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Nirvana - 15 Classic Songs

The Voice of a Lost Generation returns - Great Music for Young Doomsters - The Generation "X" has moved up towards Wall Street and into the Dot Com business - And if you did Not, there will always be the Sweet Memories

Tekst: Xander van Aart

Publicatiedatum: 02 december 2002

It was a cold and vile February morning, and it was snowing as we rode our bikes to school for another boring day, later ditching the last few classes in order to smoke dope and drink warm beers and enjoy an early weekend. We would always ditch school on Friday afternoons because we liked smoking grass and listening to music and tuning in to that fantastic vortex that escapism is. There was ice on the streets and the sun was hiding behind thick, gray clouds. Vincent was talking in a very unusual way: He fired the words from his lips like a machine gun on full automatic. A rapid blast of positive and cheerful sentences, his eyes filled with excitement. He was talking about a song he heard late the night before, on the radio, called 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' He explained that those guys were from Seattle and that they had the usage to tear apart their whole backline after each song. That sounded very exciting, but I didn't know what to think of them when Vincent put on the record he was talking about a few days later. I liked it, but I didn't really understood what the buzz was all about. Suddenly, everybody was talking about Nirvana, and friends would wear those damn "smiley" T-shirts, and people were copying the Nevermind album like crazies on doubtful cassette-tapes, and word spread 'round faster than that bullet left the barrel of Kurt Cobain's Remington shotgun barely four years later.

Looking back on that cool vibe that Nirvana begot in the beginning of their period of glory, I finally understand where the buzz came from. It came from the deepest and darkest and most unexpected corner of the underground and it was cracking in order to change the world forever by using old Beatles melodies, a punk rock attitude, and some odd Pixies and Black Flag references. It was loud and wild and different and, therefore, it was the voice of a new generation. A generation of confused teens who prayed to the unctuous music and adored the singer and songwriter, Kurt Cobain. It was the constant struggle for full collaboration between his mind, his body, and the outside world that still gives everybody the creeps, and that is the "realness" aspect in Nirvana's music. Those lyrics weren't a lie. Some of them were weird and creepy, but after that strange April afternoon in 1994, we knew they were as real as can be. His final performance in April of 1994 even added something more mystic to the already dim character of the music. We could depend on those lyrics. We could really hold on to those verses when times were rough, and lose our aggression in the loud and raw choruses whenever we felt alone or misunderstood or when we felt we didn't connect with the system or couldn't communicate with the outside world. All we had to do was put on the Nevermind album and we would hear a friend — or at least someone who understood how we felt.

Nevermind would eventually become the cornerstone of my generation, the Generation X. But around the time it came out we didn't have a whole counterculture standing behind us. A counterculture consisting of unanimous young people that wanted to see what else life had to offer besides the things that were going on around their houses: divorces, suicides, unemployment, and a gray future behind closed curtains. We were not like the kids of the Hashbury generation, seeking love and peace and political changes, who would come together protesting for better opportunities in life and unity on a diet of LSD, flowers, and music, believing that they could really change the world like some sort of Flower Power Jesus cult or Charles Manson's conviction to be God. No, our situation was much different. We were just individuals and we were bored and laughed at and rejected, and, hell, we just didn't have the slightest idea of how to handle that because we didn't have anything to fall back onto. All the signs of a generation lost were there. We had the hardest time searching for something to fall back onto and our parents and teachers wouldn't understand. We thought Nirvana was the answer, and with them around we felt connected, and you could feel some kind of electric buzz of recognition when you saw somebody walking on the street wearing army boots and greasy shirts. But we were wrong. The sudden death of The High Priest of Grunge who blew his own head off, left us all behind in despair.

Look what happened to us eventually eleven years later. We, the followers of Nirvana who started jerking holes in our expensive jeans and suddenly stopped washing our hair on a regular basis. The ones who adored posters of Kurt Cobain sticking a gun in his mouth. That's my generation. We are in our twenties now. Some of us still hang on to that legendary and eternal idol called Kurt Cobain and are still trying to make a decent living ourselves. Some of us work as carpenters, or clean pools at local hotels, or manifest ourselves in other ways, serving society; but this group are still considered losers to civilized humans of the upper class. And most of that loser group are married now. They found the love of their lives and now live in quiet and shallow suburbs, where everybody minds their own business and where gossip is considered more important than actual facts — or even small talk. They earn a lot of money and own two cars and have to fight for some leisure time due to agendas thicker than their wallets. Some actually have children, while they might have been children themselves when they heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the first time. Yes, this may sound dramatic and hideous, but remember that, of all stories, the truth is the ugliest one of them all.

We are adults now and we have our own lives and careers and most of us are through puberty and don't need heroes anymore. We can look back on a very uncertain and difficult time in history when music was our special friend and insecurity was our reality. A time in which we indeed would just ditch school and steal beers and smoke dope, listening to the pains of that frustrated man, and feel confused and sad and ignored, and sometimes it would feel like we were living on a whole different planet. We have eventually spread our wings and pounced upon life and learned to survive struggles and mean times and hunger, and we made it all the way up the social ladder. Or at least the strong ones did. All of us who are sitting in Wall Street or other important places now are laughing their asses off over the weak that stayed behind in that puberty trip, hanging onto other people's visions and smoking too much dope. Because the winners didn't end up being a nobody or a Marionette of the Doomed or a Slave of the Wealthy. The stockbrokers and the real estate agents and the executive managers and the chairmen and the financially independents among us truly won The Big Race. They were running up front while the losers were picking up the trash they left behind, and the retards were cleaning the streets with toothbrushes, high as a freak and depending on social security. And I find myself between the leaders and the losers nowadays. I'm getting dragged along with the frontrunners, while stepping on the toes of the doomed and helpless.

The Generation X has changed over the last ten years. The winners and the failures both followed their own paths. We are separated now, but those who lost The Big Race that is life will not be not forgotten. In the eternal Nirvana, we all will meet again, and everything will be forgiven, and we both will be right. 'Nevermind,' we will say, and laughter and recognition will emerge.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/nirvana/nirvana-15-classic-songs/2104/
Meer Nirvana op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/nirvana