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Granted, Nirvana revived rock, but the band has Britney to answer for too
SF chronicle ^ | Monday, April 5, 2004 | Aidin Vaziri

Posted on 04/05/2004 6:36:54 PM PDT by KneelBeforeZod

Everyone thinks Nirvana was the best thing to happen to pop music since Gerry & the Pacemakers.

Well, what about the part where they were responsible for Britney Spears and the return of teen-pop because they made everyone so miserable?

And who do you think is responsible for the Backstreet Boys, Bush, the Iraq war, gonorrhea, Avril Lavigne and everything else bad?

Looking back, Nirvana was just as useless as Adam and the Ants. So here's how Kurt and Co. ruined the world ...

... For Britney Spears: Before Nirvana, the battle lines were clearly drawn. The cool people liked the Pixies and Replacements, everyone else was a bunch of jerks. But after "Smells Like Teen Spirit" everything fell apart. Suddenly Terence Trent D'Arby fans were buying up copies of "Zen Arcade" and rock became pop -- fooling people into thinking that Hanson and Britney Spears were actually respectable. That or they just got tired of all the loud guitars and endless moaning.

... For Puddle of Mudd: About four hours after "Nevermind" came out, so did the clones. No one thought it could get any shoddier than Stone Temple Pilots, but then Bush arrived. Yet those thinking the worst was over were dead wrong -- there was still the wrath of the other bald tattooed men moaning about their miserable childhoods in bands like Staind, Puddle of Mudd and Creed. And what about the Vines? That's like if someone took Kurt Cobain's DNA sample, dropped it on the floor in some lint, and still made a clone anyway. Messed up.

... For Courtney Love: If Nirvana never got famous, then she wouldn't have married Kurt Cobain, he wouldn't have helped her write all the songs on Hole's breakthrough album, "Live Through This," and no one would have cared that she was such a desperate attention freak with a bad dye job and implants. But instead of fading into obscurity along with L7 and Bikini Kill, now we're forced to read about her antics every week in "Teen People."

... For Dave Grohl: He's the most boring rock star on the planet. Sure, he plays in every band from the Queens of the Stone Age to Probot, but imagine how wonderful the world would be without the dreary generic toss of the Foo Fighters. It's almost like that guy from the Lemonheads getting totally famous and making millions upon millions of dollars for sounding just like Blind Melon. It's just plain unfair. Plus he looks like Cojo.

... For flannel shirts: Here's a good idea -- let's all dress like lesbian trailer-park lumberjacks. Operating under the mistaken impression that rock stars should look poorer than their audiences, Nirvana dressed like hobos, inspiring everyone from Soul Asylum on down to follow suit. If the Spice Girls had never arrived, then our celebrities may have never gone back to a more respectable wardrobe of spandex and leather. Bless their hearts.

... For guitars: Before Nirvana arrived, everyone knew music after the year 2000 would totally be technological and rad -- just robots playing crazy drum 'n' bass with androids singing over it. People were totally sick of hearing lousy guitar rock by Eric Clapton and Tom Petty. But then Nirvana made guitars popular again, opening the gates for bands like the White Stripes and Nickelback to exist now. If it weren't for Bjork, we might as well all still be cavemen right now.

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: kurtcobain; nirvana
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To: Sam's Army
Desert Sessions 1&2 and 5&6 are my personal faves... haven't heard too much of the new stuff except that new track with PJ Harvey that all the lamestream radio latched on to...

RIP - Man's Ruin Records
41 posted on 04/06/2004 9:20:48 AM PDT by bc2 ("Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown" - harpseal)
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To: bc2
I'm with you on just about every point (although not a huge White Stripes fan I shiver to see them in the same sentence with Nickelback - eesh).

BTW: I hear Nick Oliveri is out of QOTSA(?).

42 posted on 04/06/2004 9:24:16 AM PDT by itsamelman ("Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." -- R. Reagan)
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To: spetznaz
I agree - altho I don't like Nirvana, either.

I'm just a pop chick. And that goes for all decades, whatever's actually popular (and not the fringe stuff all the special people on the 'net make seem were the norm these days), I probably liked it.

If you can't dance to it, I don't wanna hear it. I don't care if you think it's cheesy or nerdy or geeky or "gay", if it's danceable in any possible way, I will probably like it. 1 of the reasons I like country, too. People *actually* dance in country places.
43 posted on 04/06/2004 9:30:13 AM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common Sense is an Uncommon Virtue)
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To: bc2
Well, count me as a late bloomer for the DS stuff, I am now going back to try to find all of the previous sessions and have had some limited luck downloading some earlier stuff. ("Up in Hell" from Vol 7 maybe?)
44 posted on 04/06/2004 9:32:16 AM PDT by Sam's Army
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To: bc2
Actually, the first Hole album Pretty On The Inside is some grade-A sonic squall. Courtney went rapidly downhill after that.

IMHO, if there was true justice in the universe, the big bands from Seattle besides Nirvana would not have been Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains, but Mudhoney and the mighty, mighty Tad!
45 posted on 04/06/2004 9:43:48 AM PDT by GodBlessRonaldReagan (Count Petofi will not be denied!)
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To: Dan from Michigan
Oh yeah, Nirvan at least cleared up this excrement


46 posted on 04/06/2004 11:59:46 AM PDT by ThreeYearLurker
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To: bc2
Memory Lane:

One Night. 3 Bands. I went to a concert at a place called 'The Cathouse' in LA, CA back in the day...Rikki Rachtman still has his hands in the Cathouse franchise at the time.....the word on the street was these bands were from Seattle...supposedly the new hotbed of talent in the music world.....and this was their first appearance in LA. Hairspray bands and spadex were still running rampant on the LA strip.....Lita Ford and her boyfriend from W.A.S.P, Chris, were drunk at the bar and cursing at each other, as usual. So, I was hoping for something...anything different. Two buddies of mine in A&R had stopped signing hair bands several months before and were looking for something original. Well, we got it! Through the stench of unwashed bodies and patchouli...obviously imported from the Seattle area along with some foreign substances usually grown in poppy fields.....post hippie depression complaint rock was born. I witnessed what I knew was a serious change in the music industry. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Mother Love Bone...on the same stage....took our breath away (literally).

My best friend and I still mention it from time to time. What we usually refer to in that experience is the complete polarity of the situation...how everyone in the club that night was transfixed, mesmerized and bedazzled. We could tell Curt and the lead singer from MLB were heroine users and Eddie....well he was high on something.... ;) We had made a prediction that morning at about 4am in Canter's Deli that 2 out of the 3 would be dead from an overdose or worse within 5 years. Unfortunately, we were right....... and that's how legends begin....

47 posted on 04/06/2004 12:29:11 PM PDT by BossLady (What do your choices cost you?)
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To: KneelBeforeZod
I was sick of Nirvana before the end of 1991. Talk about something that got old fast! Nirvana was just predictable and whiny.

I'm still into much of the music that I was listening to when Nirvana came out: Testament, Metallica (before they sucked), Slayer, Megadeth, Overkill, Pantera, Nuclear Assault (mutants for nukes!), MOD, etc. You know, the classics! I've recently picked up on System of a Down and Fear Factory also.

Give me a hard beat and a loud, fast guitar any day.
48 posted on 04/06/2004 12:56:17 PM PDT by T.Smith
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To: BossLady
I though Pearl Jam was formed out of what was left of Mother Love Bone after the singer overdosed?
49 posted on 04/06/2004 1:02:41 PM PDT by T.Smith
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To: itsamelman
At this point in time, both Nick and Mark Lanegan have split from QOTSA. Nick got fired by Josh and Mark left right after he heard the news, so he could concentrate 100% on Mark Lanegan Band.

Basically I'll just post the interview with Josh, he explains the whole thing:

------

In a press release issued last month, the band's management stated that "a number of incidents occurring over the last 18 months led to the decision that the two can no longer maintain a working partnership in the band". The vague statement fueled speculation that rampant drug use was responsible for Oliveri's removal, but Homme said the problem wasn't a direct result of partying, but rather the way Oliveri behaved when he was wasted — and even when wasn't.

"Our whole band is full of hard partiers," Homme said. "We have put more people in rehab than Mardi Gras. But when you get drunk, you either get drunk with class, or you get drunk like a slobbering, toothless f---. And that's just an analogy. It's not just drinking, it's how you live your life."

Homme said there were dozens of times Oliveri got the band kicked out of parties or banned from hotels. Homme added that he played a major role in keeping Oliveri out of jail by "snowing his probation officer" and smoothing out countless other tense, volatile situations. "He's a tornado, and a tornado just destroys and goes on to the next city," Homme said. "I'm in the tornado cleanup crew, and all I ever see is his detritus and I'm sick of it.

"We used to have a thing we called 'Jekyll and Hyde' where, whenever Nick did something, we blamed Nick in the press, and whenever I did something, we blamed Nick in the press," Homme explained. "But I think Nick started believing our press and thinking that he's gotta be the next Sid Vicious or something. And I think Sid Vicious is a badass, but also I think Sid Vicious is a dumb drug addict who couldn't play bass and never wrote a song, and if he stayed alive most guys would have went, 'This guy's a worthless piece of sh--.' And so I don't think that's something to aspire to."

Homme said he was amused by Oliveri's antics for a while, but when the bassist became noticeably more mean-spirited, his amusement waned. When it became apparent to Homme that Oliveri's irresponsibility and cruelty was more than an act for the media, he realized the relationship couldn't continue.

"He really doesn't even know why I kicked him out," Homme said. "In the press, he admitted he threw bottles into the audiences, but he's saying, 'I do it for the fans. Isn't that what they really want?' But what Nick really did was come up to me between the first and second song and say, 'This audience isn't good enough — they're sh--,' and then he threw full bottles of Corona at them, like a baseball pitcher. Is that for the fans? That's not my style. I get drunk with the fans, I don't throw bottles at them."


The final straw came after a show in Australia in which Oliveri trashed all of his equipment, then later got the Queens banned from a hotel in Perth. "You can just put that in a box with the other hotels we've been banned from," Homme said. "You know Nick's been accused of a lot of things, and basically all of them are true, and I can live with the sh-- I've done, but I can't be tied to the sh-- I haven't done."

After Homme decided to part ways with Oliveri, he drove to the bassist's house to confront him. Even though Oliveri had caused Homme plenty of headaches, the two also shared lots of good times, and the frontman felt he owed his "bro" an in-person explanation. "He was bummed, man," Homme recalled. "It was the only time that an irrational guy was rational. He was going, 'I don't want this to happen.' But when you see a guy winging bottles at the audience, you eventually just say, 'F--- this!' If you don't, then you're just somebody's bitch."

Homme admitted that the musical chemistry between he and Oliveri helped drive the last two Queens of the Stone Age records, and he added that he'll miss touring with Oliveri and would be open to working him in the future if he can change his behavior. "I still love the guy, man. And Nick had a vital spot in the band," Homme said with a hint of regret. "Nick has great energy. He scares people, I guess."

A few seconds of silence followed while Homme pondered the statement. "You know what? I don't want to scare people," he finally said. "I want to enrapture people with music. And I want them to get the goose bumps when they hear our album. I don't give a f--- if they're scared about looking at us."

"I write 90 percent of the music. Which I never say, because I always try to stay mellow about it," he said. "I wrote most of the music and took care of all of the business, and kept it so our bass player could just play for an hour and a half a day and that's all he had to do. If you're wondering if Queens has no balls, you don't have to wonder. If you want to see balls, go see Nick with the Dwarves, because I understand he's playing with them again." Homme added that when Oliveri played with the band in 1997, he would expose himself.

------

So there ya have it. What he did isn't cool. If you've ever seen the video for "First It Giveth", you know what a bunch of maniacal freaks QOTSA really are. But, you can be a huge rock star, have the rock star attitude, and still be cool to people. You can get drunk as hell, pick fights with other bands, get naked, break all of your gear, and still not be a total 100% jerk. But, when you start talking sh!t about the kids who are coming out and paying $20 (or more at a festival) to see you rock out, you can't be a jerk to those people.

All in all I don't think Nick is a bad dude and I really hope that he can look at himself and say "what an asshole I was" and get over himself a bit. I mean dude, he is living everyone's dream of rock stardom! The least you can do is be cool to people who enable you to be a rock star. As he's said, the best band playing in the world today is finished, and it's too bad. Hopefully he can get it together and get back with QOTSA. I think that when Mark Lanegan joined up for vocal duties that they really had something goin'!

If you haven't seen the video for "First It Giveth", you've gotta get it! I have a copy.
50 posted on 04/06/2004 1:48:44 PM PDT by bc2 ("Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown" - harpseal)
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To: Sam's Army
Since Man's Ruin Records is now defunct, a lot of that good old stuff is out of print. You can get some of it from e-bay, and other sources, but most of it's lost and gone forever. I have most of the Desert Sessions material on CD. Contact me if there's something you can't find. I'm a huge collector.

51 posted on 04/06/2004 1:50:42 PM PDT by bc2 ("Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown" - harpseal)
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To: T.Smith
You may want to check out my friend's site

http://www.hellridemusic.com

He leans a little more towards doom, but there's still a ton of reviews, interviews & merch related to the heavy stuff.
52 posted on 04/06/2004 2:25:31 PM PDT by itsamelman ("Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." -- R. Reagan)
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To: bc2
Thanks for the info. I had a feeling Nick's BS finally caught up with him.

I saw QOTSA w/ ...Trail of Dead last year in LA. Fantastic show. Josh is truly a rocknroll guitar stud. Nick's bass will be missed, but I can honestly say I won't miss the obiligatory Oliveri coke & booze-fueled scream session on each QOTSA album.

Controlled power and agression is the key.

53 posted on 04/06/2004 2:39:01 PM PDT by itsamelman ("Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." -- R. Reagan)
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To: T.Smith
Welp, they were on stage together that night....many musicians were crossing over bands at that time. You would see the guitarist for one band playing with another band...it was hard to keep up. What happened in that situation was that the guitarist from MLB moved over into Pearl Jam after the overdose. I actually have a video on the formation and the demise of MLB with interviews from all the band, Eddie Veder and all the musicians on the scene then. It's pretty telling to say the least......
54 posted on 04/06/2004 4:29:49 PM PDT by BossLady (What do your choices cost you?)
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To: bc2
Ok, you said it for me: Sonic Youth is also excellent. IMO, the most interesting band since the Velvet Underground.
55 posted on 04/06/2004 5:46:36 PM PDT by moni kerr (Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way)
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To: the OlLine Rebel
If you can't dance to it, I don't wanna hear it. I don't care if you think it's cheesy or nerdy or geeky or "gay", if it's danceable in any possible way, I will probably like it. 1 of the reasons I like country, too. People *actually* dance in country places.

Wow, that's pretty much my feeling as well. Though for some strange reason I can't dance to Latin music or disco.

56 posted on 04/06/2004 5:50:33 PM PDT by moni kerr (Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way)
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To: weegee
The White Stripes would still exist. They get their lead from Billy Childish, not Kurt Cobain.

Don't forget the Yardbirds. Preferably with Jeff Beck.

57 posted on 04/06/2004 5:52:13 PM PDT by moni kerr (Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way)
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To: itsamelman
Yeah, I can deal with everything except for disrespecting the fans. I don't personally endorse the self destructive lifestyles, but as Josh said, it's cool until it starts affecting people personally. Hurting fans and causing your bandmates trouble is no good.
58 posted on 04/06/2004 9:57:05 PM PDT by bc2 ("Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown" - harpseal)
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