WITH THE LIGHTS OUT…
I feel lucky to have played music when I did. The glaciers of hair metal and popular music , once thought to be immovable, cracked and slid free like an explosive sneeze. You looked sunward with a tingle in your nose, careful not to ruin it and in one fail swoop, the game changed.
Some people credit Nirvana for that change and some credit is due, but for those of us who were immersed in music at the time it felt like they were the slickly packaged harbinger of the bad news. For many of us in the college music world the lights had been out for years. Now you allowed us to entertain you.
On the internet of things a few weeks back I posted that I thought that Nirvana wasn't that great. What I meant was that through no power of their own, they'd been cast as the greatest thing of all time. Credited with "changing everything". No one band can be that. When I think of the band that really had cracked open those doors, I think of something far less intense but no less influential. For me, it will always be REM.
Full disclosure. I am not the largest of REM fans. After Automatic for the People, I quit listening to their new albums, our intersecting trajectories crossing and continuing on in opposing directions. I still wanted them to be great. I just didn't connect with their music as much anymore. But from 1985-1992, (especially 1987) REM chipped away at the walls of popular music. Trapped in some sort of deeply southern baroque, they kept landing songs. They kept inspiring musicians (Messier Cobain was a giant fan) and they didn't change what they did to do so.
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My other net negative with Nirvana was this dichotomy of wanting for years for musical success and then spending the short period after success had arrived, wanting nothing to do with it. It was at the least off putting and at the most disingenuous. I would have given anything for a meager slice of that success. I'm ultimately very sorry for Kurt Cobain in some ways. He was a heroin addict. He had big problems. But he wanted to be a rock star. Then he was. Then he hated it with the strength of 1000 suns. Part of me says sorry. Not sorry.
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Really though, I bring this up this morning, not because I feel the post I made needed explaining. I stand by it still. I bring it up because of the attached picture.
Yesterday evening my son’s Senior class gathered at a friends house to take homecoming pictures. This house has a small barn, a few horses, and a llama. I got out of the car and the llama was looking at me so I went to pet him. I turned and took a selfie with him putting his chin on my shoulder.
A friend last night said she wondered what my thoughts would be of this pic.
This morning. I was walking to the kitchen and in Kurt Cobain's voice, sang softly to myself.
"It's a llama, it's a llama, it's a llammmmmmmmaaaaa"
#hugsandhi5s
