Nirvana
Where did you sleep last night...

1)

I will try not to indulge in the fact that the boy was blonde, beautiful, tender, and exhausted... Oh yes, I will really try not to, even if reluctantly, since I've always lived rock as a legend...

But this is not a distant and mythical story, like, for example, that of Jim Morrison...

And the story of Jim Morrison is so distant that it's like talking about Rimbaud or Jackson Pollock.

This one, however, we lived it live and faced the usual cliché, the self-destructive rockstar.

John Lydon, the morning after the death of his friend Syd, said that the paradox was that he wanted to destroy rock (understood especially as rhetoric) and now he found himself facing the same old story.

Punk really hadn't changed anything...

The problem is always in the need for illusion, in the fact that all of us, always unsatisfied with dad and mom, are in perpetual search for a legend of freedom, a father/mother figure to guide us into the unknown and give us back a shred of belonging...

“I think Mick Jagger would be stunned and amazed if he realized for how many people he isn't a sex symbol, but a mother’s image,” observed Angela Bowie shrewdly...

There's also the fact that the construction of the legend, i.e., a sort of fabulous and reassuring mask, is a need for everyone... and we all build our own from scratch...

In art, in some cases, invention lies wholly in aesthetics and language, the scaffolding that supports the discomfort and the most perfect backdrops for the little theater where the legend is staged...

Art is something that allows you to exit the mechanism and helps others in the illusion of being able to get out themselves. But, obviously, you don’t really leave the mechanism, or if you do, it's to immediately re-enter another. And that's what hurts.

That’s why we could smile at Morrison’s shamanic posters, and we could do it because we weren’t there at the time, but the same thing with Cobain wasn’t possible anymore...

It's the market, beauty...or, if you will, the horror...

Or the meat grinder... then no mythology... no blonde, beautiful, tender, and exhausted...

I know, I made a somewhat confused speech, but what do you expect, I'm not a genius...

2)

“Where will you go young girl, I am going where the cold wind blows”

“In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines, I want to take the tremor of the night as mine”

Oh yes, it's Nirvana, but here we are in the mythical realm of folk and a chill runs down your spine...

A chill, the same one you feel in that “I want to take the tremor of the night as mine” which I, maybe, have translated a bit too freely, I know... But "tremor of the night" evokes fragile and nocturnal words, melodies lost in the night of time... emotions... sensations beneath the skin... The chill, precisely...

And it is that chill that changed the life of my drakian picnic companion. Those who have read my reviews about good old Nick with a honey voice, might remember... It's about the vampire... and for me, only for me, the vampire with a single tooth...

But what is a vampire with a single tooth like? Tall? Pale? Clad in elegant dark clothes? Oh yes!!! tall, pale, clad in elegant dark clothes...

Only this, oh no!!! there would also be the soft and flexible step and a circle around him destined to keep others, jerks and normals mainly, away... Jerks and normals, but not certain ill-kempt figurines like, for example, little old ladies with one white sock and one blue...

It was precisely such an old lady who stopped him one day in the street:

“The only way to make things even is to let them be odd.” she said

“I heard this in an old blues."...

“E cusel e blues?” (That is "and what is the blues?”)...

“It's me when I will remember you.”

Oh damn!!! “It's me when I will remember you”...ding ding ding...

Ding ding ding...or tic tic tac, if you've read the tale of the witch with the magical language... That witch started and ended every sentence with tic tic tac. How then could it be possible that an old lady approaches you saying something like “the only way to make things even is to let them be odd” I really don't know... She didn't start the sentences with tic tic tac. Or maybe she did?

But let's get to the music... listening to (and loving) Nirvana is the most mainstream thing the vampire did in his life... probably had to do with the malaise... and maybe also with the beauty, the real beauty though...

He walked on the roofs of school...

And at the high school final exam, he showed up in white gloves like Baudelaire...

And a few years later he wandered for a week with his face completely bandaged.. “No one must see my face” he said...

Back then he wasn’t a vampire yet though, he was just a beautiful and crazy boy... and thank goodness where I come from psychologists hadn’t been invented yet...

Oh, I remember well when Nirvana arrived... and I remember the night when we were drunken out of our minds and everyone was dancing “Smells like teen spirit...” “But this shouldn’t be danced fools, this is an aesthetic peak, at most it should be danced within...”

But do I really have to talk about Nirvana, with all the reviews there are on debasio? O.K. I have to say a little, but since I don't want to make an effort I think a statement from Cobain is enough:

“I wanted to be like Led Zeppelin and at the same time play excessive punk rock and however create sweetened pop songs”

Yes, these are Nirvana... I might just add a pinch of Neil Young and the immediacy and recognizability of a personal and unique sound. And lyrics capable like few others of narrating the discomfort...

Stop...

3)

“Where did you sleep last night” is a classic of American folk heritage. There are several versions with variants which are all in all not so significant, since the heart of the song remains the same.

Known especially in the version by Leadbelly, it has actually been interpreted by many artists and the list is breath-taking: Joan Baez, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk, Jackson C. Frank the first that come to mind...

Here's the point, really... the vampire in recent years among the modern (let's say so) only listens to Nick Drake and Nico... for the rest he's in search of a lost secret...

And this search began after having listened to “Where did you sleep last night”... And the secret is that chill we spoke of...

Sure, it's nice to think that Cobain too could have embarked on a similar search...

4)

“Where did you sleep last night” is a magical song...

It evokes the nightly places of the soul and, basically, only asks questions, since the answers are vague and refer back to other questions...

Why would a girl want to merge with the tremor of the night? Why does a man go where the cold wind blows? And what is that beheaded head doing at a certain point?

“Keeping the quality undefined is the secret,” said Robert Pirsig...

“The undefined quality”...ding ding ding...

Ding ding ding... ding ding ding... ding ding ding..

Yes. “The undefined quality” is one of the secrets of this song...

5)

Is it possible that a young boy made the best version of “Where did you sleep last night”?

Slow, enveloping, hypnotic and ghostly, with just a few lumps or sparks of the Nirvana canon... and an incredible sense of waiting and mystery...

And that emotional peak, the highest notes, the scream... and maybe the catharsis...

I would like to, but I can't say more... really... the only thing I can do is answer the initial question...

Is it possible that a young boy made the best version of “Where did you sleep last night? Oh yes, it is possible... that boy was an outsider... and folk and blues are music for outsiders...

As you can see, you can't escape the rhetoric...

6)

Sure, we could talk about the pause, the sigh, and the wide eyes before Cobain sings the last verse... But I had promised no myth...

And so we close with the vampire, who fortunately isn’t a rockstar even if he is blonde, beautiful, tender, and exhausted...

The other day a guy approached him, obviously in bad shape...

“You know what I’ve done all my life?”

“No mate, I don’t know.”

“I’ve been walking through flower fields and...”

(long pause)

“and you know, in those fields, somewhere, there's also death dozing..”

“In an old blues it's said that one day sooner or later she will wake up.”

“That day I will be happy to have a chat with her.”

And, having said this, the guy went away.

Oh, I lied to you about one thing: the vampire isn't blonde...