Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain killed himself on my birthday. That is an odd and perhaps morbid thing to remember on a day when you're trying to celebrate, or at least relax, but it really doesn't bother me that much. It's sad, because you're left to wonder, as with other great artists who were gone before their time, what might have happened had things turned out differently.

When I think of Nirvana, I always go back to that autumn day in 1993 when they played live and acoustic on MTV Unplugged. I think it is one of the great live performances in the history of rock and roll. On that night, Kurt Cobain was able to channel the demons that would eventually overtake him and use them to fuel his performance. It was a remarkable performance, all over the map - Bowie, Leadbelly, Meat Puppets, The Vaselines, lesser known Nirvana - a performance that, nearly 20 years later, still gives me goose bumps.

So in honor of a great artist, a song from that performance.




R.I.P.

1 comment:

Marguerite said...

Believe it or not, Leslie and I were hanging out the evening the news broke. We watched MTV news all night.