I wrote this for a young friend of mine who recently discovered Nirvana and is ashamed to be associated with the generation that brought us Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne. I dediacte this to you, you know who you are. So here:
Well, here's the way it is. There's never going to be another Kurt Cobain that comes along and changes the face of rock music for this generation because - he's not the only thing that is dead. On the heels of grunge, the music labels took the last thing left and made it corporate which is really the very thing that made the mainstream success of Nirvana possible anyway. It was no accident, and Kurt knew that just as much as anyone else. Now, people try to do new innovative things but "alternative" music has become anything but alternative and the sub-genres are so far and widespread that it has all become so absurd and ridiculous that we can't turn back.
After grunge we had a short ride with Brit Pop, where the media put over bands like Oasis and Blur and fueled that rivalry to the bitter end in an attempt to make alternative music fun again. But even Brit Pop wasn't too impressive in terms of standing for somehting anti-establishment, and it certainly wasn't anti-mainstream. So what happnened after Brit Pop? Nothing. Maybe a short lived Girl Power phase that involved everything from the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child to Elastica and Hole to Sarah Mclaughlin and Sinead O'Connor and Ani DiFranco. But really, nothing. None of that was about to "save" music.
Some people got smart and started to check out turntables and some kids (and even adults) started figuring out what was happening in Europe and started wearing colourful clothes and called themselves candy ravers and DJ culture became huge. Even U2 tried it, but ultimately the people with rock and roll in their souls couldn't accept that hip hop and rave music was more alternative than alternative. Because they still wanted guitars and they wanted to rock out, and that was fair enough. That *IS* fair enough, but what is we think is going to happen? In the 80s, New Wave was possible because casio keyboards were invented and that made new sounds possible. So, what did we get in the late 90s? We got two really weird Radiohead albums that tried *TOO* hard to be alternative. We get art for the sake or art and crap for the sake of crap.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
The only time I ever saw Nirvana live was at a club in Montreal. It was a weeknight, and I had to work the next morning, I was grumpy, and told the friend who invited me to see this band I didn't really want to see another Seattle knockoff Black Sabbath hair band (grunge not being invented in those days, though I do have a Mother Love Bone t-shirt).
Sure enough they were just another Seattle Black Sabbath hair band so I went home after three "tunes". And you know what, I still think they suck. But a teevee show with Kurt 'n' Courtney would be pure gold.
Now Blue Oyster Cult, there's a band.
2 - jason
Or better yet, Sid n Nancy
3 - Jim Carruthers
Sid and Nancy was, after all, the inspiration for Spike and Drusilla.
4 - Rob
Kurt Cobain was like that kid in high school who really loved a little-known band and talked about them, but as soon as they became popular, he couldn't stand them anymore, and disparaged all their new fans. The trouble was, it was his band that it happened to.
I loved "Nevermind", it came along at a time when radio needed songs you'd turn up when they came on.
It was sad that Cobain took his own life, but I doubt think the music world lost all that much.
5 - Veronica
People now a days are too into hip-hop for there to be any space for good rock on the radio. Let's face it *good* rock, is dead. All we have now is Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, and if you want a hardcore chick to look up to you have Avril Lavigne.
People don't like to hear the raw truth, the like to hear the happy parts because life is so hypocritical that they need something fake in it to make themselves happy. That's the meaning of this generation: fake happyness. No one wants to turn on the radio and hear someone with (in their opinion) senseless lyrics. It's almost like poetry, most people don't understand it, so why bother to read it? If it's loud it's kinda scary so I don't want to listen to it because people will think I'm crazy.
But I do have faith that in a couple of years, not so close, there will be another band that will change rock history and if they are women, maybe they'll even change the view of how women can't rock or be remembered in rock history.
All in all, these shitty so-called artists will be forgotten.
6 - R.P.
I know fuck all you see now are a bunch of kid who can't have there own opinions and you go with the flow for fame and cash. All you see now is a music industry owned by CORPORATE BULLSHITTERS. the early nineties where the best i can actually relate to it.