Word: nirvana
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When Nirvana's Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast in 1994 at age 27, it marked the end of a short life plagued by family troubles, heroin addiction and struggles with fame. His story certainly wasn't heavenly, but it was heavy, and Cross--a grunge sponge who conducted 400 interviews for this serious, substantial biography--lays it all out vividly. Extraordinary access to Cobain's unpublished journals helps the narrative move like the best Nirvana anthems: a slow build, some off-kilter rhythms, softly seductive passages followed by loud screams and a devastating finish. Smells like...
...listening to. Black assumes the voice of an array of comic characters on the album, from a sex-obsessed buffoon on "Kielbasa" to a lonely Don Juan rock star on "The Road" (the latter has been praised for its veracity by no less an expert than Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, who contributes drumming on the record.) He also manages to parody a swath of celebrated musicians by incorporating their stylistic trademarks into his songs: Joni Mitchell's upward swoop, the keening harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and, on an slow, instructional song whose title...
...Azerrad, who wrote the 1994 Nirvana bio "Come As You Are," well knows how indispensable Kurt Cobain's band was in alt-rock's rise to prominence, but "Our Band Could Be Your Life" is a lesson in the impossibility of reducing the revolution to an individual (or a trio). Its story goes like this: in the early `80s, a bunch of kids in unknown punk bands, like L.A.'s Black Flag, figured out that "calling up a pressing plant and getting their own record manufactured wasn't the mysterious, exclusive privilege of the giant record companies on the coasts...
...room and she'd make sure she went over there." By 1991, that kind of fastidious networking had put Sonic Youth and Dinosaur, Jr. in the enviable position of being able to pack large fields full of muddy, hormonally unbalanced teenagers, and drag along an obscure opening act called Nirvana...
...many `zine articles Azerrad excerpts. His response: "We try to eat." While members of Sonic Youth now drive Volvos and divide their time between Manhattan and country homes, the people who accumulated real wealth as a result of the American indie rock saga of the `80s were either in Nirvana or married to people in Nirvana. For that reason, the tenth anniversary of Nevermind comes attended by unceremonious squabbling. Courtney Love, Cobain's famed widow, is engaged in a court battle with bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl over the rights to the Nirvana catalog, and that lawsuit looks...