Freak Swerve
33 minutes ago
Friday, 9 September 2011
Jon Stewart to Host Q&A With Former Nirvana Members on Nevermind Anniversary Night
Mark Hogan @'Pitchfork'
Why Nevermind is overrated
I guess before the death threats start pouring in and I have to undergo plastic surgery, submit myself to the witness protection scheme and relocate to Huddersfield, I should make one thing clear: Nevermind isn't a bad album. It is full of memorable hooks, perky riffs (even the ones that haven't been lifted off Rainbow or Killing Joke) and exciting galloping beats. It is, in the main, a collection of pretty grunge songs that are nice to sing along to. It has one generation-unifying and genre-codifying all time anthem/irritating student disco staple in Smells Like Teen Spirit, the truly sublime Something In The Way and the genuinely exciting Territorial Pissings. Mainly however it plays to the gallery and is something of a failure (or at the very least a cop-out). It's supposed to be a sardonic dig at mainstream, MTV and FM radio culture but it shamelessly fits very neatly into the schedules of both institutions. If it had a subversive message it must have been generally too cryptic to be understood, as it was a massive hit amongst the jockish, mainstream types that they had always defined themselves in opposition to. This happened because the album was a massive compromise made to reach a mainstream audience. And it was a compromise agreed to by a sensitive, artistic, troubled frontman after he signed to a major label record deal - something he always regretted.
Your relationship to Nevermind perhaps depends on how old you were when it came out. Anyone younger than 35 is guaranteed to have felt full impact by being introduced to it as an angst-ridden teenager. As a gateway from whatever corporate nonsense Radio1 has chosen as its token 'heavy' guitar act of any given year - Green Day, Muse, Kings of Leon et al - into the weird and wonderful world of heavy, underground, alternative, psychedelic, mind expanding rock, it still remains a rite of passage. But to anyone who had been following grunge for a few years back then, it represented nothing more than the genre's cheap ascent into the mainstream.
2. Other bands did it better
Nirvana may have had more of an impact on the state of mainstream metal and stadium sized alternative rock in the 1990s than any other band, except perhaps Metallica, but their roots were firmly in the more obscure American post-punk underground of the 1980s. Acts such as Pixies (who they lifted their sense of high contrast quiet loud quiet dynamics from), Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, The Dwarves, Big Black, Pussy Galore and Flipper were cult acts gigging relentlessly around the US in the late 1980s when bands such as Green River and Mudhoney gave a more classicist Neil Young, Sex Pistols and Black Sabbath-influenced shot in the arm to the scene. But Nirvana's success helped to partially decimate this forward-looking music, replacing it with retro bands and arena alt-rock acts.
But before all this Nirvana weren't much to write home about. Their debut Bleach does not stand up to the early output of Mudhoney. Sure, Negative Creep is a great track but it is blown clean out of the water by the monumentally unhinged swamp metal assault of Sliding In And Out Of Grace. The scene was already becoming overcrowded with so-called grunge bands like Tad, Jesus Lizard and Pearl Jam; Nirvana realised they had to step their game up if they were not to become also-rans. Frontman Kurt Cobain stopped hiding his clear gift as a pop-hook writer under a bushel, they signed to Geffen and drafted in producer Butch Vig who polished everything up to a high shine, ready for their musical ascent. It's just that Cobain had not even considered what this kind of success would entail and more importantly was simply not cut out for it, whether he wanted it or not.
3. In Utero was better
Almost immediately, Cobain quite clearly had misgivings about Nevermind, and what he had created with it, but what was done was done. Personally, my main reason for disliking the album is not the fact that it is - relatively speaking - bland and a compromise, but that it contributed to his subsequent death.
When Kurt Cobain took his own life due to a horrific combination of bad company, bad drugs, an inability to deal with fame and untreated depression, he had really only just begun to reveal his true genius in the form of the vastly superior album In Utero. Recorded by alternative-rock hero Steve Albini, it is a document of a splintering personality, expending the last of his energy in one final creative surge. The undeniable, John Lennon-esque knack for a pop hook is still present on tracks such as Heart Shaped Box but his lyrics were next-level poetry and would be pored over for clues to what went wrong much more than his suicide note would be. But nudging up to this and All Apologies were Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Scentless Apprentice and Milk It - primal screams of rage emitted too late to do him any use. Ironically, they do reveal to us in a very visceral manner exactly how he felt himself about the pop polish of Nevermind.
4. Do you really need the box-set?
The thing is – it doesn't matter what I think about Nevermind. You almost certainly already have it. And my real point is: it's not that good that you need to buy it all over again. The really sad thing is, if he was around to see this dead-eyed, late capitalist, mercenary squeezing of every last red cent out of his band's reputation and fan base in the form of utterly unnecessary reissues, Cobain would probably pull the trigger all over again. If you genuinely feel you love this band, don't buy the Nevermind reissue. Instead try exploring the back catalogue of one of the many bands Kurt Cobain obsessed over such as Jesus Lizard, The Raincoats, The Meat Puppets, The Vaselines, Joy Division, Pixies, The Butthole Surfers, Earth, Bikini Kill, The Melvins or Daniel Johnson. Or at the very, very least dig out your copy of In Utero.
John Doran @'Virgin Media'
My thoughts exactly!
Missiles looted from Tripoli arms warehouse
(Click to enlarge)
A potent stash of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles is missing from a huge Tripoli weapons warehouse amid reports of weapons looting across war-torn Libya. They are Grinch SA-24 shoulder-launched missiles, also known as Igla-S missiles, the equivalent of U.S.-made Stinger missiles.
A CNN team and Human Rights Watch found dozens of empty crates marked with packing lists and inventory numbers that identified the items as Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.
The list for one box, for example, written in English and Russian, said it had contained two missiles, with inventory number "Missile 9M342," and a power source, inventory number "Article 9B238."
Grinch SA-24s are designed to target front-line aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones. They can shoot down a plane flying as high as 11,000 feet and can travel 19,000 feet straight out.
Fighters aligned with the National Transitional Council and others swiped armaments from the storage facility, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The warehouse is located near a base of the Khamis Brigade, a special forces unit in Gadhafi's military, in the southeastern part of the capital.The warehouse contains mortars and artillery rounds, but there are empty crates for those items as well. There are also empty boxes for another surface-to-air missile, the SA-7.
Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles."
He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market.
"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I've seen cars packed with them." he said. "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."
There was no immediate comment from NTC officials.
The lack of security at the weapons site raises concerns about stability in post-Gadhafi Libya and whether the new NTC leadership is doing enough to stop the weapons from getting into the wrong hands...
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Ben Wedeman and Ingrid Formanek @'CNN'
Thursday, 8 September 2011
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