Nirvana
Bleach

THE REVIEW

I start by stating my total ignorance in writing reviews and basic grammar.

Forgive me.

Bleach is a terrible album.

It consists of a journey that leads us to reset our musical consciousness-knowledge, a "hole," paraphrasing Christiane F. and Kubrick, of ultraviolence and transcendent love, of tears and laughter, of ambulatory will and immobility of the soul.

Tremors, passions, and illusions. Sweet illusions, after all.

An act of faith towards certain music, an awareness, an expression of a total denunciation of the technocratic society, the disposable, valid for discount cameras as for human Thought, of the contradictions of a world that has placed too much trust in capitalism (without intending Bleach as a Marxist manifesto, obviously). Or perhaps the opposite: who can say, in the face of a masterpiece of such magnitude?

The fact is that this record not only created grunge (because, I am convinced, neither the Pixies nor Green River were grunge, at least from the point of view of a Turin native in 2007), but it formed part of who I currently am, or believe I am.

I was a young fifteen-year-old lover and supporter of brit, nu-punk, well-dressed liars and, although the appearance sometimes candidly threatening, well-meaning. I found myself in some random store on some random street I happened to walk, with the intention of taking another ride on the golden wagon of showbiz, heralding fame and groove (!). Maybe the second album by Franz Ferdinand, or the latest live by Green Day. Someone, probably from above, perhaps that superb entity that infused the breath of rock'n'roll in a few, great elect in the '50s, changed the course of events.

I found myself, hours later, with that CD in hand, trying to place it back in the case after listening. I had to sit down, head and quadriceps throbbing, electric shocks at the epidermal level, continuous spin sessions in my poor skull. Everything was clear. It was evident that security is not of this world, except for that God/god I have always ignored and now begin to appreciate, in this Hesiodic silver age. For a moment I felt part of a movement extremely threatened by the pop germ. At that moment I understood rock and placed in the basement the stale dogmas of various Giorgio Aiuola, the Knights, the Professors, rhetoric, and the consequent demagogy.

Since that day I have only found incomplete, false, convenient answers; the point is that since that day I began to ask myself: why? Although I knew in which abyss I would throw myself, wanting to understand something. The animal nature is inherent in humanity, we will never understand anything.

But I have not stopped searching: answers, objects, instruments, people, another Bleach, that can help me understand, that can make me feel like that day.

Music is not everything, rock is not everything, grunge is not everything, Nirvana is not everything. However, the latter is something.

Cobain showed me/us that sphere of light that radiates anger and empathy, suffering and warmth, his and our soul.

He was a man