Remembering Kurt Cobain


Rally In Commemoration of Kurt Cobain
Seattle, April 10, 1994


Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide.

'Like few of his generation, Kurt Cobain produced music that is still with us, 10 years after his suicide on April 5, 1994. Short-lived as the promise of "grunge" was, and disposable as much of the hit music of the '90s was no doubt intended to be, the songs of Nirvana's reluctant titan can still be found roaring out of our music collections and radios alike, with as much potency as they revealed on first listen. His songs point to a future that wasn't to be: At the height of the popularity of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Kurt quietly admitted in interviews to loving The Beatles' "Rubber Soul," and still later, that "Pennyroyal Tea" from "In Utero" was a glimpse of where the budding songsmith was heading. Though his life ended with those paths untaken, his sound came to define a legion of copy-cat bands and wannabes still in evidence today.

While in pictures his youth is forever frozen in time, like the photos of Bruce Lee eternally in his prime, Cobain's songs show no signs of becoming dated. Kurt Cobain's name evokes no mere cult of personality, or thin tragedy of youthful brilliance lost, but the unlikely, towering musical legacy of a career that spanned a handful of CDs.'

'Journals', a publication of the grunge rock legend's diaries, hit the stores late last year. It was one of my fave browses in the Borders back in Tally.