated their own works and have “The Trial” sitting across the room from you. If you’ve got a boxset of “The X-Files” on your DVD shelf, you’re probably thinking the same about Darren Morgan. But the fact is; Kurt wrote the song to be popular. He didn’t write it because he wanted to express himself, or because it was a topic that was important to him. He wrote the song so that people would buy it. And that’s the problem with it.

Most fans will agree that what makes Nirvana great is that Kurt et al seem to be expressing real feelings – real pain, real confusion, real suffering – and it shows. Smells Like Teen Spirit, however, was nothing more than Cobain’s attempt to write a Pixies’ song. Now, I have nothing against The Pixies – I even mentioned my passion for “Here Comes Your Man” in a previous post. Nor do I have a problem with Smells Like Teen Spirit as a song. It’s well written, well performed, and it’s catchy as hell. What I do have a problem with is Smells Like Teen Spirit as a Nirvana song. Compare it to some of their other songs. Not even more obscure ones like “Endless Nameless”, but tracks off their hits album – even the other catchy pop-like songs they wrote are a lot darker in tone, and more honest sounding: Sliver, Lithium, Come as You Are. Sure, they’re similar in tone and pace to Smells Like Teen Spirit (Lithium and Come As You Are having been on the album “Nevermind” too), but there’s more honesty behind them. Then compare these tracks to the ones that appeared on In Utero – Heart Shaped Box, Pennyroyal Tea, Rape Me – these tracks are far softer, more poetic, and it is this album which I feel truly reflects Kurt’s feelings. They were already famous at the time of recording, and had long ago stopped caring about their image – to me, if you want to pin a song to the group, make it one of these. It is common knowledge that the group listed both the song and video for Heart Shaped Box as being one of their greatest achievements, and personally I’m a big fan of Pennyroyal Tea, where Cobain’s love of poets such as Leonard Cohen clearly shows through, whilst at the same time, the song still retains the dark feeling of Nirvana’s older tracks.

Now, I accept that since In Utero was Nirvana’s last studio album, perhaps it wouldn’t have been appropriate to list one of the songs on it as the reason the character from “The Story of you Know Who” was so into Nirvana – but I just wanted to make the point that Nirvana is not “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and pretty well any other track would have been more appropriate. If the character lists Smells Like Teen Spirit as being the great track that really changed who Nirvana were for him, then he doesn’t strike me as a guy who actually cared for the content of the songs, and was just going along with the flow. I guess what I’m trying to say is – I doubt any of the 68 people who committed suicide after Cobain’s death, as the story depicts, would have listed Smells Like Teen Spirit as their favourite Nirvana song.

As for Smells Like Teen Spirit winning the grammy over “Layla”, I find it hard to believe Cobain would have even wanted the award had they won it. Now, I hate posers far more than the next guy. An old Girlfriend (as in Ex-Girlfriend, she’s younger than me) once mentioned how cool she thought the Artic Monkeys were for refusing to take an award, and I just thought “What posers, trying to act all Rock ‘N’ Roll as though that makes them cool. Losers”. But with Cobain, it was just the guy he was. He didn’t care for his image, and he didn’t care for his fans. I’m glad Clapton won the award, simply because I feel he probably appreciated it more than Kurt would have. And for the Gentleman arguing a good 14-15 years after Cobain’s death that he should have won the Grammy, I feel I should quote Kurt’s response to over-zealous fan letters from the year before he died.

“Why Don’t they get a life and stop worshiping me?”

He’s dead, man – get over it. Clapton’s awesome.