supersoul

this yosif prezzemolino dares to lecture others, "guilty" of mocking some young users, when his writings always end up trashing PhilAnselmi93 (noting the year of birth intentionally) terminal metallers. Damn, either he has some serious nerve or he's just a total fool. A review so pretentious and confusing that it does everything except achieve its intended purpose: making you want to listen to the proposal.

I feel a bit guilty for having triggered this discussion because I see that my opening statement has often been misunderstood. What I meant by saying that Nirvana could become the Police of the '90s has been misconstrued as a suggestion that Cobain could be like Sting. Absolutely not, in my opinion. What I intended was (and it seems to me that this is also possible from reading your comments) that Nirvana was more or less in a situation similar to that of the Police in the '80s. The market had in its hands the golden goose that had launched a genre straddling punk and pop, which had captivated millions of people, and thought it could exploit it to the fullest. It hadn’t taken into account Cobain, who, unlike Sting, was disgusted and even ashamed of the luxury he could afford. On the other hand, he no longer even had the strength to rebel artistically because creativity (and desire) had vanished; it had worked automatically as long as he was, let’s say, a growing adolescent, but then at twenty-six, he felt like an old man who had nothing to say. A grabber like Sting became the Englishman who strolls with a cane through the streets of NY, while Kurt said enough to that machine he had found himself caught in. He didn’t allow Nirvana to become the Police of the '90s.

Thank you, Don, but I believe that as a record executive, I would have been hopeless compared to David Geffen. I'm still wondering how he decided to sign them after listening to Bleach, which is so heavy and monotonous in a Melvins way that it's UNSALEABLE to the general public. How he realized he could make a boatload of money from those deranged individuals is still a mystery to me and a testament to his genius as a businessman.

Am I mistaken, or was it them who did the Husker Du cover of "Take on Me" by A-ha (or whatever the hell they were called)?

Franci, getting better and better, summed it all up in one phrase: "simply music for teenagers made by teenagers." But if teenagers started their careers playing this way, then screw Sting who says that rock is dead. The blame for bands like these always falls on those two bastards, Mould and Grant.

Patti Smith is too intellectual to be punk. Punk is those self-destructive Electric Eels, those ignoramuses the Ramones, those crazy ones the Sex Pistols. However, she is the high priestess of the Blank Generation, which included figures like Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell. They are the ones who provided the musical (and aesthetic, in Hell's case) push to a generation that shattered the established order.

what you can't understand pistolpe(re)te is that Cobain is truly one of the real losers of rock (and the tautology is intentional)

but there is no doubt that it is so, Malley. However, I don't think this should prevent us from evaluating and judging these "evolutions" from a musical perspective without letting ourselves be influenced by that "existential" aspect.

Lately, I can't seem to express myself the way I want to, and this worries me because it means I'm explaining myself really poorly :-) Saying that Nirvana would have become the Police of the nineties doesn't imply that their initial intentions were the same; it's clear that Cobain came from punk while Sting has always had an attitude light years away from punk. But take an album like Reggatta de Blanc (1979), which, whether we like it or not, combines the raw energy of punk and reggae with pop, selling millions of copies. Remember "Nevermind"? When I bought the vinyl fresh off the press, I said, "These guys will make billions." Because no one, like Cobain, managed to spontaneously blend the rawness of punk with pop, tapping into the adolescent/existential pain that the audience craved at that moment, while holding back the anarchic and carefree spirit that still characterized other champions of this punk/pop operation, like the immense Pixies. As far as I know, Cobain was never happy with the results of his albums; once, he awkwardly said that "Nevermind" sounded more like a Motley Crue record than punk rock as he had intended. That's why I have such affection for Cobain; he was always a character who fought not to become the Police of the nineties, as the rest of the world wanted. Perhaps he only succeeded with his sacrifice.

I have both editions, the vinyl one which I think you have too distributed by Diva Records and the compact disc version with Disconnected. Usually, when writing reviews, I avoid mentioning the bonus tracks added in the CDs compared to the original, but this track is just too beautiful ;-)