10 years - Nirvana

[Dean Winchester]

hard to believe that is has been a decade since Kurt Cobain took his life. Such a sad day for music (even though word didn't get out until Friday April 8th). For music fans in their 20's and too young to remember the death of Lennon, I think Cobain's death is the "remember where you were when you heard?" for us.

Also today marks the 10th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Division Bell

[Kay Scarpetta]

I was five years old... the only reason I remember so well was because my cousin's favorite band is Nirvana (along with mine now, but I was too young to know who they were at that time)and I remember going over his house the night it leaked and he just couldn't take his eyes off MTV.

I woke up this morning to "You Know You're Right", one of my favorite songs of all time. Such a sad day for the music world... it was strange. I couldn't get Cobain out of my mind today, even in classes. I'd get chills everytime I'd think of this.

[Dean Winchester]

my Kurt story was:
I was on Spring Break, and it was a Friday afternoon (the 8th). I had the house to myself because my mom worked nights and she was already asleep, and I was home watching television (but not MTV) and my dad came home from work and said "Kurt Cobain killed himself" and everything else he said I didn't pay attention to, I spent pretty much the rest of the day watching MTV and mourning it.

I think that Kurt's death was as significant to rock fans in their 20's and early 30's as Lennon's death was to his generation (I'm not comparing the two, but most of us were too young to remember Lennon's death that really felt impact when Kurt died). We all remember where we were.

[AKA]

Repost from last year (albeit amended):

I remember it was my last day of spring break. As is the case for any thirteen-year-old seventh grader, sleep was of the utmost importance to me, so I slept in until about 11:30. After waking up, I proceeded to watch the last half hour of a "Late Night With David Letterman" rerun on E!, after which I flipped on the local 12:00 news.

The first thing I saw on the news was a video clip of Kurt from the "Heart Shaped Box" video, with the news' theme and no voiceover for a few seconds. I immediately suspected something was wrong, and my heart jumped. Kurt had attempted suicide a month before, in Rome, and rumors of the Nirvana's breakup flooded the grapevine for the past few days.

The news came. The body of 27-year-old Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain had been found at his Seattle home, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Many emotions ran through me throughout the day, most notably sadness and anger. I was pissed off at Kurt for doing such a selfish thing to his fans and family, and sad because he would never write another amazing song again, never scream from his stomach again, never reach out to millions of cynical kids just like me again.

Nirvana was the first band I really cared about. They were my gateway to becoming the music nut I am today.

I remember when I bought Nevermind in early '92 (on cassette, no less), and listening to that album repeatedly for hours.

I remember the '92 Video Music Awards.

I remember waiting in anticipation for the relase of In Utero.

I remember when they came to Spokane.

I remember the shock when Kurt overdosed in Rome and slipped into a coma.

I remember April 8, 1994.

I remember Dave. I remember Krist.

I remember Kurt.

I remember Nirvana.

It's hard to believe ten years have passed, but it's great to know that the music will live on. It brings a smile to my face to know that the next generation has embraced the music these three guys put their souls into, as mine did a decade ago.

You burned out, allright, Kurt. Why couldn't you have just chosen to fade away instead? I miss you. We all do.

Kurt Cobain
February 20, 1967-April 5, 1994

If you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to ask someone else first

[AKA]

Originally posted by BuffySlayer79
Also today marks the 10th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Division Bell

A sad day, indeed, for all music fans. Just kidding! I love The Division Bell. Gilmour did good.

[AKA]

Fans Mark 10 Years Since Cobain Death

By Gene Johnson
The Associated Press

ABERDEEN, Wash. - Kurt Cobain and his band, Nirvana, spent only three years in the public eye, and they released only three studio albums. But what he accomplished before committing suicide 10 years ago Monday at age 27 — deciding it was "better to burn out than fade away," as he quoted Neil Young in his suicide note — was remarkable.

Beneath this bridge above the muddy banks of the Wishkah River, a troubled young Cobain would come to escape his unhappy home and the persistent gray drizzle of the Washington coast.

Among the cracking concrete supports, he would smoke pot and drink and plot his stardom, bragging to friends of his "suicide genes" and that he would die a young rock star.

It's here that many of his fans have come to pay their respects since he fulfilled that prophesy with a needle and a shotgun.

"Peace, love, empathy," reads one message scrawled in graffiti under the bridge.

"Kurt," says another, "Your spirit will bounce on happily."

Critics describe 1991's "Nevermind," which has sold more than 10 million copies, as one of the decade's most important albums. Its biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," remains a seminal expression of teen angst. Cobain brought the dark, driven sound of grunge rock to the nation, helped save the world from hair metal, and with a single line — "Here we are now, entertain us" — captured and captivated a generation that had grown bored and cynical about popular music.

Andrew Harms, a 24-year-old disc jockey on a Seattle radio station, still remembers his first exposure to Nirvana, which remains his favorite band: seeing the video for "Teen Spirit" on MTV.

"It filled me with an energy that music had not done for me before," Harms says. "The guy had an amazing creative mind, and he took all the emotions within him and expressed it through music. It was music of substance, music that seemed real to me."

Cobain biographer Charles Cross says that when Nirvana went to record "Nevermind," they followed Warrant into the studio — a band known for big hair, open shirts and their "Cherry Pie" video.

"Music at that point was so prefabricated, so fake, so hairspray that Nirvana was really a breath of fresh air," Cross says. "It was more organic than anything we'd seen in music in years."

Much of the screaming desperation in Cobain's songs can be traced to his life in this timber town on the Washington coast, and in Montesano, just inland, where his grandparents and father lived. Cobain's parents divorced when he was 9, an event that scarred him deeply, and much of his adolescence was spent bouncing among the homes — and garages and vans — of his parents, grandparents, relatives and friends.

As Cross writes in "Heavier Than Heaven," a family history of alcohol abuse and suicide weighed on him, but several relatives on both sides were artistically talented. Many friends recall Cobain saying he would one day join the "27 Club" — a reference to the age Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were when they died.

Cobain found an outlet for these emotions in guitar, punk rock and painting, through which he would express himself for the rest of his life. He spoke frequently during the last two years of his life of giving up music for painting.

Shortly before he dropped out of Aberdeen's Weatherwax High School, Cobain began playing with classmate Krist Novoselic. They formed Nirvana after moving to Olympia in the late 1980s, and drummer Dave Grohl — now of the Foo Fighters — joined the band in 1990, the year Cobain began taking heroin, and the year Nirvana's first album, "Bleach," helped it win a major label deal with DGC, part of Geffen Records.

Over the next year, Nirvana — and grunge — exploded onto the national stage, with Seattle becoming the locus, thanks to Nirvana and other local bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. In September 1991, when "Nevermind" went on sale, Cobain had just been evicted from his Olympia apartment and was sleeping in his car. Geffen initially expected to sell only 50,000 copies of "Nevermind." By year's end, it sold 2 million.

Shortly before Cobain brought his dyed locks and emaciated frame onto "Saturday Night Live," he learned "Nevermind" had knocked Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" out of the No. 1 spot on the charts.

As his fame soared, though, so did his heroin use, in part as a self-treatment for his chronic stomach pain. Encouraged by his wife, Courtney Love, who had her own drug problems, Cobain checked into detox several times over the next 2 1/2 years. But he always returned to heroin, even around the time his daughter was born in the summer of 1992.

Nevertheless, his songwriting remained impressive and became more polished with Love's collaboration, especially on "Heart-shaped Box" and other songs for Nirvana's third album, "In Utero."

In January 1994, as Cobain's despondency spiraled, he recorded his last great song, "You Know You're Right." It would not be released until 2002, following a long legal battle between Love and the surviving Nirvana members, but the song's ironic couplet "Things have never been so swell/ and I have never been so well" lent a serious insight into Cobain's mind at the time.

While in Rome a month after recording it, he tried to kill himself by taking 60 tranquilizers. The overdose left him in a coma.

He survived, but in early April he jumped a wall at a detox center in Los Angeles and flew back to Seattle.

On April 5, 1994 — give or take 24 hours — Cobain wrote a suicide note, in which he said he couldn't stand to think of his daughter becoming "the miserable self-destructive, death rocker that I've become." He went into the greenhouse of his mansion, injected himself with a massive dose of heroin, put a 20-gauge shotgun against the roof of his mouth, and fired.

An electrician found his body the morning of April 8.

Thousands of people attended a vigil for him at Seattle Center back then. There is no such widespread event planned for the 10th anniversary of his death, though some fans communicating on the Internet have suggested meeting at Seattle Center. Others will come here, beneath the Young Street Bridge, or to the benches at Viretta Park, next to Cobain's house in Seattle, where some of his ashes are scattered.

Radio stations around the country plan to devote airplay to Nirvana's music Monday, and the Aberdeen Museum of History plans to open an exhibit and walking tour of Cobain-related sites this summer.

"You can't get around the drug use, but we're not going to dwell on it a lot," curator Dann Sears says. "What's important is his legacy, his music ... and he revolutionized music."

[Hollow]

I'm not a huge nirvana fan, but yes this is really sad. RIP kurt.

[consentida]

I'm not a big fan either but its always sad when someone that talented dies so suddenly. R.I.P Kurt.

[~*Hannah_Lee*~]

I'm not old enough to remember Kurt's death. I'm certainly not even old enough to remember how it was when Nevermind came out. But I love the music, the band, and what they stand for...and this day pains me so much. I woke up this morning in a good mood, all happy and stuff...then it hit me, today is April 5, 2004. Ten years without the talent of Kurt Cobain, and yet his legacy still remains. I hope that ten years from now people will remember the music, and not what became of him; remember the music, because we'll have it forever.

R.I.P. Kurt Cobain

[vashti1999]

I kept thinking, "why?... why?"

I remember hating to hear "Heart Shaped Box" because it was an already depressing song and if I'm not mistaken that was the most recent video Nirvana had out at the time of Kurt's suicide. To this day, that song in particular makes me think of that time. I also spent most of that day and weekend watching coverage on MTV. That was definitely a sad, depressing time.

I was angry at him really. I know we're all human and have our "stuff" to go through, but his daughter was a baby at that time and I kept thinking about how she must feel years later at the thought that the love of his own baby wasn't enough to keep him strong enough to stick around and deal with whatever he had to deal with. It's not for me to say how he should've handled his personal issues, but I know I'm not the only one who feels angry in that respect.

Still, I appreciated his music. I appreciated his honesty, he was real.

[Salute_yr_shorts]

what about Frances bean?

[AKA]

Originally posted by Salute_yr_shorts
what about Frances bean?

She had to be raised by her very, very unstable mother. I hope Kurt's parents get custody of her.

[Salute_yr_shorts]

did you know Courtney slapped Wendy cobain!

[AKA]

Originally posted by Salute_yr_shorts
did you know Courtney slapped Wendy cobain!

I've heard that. That's awful.

[Salute_yr_shorts]

yeah.....are you a huge Nirvana fan.....you should join www.kittyradio.com its a messagebaord its sooooooooo cool