By Evan Dashevsky Well, perhaps “sucks” is a bit too strong a word and I’m sure that you’re not such a bad person either. However, a line must be drawn in the sand of popular culture with elitist romantic rock journalists on one side and we, the true music fans unmoved by the winds of martyrdom and the tidal waves of conformity on the other. The enemy is consisted of the same sensitive college boys who dismissed Black Sabbath during their early reign and heralded Pavement as the new Beatles. But of course, history has proven us correct time and time again --Black Sabbath’s influence has lived on far beyond their first incarnation while, not a bad band, Pavement has been left to Ned’s Atomic Dustbin of popular history with little to show in the way of influence thriving in this new millennium. It is these same evil forces which have forced the martyrdom of Kurt Cobain down the public’s throats and rewritten recent history to paint a romantic portrait of a tragic figure who fought against the system, only to self-destruct in the face of pervasive fame. This is not only a dangerous myth to have fed into the popular consciousness, but also completely off the mark.

Off the back, I must put the disclaimer out that I believe Nirvana was a great band, and would certainly include In Utero to be one of the most artistically ambitious albums of all time. But I must pick a bone with the suicide of Kurt Cobain being passed down (especially in this post-Columbine culture) as the last act of a great artist, and I certainly have to disagree with the dwarf known “grunge” being portrayed as a musical giant.

It has become a cliche at this point on the Mtv or the Vh1 to show through a menagerie of images the story of how Nirvana came along in a time of “hair” bands like Warrant and Poison to usher in a great new chapter of music. This idea has several subtle falsehoods. First would have to be the destruction of “hair” bands. If you define that movement as the bleached pop acts like Whitesnake and company then the early nineties circa September 1991 (Nevermind’s release) did mark the end of the road, as it did for all the other eighties mall-pop bands including those of the Debbie Gibson and Tiffany variety. But if you have include bands like Anthrax or Megadeth in the hair club for rockers then the nineties were anything but the end. Remember, The Black Album came out only a month before Nevermind and still went on to become what it did which was followed a month later by the Use Your Illusions. Megadeth scored a big hit with Countdown to Extinction in 1992 and Pantera did the same with Vulgar Display of Power. The early nineties were very good to many bands who fought the winds of change as much as their hair fought gravity including Slayer, Anthrax, Queensryche, Sepultura, and have you ever seen the photo of Type O Negative on the back of 1993’s Bloody Kisses? Perhaps a change did take place in the early nineties, but this probably had a lot more to with a war in the middle east and a plummeting economy. People were just buying angrier stuff, including the “grunge”. Remember, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie, Rage Against the Machine, and many others who were as angsty as they come and didn’t owe a damn to Nirvana were born in and thrived on the end of the eighties and the wee years of the nineties. Nirvana didn’t kill Headbanger’s Ball, but certainly was able to exploit the bubbling youthful angst it represented.

Another fairy tale is that Nirvana was a smash hit. Nevermind did hit number one on the Billboard charts --twice. The album sold upwards of four million before Cobain’s death (and more than doubled since). But so what? Matchbox 20 has sold ten million plus copies of their whitebread in song form, and we’re still stuck with those pricks. Whenever a band sells well other bands will often pop-up who happen to sound just like said band: this is usually due less to influence than to capitalism. If we are going to say that Nirvana created a musical revolution, then we might as well say the same about Korn? --Come on, they were doing their rap/metal mix thing when everyone else sounded like... well, Nirvana. After Korn hit it big, then didn’t they pave the way for other super-geniuses like Limp Bizkit or (gasp) Papa Roach? (And really, Korn is not that bad of a band -but that’s another article).

Lots of great sounds were coming out in the early nineties, but with the romantic hindsight glasses taken off you can see that despite what all those glossy monthlies repeat ad nauseam, Nirvana wasn’t really the reason for it. Kurt was surely not the first to lead the masses, their dollars, and the majors to “Alternative Music” --the Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Primus and scores of others were already doing a fine job in that department (“120 Minutes” was on long before 1991). Then Green Day and Offspring who sound nothing like Nirvana were able to find their meal ticket after the Naked Baby was plastered all over America. And, the real shocker that we can stuff up Kurt Loder’s ass --Nirvana didn’t really even usher in the Seattle Grunge era (especially as the national major labels were concerned). Sonic Youth, had of course sold their souls to David Geffen long before Kurt and Pals, and Alice in Chains and Columbia scored a hit with Facelift in 1990, and even Pearl Jam released Ten a month before Nevermind even hit the shelves (by the way, Ten still outsells Nevermind by a million copies to this day --and Eddie didn’t even have to kill himself, apparently moping was enough).

So, yes, we’ve been lied to. Isn’t it ironic that the forces that Nirvana supposedly so bravely stood up to are the same that have forced rose tinted glasses on the world in order to sell more albums? And so, Spin, Mtv, David Geffen and the rest of their unholy union of the soulless will certainly continue their quest of world domination and bland music. And even this evil cabal has given us some good tunes over the last few decades, we must remember that the media, the industry, and the radio are all connected so when people try to force any idea everywhere like The Strokes are the next saviors of Rock or Russell Simmons invented Hip-Hop, try to look at it with a bit of a cynical eye.