Fecal Matter
Illiteracy Will Prevail

Kurt Donald Cobain was not originally a whore. I swear. It seems impossible to admit it, but it's the naked, raw, and dirty truth. Maybe a fool, very probable. A minimalist taken to the extreme, that's certain. However, what becomes evident to those few who have decided to rub their eyes and wake up from the infernal nevermindian spell, is a reality as hidden as it is obscured: thus, if and when a veil is drawn over an individual's past, their truths vanish to be replaced by others (and fictitious) imposed unpunished and arbitrarily by the commercial power of money, in the proportions for which the individual "serves" the purpose of that power itself. Morale of the story, Kurt Donald Cobain, was not always accustomed to sucking the macabre balls of Butch Vig, nor was he intent on gulping pounds and pounds of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys "and so on." 

Believe it or not, there existed an individual truly distressed, violent, confused, nonconformist, antisocial, asexual, and apathetic all at once, capable of being ashamed of his own stupid and senseless mediocre guitar playing skills, to the point of exalting its wickedness, abusing it, spitting it out and, if you allow me, raping it. The one I'm talking about is certainly not Jesus Christ, let alone a rockstar.

So why dedicate a de-page to these bizarre and proto-nirvanic events?

From my point of view, and believe me, it's not a beautiful point of view, because I feel it is necessary to give importance to what could have been, and never was.

Fecal Matter, Illiteracy Will Prevail (1985, Crover/Cobain).

In this demo CD, recorded using a four-track obtained miraculously from the aunt of the alleged "messiah" of Rock'n'Roll, there is more Nirvana than in "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Lithium," and any other pseudo-success of the Grohlic epoch gathered into a deformed sonic ensemble. In this repulsive recording, in fact, everything is abrasive, poorly recorded, deteriorated, damaged, bruised, and offensive, to the limit of depravity. "Laminated Effect" for instance, with the rawest and hardest lyrics of the entire recording, within which it attempts to account for how sexuality and homophobia were undergoing dangerous yet incomprehensible "mutations" for the American public opinion, highlighting a malaise rooted in the deepest darkness of the middle-class man's soul; "Buffy's Pregnant" a destructive ode about birth understood as a sexual-ritual gesture devoid of meaning, self-serving, mechanical, obscene; "Downer," a track later re-included in the wonderful "Bleach" (1989, Sub Pop), but created back in 1985 together with the executioner Crover, intent on depicting American society in its most conservative forms of mental expression and repression. And so forth.

What I'm trying to explain is that the Kurt Cobain playing in this incoherent and ramshackle Demo is the janitor Kurt Cobain who cleaned the floors at Aberdeen high school, the Kurt Cobain who gave swimming lessons to children to make a living, the Kurt Cobain who tried to experiment, twist, and perhaps torment the use of a deconstructed and reconstructed guitar based on his personal economic budget. This was Kurt Cobain. The Kurt Cobain who listened to Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Bowie, Stooges, Black Flag, Scratch Acid, Led Zeppelin. 

I, the big-mustached guy of "this pair of testicles," believe in this demo, and in the enthusiasm with which it was generated.

Every track, every auditory irregularity, every guitar friction, and every lyrical obscenity, in my opinion, is worth more than "Nevermind" and "In Utero" put together, which will undoubtedly turn out to be more listenable in terms of technical recording quality, but impotent and incapable, in the face of the spontaneity, the healthy genuine ignorance as well as the filth of this unmissable mid-80's gem.

My opinion folks, but it's about time to put the nineties of the Celebrities in the attic, and try to understand what made them "possible."

And the same, always in my opinion, should be done with Nirvana. 

Better late than never.

(Now, we can start with the insults: service announcement, for logistical-distributional reasons, all emos are required to comment last, so that the guest sector can be evacuated first. Thank you for your kind attention).