We are the new Americana
High on legal marijuana
Raised on Biggie* and Nirvana
We are the new Americana
— Lyrics from New Americana by Halsey (2015)
August 10, 1995
“Hey Tiffany, I’m really sorry to hear that Jerry Garcia+ died.”
“Thanks, Jeff. It’s such a shock.”
“Yeah, I remember how I felt the day Kurt Cobain++ died.”
Tiffany, pissed: “Don’t you dare try to compare Kurt Cobain to Jerry Garcia.”
Me, aghast: “You’re right. These days, Garcia was just an entertainer. Cobain was creating art. ”
Decades later, I’ve won this argument. Pop-star Halsey** says so. All the kids love Nirvana.# Sadly, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday while an entire generation grew to adulthood.
April 5, 1994
The night Kurt Cobain died, I hosted a small party. Not because he died, the party was already planned. I bought a cookbook on how to make pizza from scratch. I bought a pizza stone, a bag of flour and all the stuff that goes on top. I was ready to start a new phase in my life. A more adult phase. I was cooking for my friends.
Tiffany was there. My brother and his girlfriend. There were a couple of other people too, but now I can’t remember who—they’ve faded into the background. Something I remember clearly is that my party sucked.
I didn’t understand the yeast-rising step of making dough. I forgot to add salt. My crust was chewy and flavorless. We might as well have been eating cardboard. I didn’t make anywhere near enough pizza, so we each ate two small slices. No salad, no dessert. Just a bit of bad pizza and beer. Plenty of beer.
Brooding and drunk, my playlist for the evening was only Nirvana. A tribute to Kurt, regardless of what anyone else wanted to listen to. Everyone’s attitude was drawn towards my own. The party broke up early. I was too focused on my misery to be embarrassed.
Today
I can’t remember the moment I first heard Nirvana. In an essay I once read, a woman described walking through the mail room at work and being paralyzed by Nirvana blasting from the speaker. Her bolt-from-the-blue experience is worthy of the band. For me, I simply realized one day that I liked several of their songs and began to seek them out. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t an early adopter. As a punk rock aficionado, I should have latched onto Nirvana when they released their debut album Bleach in 1989. Those were different times. Without the internet, band news, especially indie band news, was passed by word of mouth. I lived a continent away from Nirvana. No one I knew saw them in concert. Like everyone else, I jumped on the bandwagon with their monstrously popular 1991 album Nevermind.
Jim Adam’s Song Lyric Sunday challenge this week is the “27 Club.” Luckily, Eli told me about this a few months ago. It’s the extensive list of rock artists who died when they were twenty-seven years old. Three of Eli’s favorite performers are on this list—Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. Others include Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Amy Winehouse, and a handful of lesser-known (for me at least) musicians. Of the list, only Morrison and Cobain are meaningful to me. The rest, I bump up against now and again, but they never made a mark.
Nirvana is an angry and gloomy band. If you dwell too deeply in their lyrics, it’s easy to become jaded and/or depressed. This is exactly what drew me to them in my early thirties. I was anti-everything. I rebelled against my suburban upbringing and my white-collar corporate job. Nightly drinking numbed the mediocracy. Nirvana was one of the few bands that found their way through the haze of my stunted life and made an impression.
I no longer love Nirvana. When I listen to their music, it’s more for nostalgia than pleasure—although it isn’t clear what I’m nostalgic for. I tremendously respect the music they created, but it no longer matches my life. For Song Lyric Sunday I’ve selected my current favorite Nirvana song, Molly’s Lips. It’s an impossibly upbeat song for such a downer band to play. And for this Song Lyric Sunday challenge, it’s a terrible choice—it wasn’t written by Cobain or anyone else in Nirvana. The indie rock band the Vaselines wrote and recorded it first. Band member Eugene Kelly wrote the song about the actor who played Hazel the McWitch on a BBC children’s show. “We just wanted to sing a song about kissing her.”
Nirvana’s lyrics. Slightly altered from the original to reference heroin addiction.
She said
She’d take me anywhere
She’d take me anywhere
As long as she stays with me
She said
She’d take me anywhere
She’d take me anywhere
As long as I stay clean
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
(Repeat three times)
I kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
Kiss, kiss Molly’s lips
+ Principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and vocalist of the Grateful Dead.
++ Principal songwriter, lead vocalist, and guitar player of the rock band Nirvana.
* I have no idea who this is.
** American pop singer.
# In defense of the Grateful Dead, my son Eli, age seventeen, likes both Nirvana and the Dead, as do I.
The Other Stuff 
Re. your * – Biggie was a rapper, also known as Biggie Smalls and The Notorious B.I.G. He was killed in a drive-by shooting, at the age of 24.
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I should probably look into him. Of course I’ve heard the name The Notorious B.I.G. (in association with the RBG moniker). I don’t know a whole lot of rap other than public enemy and the beastie boys.
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I only knew of him through one of my daughters, who inflicted one of his albums on us. To me, I think the whole genre should be spelled with the missing silent ‘c’ at the beginning.
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HA!
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There was a time when all music passed me by; I missed most of nirvana.
Pity.
But the idea that Hendrix barely impacted you, it shocks me.
(I exaggerate a little for impact).
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So here’s my deal with Hendrix: In college all of my friends LOVED him. His music never really spoke to me. Then for 35 years, I just assumed I never really gave him a chance. Now, he’s my son’s favorite performer. I hear his music all the time, I’ve watched a documentary about him, read a bit about his life… still, some of it is fine, I love none of it. We just don’t match up. It drives my son nuts.
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oh well…
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Thank the Gods of Grunge for that final #Footnote.
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Must. Unfollow. Jeff!
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Most of my peers were also huge fans of Nirvana, but I was late to the party (as usual) maybe thats why I never connected. I only knew about Smells Like Teen Spirit because of Weird Al Yankovich.
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Funny how often I hear that weird al is an entry point to a new band. Aluminum Foil was that for me with Lorde.
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Ha! Hadn’t heard of that one. Of course Weird Al did a song about aluminum foil.
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i really like Lorde, but that weird al version of royals was most excellent!!! my fave weird al is “another one rides the bus” spoof on Queen. i love queen, but loathe that particular song.
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That song. It came out right at the start of my freshman year of college. I drank a fifth of rum one night. The next day, lying in bed with alcohol poisoning, someone on my dorm hall kept blasting it over and over (along with Flirting with Disaster). Two songs I can’t take to this day. “Loathe” is no where near strong enough.
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I would never compare Nirvana to the Grateful Dead or Kurt Cobain with Jerry Garcia, but they are both dead and sadly missed. If you really are a Punk aficionado jeff, then you won’t want to miss December 25, 2022, where the theme is Punk music.
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Well in my defense, I wasn’t trying to compare the bands or the artists but the sense of loss. Now I’m just lashing out at an old girlfriend where the relationship ended badly. Already trying to pick the best song for 12/25. So many ways to go there. Classic, obscure, proto punk, post punk, 70s, 80s, 90s… Expect me to overthink this.
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I am going with the Patti Smith song ‘Horses’.
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Well, that’s a great one. I used it on your american music 4th of july post.
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i will always LOVE nirvana. my favorite nirvana song is also a cover (Lead Belly). linked it below. thanks for sharing your song … one i’d never heart b4! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMm7gxBYSc
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I love that cover too. Seemingly hundreds of people have covered it. I like Nirvana’s best. Isn’t Molly’s Lips fun. I tried to get Eli interested in playing it on his guitar but he says it’s too easy. Simplicity can be freedom. That’s why I love the Ramones.
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Other “27 Club” members: Duane Allman, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, another Grateful Dead member.
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Someone else in the group profiled Pigpen. They featured a song with him singing and playing harmonica. I REALLY liked it.
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Great track, Jeff. I missed Nirvana first time around. I am only starting to appreciate the quality of their music and lyrics. Mainly, after watching the BBC Documentary, When Nirvana Came to Britain (2021).
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I confess … I’ve never listened to Nirvana, at least, not knowingly, although I daresay they’ve been on the radio in the background sometimes. I have heard of them, though. I listened to Molly’s Lips, but it didn’t really do a lot for me. I think my early musical influences were lacking somewhat, given that I barely had an independent teenage life. I was engaged at sixteen, married at nineteen and had two consecutive children in the next twenty months. You could say I was a bit preoccupied with all that. However, I do remember some of the bands from that time, which I doubt you would know given that you’re in another part of the world and younger than me. I used to listen to Top of the Pops on Sundays in the seventies and remember bands like The Sweet, Jam, and Marmalade (they all sound more like breakfast than pop bands!). My absolute fave star was David Cassidy, now much to my embarrassment, although I think I liked David Essex just as much. Of course, there were very well-known stars like The Beatles (mainly from the sixties), Pink Floyd, Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. I do still particularly like the latter band. Thanks for a trip back to nostalgia, Jeff.
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I’m sure you’ve heard their music somewhere. I once heard one of their songs in a pirate cartoon my kids were watching. I appreciate the fact that you didn’t like Molly’s Lips. As a song, it really doesn’t do much. It’s simple and repetitive. I like it for the upbeat energy. I like the original too (which is much more mellow). David Cassidy: So growing up with the Partridge Family, I love all of those songs (although I don’t know if that’s what you mean by David Cassidy songs). It’s such a significant part of my childhood — along with the Monkeys, they were probably one of my first bands to identify with. Obviously we can’t all like the same music. The Eagles are on the outs list for me. Little Willie by the Sweet was a smash hit in the states when I was nine or ten. Great one.
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I remember the Partridge Family well, although not as well as I knew David Cassidy’s later songs. He recorded titles like Cherish, Rock Me Baby, and I Am A Clown etc. Not sure when they were recorded, though. He was my heart-throb at school; I had his name scribbled all over my school notebook. I remember The Monkees very well, also. I can hear them singing in my ear now (Hey, hey, with the Monkees 🎶🎵). Sweet were brilliant – I liked Fox On The Run and Ballroom Blitz, too; the latter was released in 1973; I was about fifteen then. Happy memories …
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As much as I wanted to love Nirvana in the height of their fame, I hated how their music made me feel (Dumb, anyone?), and thus could never listen to more than one of their songs at a time in one sitting.
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I’m like that with the Cure. I just get so down. Hey, let me ask you this? Is the MTB crowd in Whistler all into metal & punk? At all of the kids races I attend, the DJ pretty much sticks to a thrash playlist all day. OK with me, but I wonder how many 14 year olds like that music now.
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Couldn’t say that they are. Most of the DJs at kids events are parents, so it’s usually what the parents listen to… though I think it’s mostly happy vibe tunes that are head-boppable. I can’t think of a time where I was distracted by the music..
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I was in a strange place when Nirvana broke and never connected with them or any of the Seattle bands. They weren’t punk enough or had too little melody or too metal. I think it was a case of not being the right demographic at the time. It’s strange how when the famous die we can get lost in our “grief” whether if Jerry or Bowie or Kurt.
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I’ve really only experienced celebrity death grief twice–Cobain and Robin Williams. Celeb grief doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I know from experience it can be a real thing.
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I think sometimes it’s easier to experience vicarious grief than the real thing because we get to have all the Thunder with none of the consequences.
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