“In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to have given wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realising it is a cliché. The impasse that paralysed Cobain is precisely the one that Fredric Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, where all that is left is to imitate dead styles in the imaginary museum’.” – Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
I find it difficult to listen to Nirvana. Not because the group’s music makes me feel painful memories, but because it makes me feel nothing. More than that, the fact that it makes me feel nothing makes me feel out of step, like everyone else is laughing and I don’t get the joke.
I do though. I really do. I know, understand, and remember the monumental importance of this band. I remember the feeling when hearing of Kurt Cobain’s suicide — which happened thirty years ago today, as most publications and news outlets are noting. I recall the disbelief, mixed with the strange recognition that this bit of news may have been inevitable. I remember thinking that the songs will never sound the same again. I wouldn’t have guessed that they would sound like this, though. I didn’t anticipate hearing them so often, in so many scenarios, so thoughtlessly thrown into whatever setting just because they were there. Until any and all power and pathos is robbed of it. That’s what happened though, and it makes the strange numbness standing in for rage even more numb.
Listening to Nirvana in 2024 feels like a tragic non-gesture. It’s like listening to a placeholder, a copy of a copy of a copy. I own all of the primary albums on vinyl: Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero. I suppose one of these days I’ll get Unplugged in New York just to have. Just about the only one I can bring myself to put on and enjoy without discomfort is Bleach. It’s their first release, the one that put them on much of the Seattle scene’s radar before that scene was on anyone’s radar, before Nirvana put it on everyone’s radar.
It’s a truly brilliant record: raw, discordant, angry but acerbically funny, its wry lyrical absurdism bouncing gleefully over the sharp chaos of incendiary punk musicianship. And I’ll be the first to admit that I find joy in Bleach because few of its songs found their way into regular radio rotation.
Even so, I can only put the record occasionally. It is still, after all, written and performed by that same group whose everywhere-ness has become unbearable, made their music milquetoast.
Every adult has some expression or gesture from their youth that they scratch their head at in retrospect, but this is different. I know very well that Nirvana’s songs are still good, remarkable even. All of the characteristics that made them so when I was in my pre-teen years are still there, and I still recognize them as such. But now it’s like they are wrapped in gauze, dulling their sharp edges. By no means does Cobain’s music sound like the countless lesser copycats that have been shoved down our throats. But somehow, through sheer force of glut, that’s how it feels.
Yes, in many ways, this is exactly what Cobain feared would happen to his music, even if he couldn’t have possibly anticipated the ways it manifested. He could not have, for example, expected his songwriting mimicked by a computer program, or his likeness virtually projected over the river near where he grew up. My piece for Real Life a few years ago aimed at both of these, but what’s still most risible to me is the suggestion that Cobain’s music wouldn’t have evolved, would have stayed the same so it could fit the mold that had been shaped around it.
That, however, seems to be the fate of most music. Lately, for work purposes, I’ve been driving quite a bit, and listening to old-fashioned terrestrial radio rather than streaming just to change things up. A lot of my dial’s time is spent on KROQ, proudly touted as a “world famous” alternative station. Listening to the station’s output more or less confirms what a meaningless designation “alternative” is.
It used to be that when a station played songs from thirty years ago, they were understood as an Oldies station, or maybe just classic rock. On KROQ you hear them all the time; not just Nirvana but Alice In Chains, Gorillaz, Eminem, Dookie-era Green Day, and so on. Along with plenty of contemporary bands that are playing in more or less the same sonic sandbox. If nostalgia for the 1990s is so enthusiastically in among the youth, then this may go some way toward explaining that.
Despite insistence to the contrary, this is a very different KROQ from the one that made the callsign famous. That KROQ prided itself on playing music that was very different from most typical rock stations, the station that employed Rodney Bingenheimer – arguably one of the greatest radio DJs of all time – and let him play pretty much whatever he wanted. It was this kind of station that first exposed many Southern Californians to punk rock, back when the style was still seen as an actual threat to public morals and decency.
It is difficult to imagine a station hiring a DJ like this today, let alone giving him such free reign. Much in the same way it is difficult to imagine a major label taking such a financial risk on an artist that broke with convention in the same way Nirvana did. A couple of years after Cobain’s suicide, the 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed for the consolidation of radio into the hands of just a few corporations. The craft of the rock and roll DJ was now on notice. It also granted private telecom companies far more reach into the nascent internet. We often talk of cancelled futures, that culture seems stuck in a cul-de-sac, but we sometimes neglect the very real and very venal history underpinning it.
Kurt Cobain and the rest of the indie rock ecosystem knew just how much they were already this fucked. It would be both insulting and frankly incorrect to say that it’s what led to his depression and profound disillusionment. It’s clear that, particularly in his last months, Cobain was in an immense amount of pain, the kind that those closest to him desperately tried to pull him out of. That can’t be chalked up to one single issue, important as music was to him. Still, a human is a whole creature, their psychology never neatly divided into so many categories, particularly when the act of creation and art are involved.
Today, there are plenty of tributes floating through the air. Many of them have this distinct but vague air of longing to them. It could be easily written off as nostalgia, but it might be something else. The 70’s and 80’s gave rise to a crude but very savvy “us vs. them” viewpoint in most local music scenes, an instinct that the major labels were out to scam both artist and listener, to make art sterile and easily marketed. In a nebulous way, this instinct is still there, though there are far fewer local scenes vibrant enough to anchor an nurture it. The most sure cultural scaffolding is Big Data and the algorithm, ever-present, hegemonic, and nearly impossible to grab onto.
Nobody needs to make an actual decision that culture will be a parade of sameness. Even the suits have less influence than they once did. Inertia is a powerful thing, and it has certainly become more of a thing than a process. With no one able to push art and culture toward innovation, the spectacle gets more and more spectacular, even as it also gets emptier and emptier.
Two days ago, Kiss – a band that Cobain may or may not have been a big fan of – sold their entire catalog and IP to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment Group for an unreal $300 million. This includes the digital avatars of the band’s members, which were revealed last winter and will be part of a “live” music “experience.” News is it will be going “on tour” in 2027.
Kiss have always been notorious for their shameless licensing, and Gene Simmons in particular is a right-wing shill. That a company is giving this impulse new space to roam seems to be creating a trickle-down effect among more mid-level bands, though in a more analog guise. In November, the Hives put out a call for cover bands to officially affiliate to the group’s brand. “Help us create a world where the Hives are playing in every city, all the time,” read the release. The fact that it won’t actually be the Hives is inconsequential. Simulation is reality, and commerce is the only art that matters.
What this signals is that music is no longer an event or an experience. Gone are the days when heading to a show was a sort of transgressive ritual, an act through which one forged an identity apart from a world that, for a variety of reasons, left us feeling cut adrift. Fans of Kiss or the Hives who go to one of these shows will in fact not be going to have an authentic moment. Not when everything is so staged or (literally) pre-programmed. Rather, they will go to these shows the same way we might go to a movie, albeit a far more expensive movie.
There’s no use trying to exit this reality. It is full-spectrum, and as of now, there is no evident egress. The budding musician or composer has far fewer opportunities to expose themselves to the grand variety of sonic modes and the emotions they invoke. Even Bandcamp, once one of the most hopeful spaces providing an exception to the online rule, seems to be heading in the same direction.
What this means for our sense of possibility – our sense of hope – is bleak, and unfortunately very familiar. All of us are already this fucked. If we want to change it, first we have to face it.