Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Severian
This may be true. Hell, it is. But Nirvana was the closest thing our generation ever had to the Beatles, like it or not. So the comparisons are inevitable. Just like Eminem has been ridiculously compared to Elvis fucking Presley.
Growing up, as the son of a Beatle-maniac, I think I consciously attributed some Beatle-like qualities to Nirvana, simply because it felt as though my father's generation had been such a meaningful one, and mine had been so empty and ultimately meaningless.
....
Still, Nirvana was just accepted into the rock n' roll hall of fame on their first year of eligibility. That's something only a handful of artists can claim, the Beatles being one of them. The world clearly views Nirvana as a band that defined an era better than anyone else. I think the case is closed on them being the band of the 90's. To say anything else is to admit obliviousness. If you didn't live through the 90's, or were too young to know what was going on, you probably think it was Radiohead. That's bullshit, though.
|
To this I totally agree, and if anything, while I am hugely obsessed with radiohead I never understood the hype surrounding them, I don't see them as all that influential.
Quote:
|
A better comparison is Kurt Cobain and John Lennon. As strange as that may sound, they were equally snarky, sardonic, pop-culture hating social justice advocates for their own time. Lennon did Bed-ins; Kurt slandered homophobic rock stars and middle american skinheads.
|
I can't agree with this at all. John Lennon was an entirely different kind of artist, and while both clearly had some fun with their music, John clearly took his art as being more serious than Kurt did. John's music often had some kind of purpose or statement, whereas Kurt was mostly having fun with his art, even if sometimes his songs also made somewhat of a cultural or social statement. I don't think Kurt was anywhere near the kind of almost natural intellectual that John was, and it showed in how abrasive John got towards the late 1970s. Kurt was never abrasive, he was just himself. John was himself too, but John's self was a bit more caustic at times. Also, John had a very high opinion of his art and his place in the musical pantheon (in other words he was a bit self-absorbed) whereas Kurt didn't seem much to give a shit about it, if anything, it became clear by 1993/94 that he didn't really care for the spotlight all that much any longer, and it is widely accepted that not only was Nirvana soon to be dissolved, but that Kurt was probably going to go off the radar musically and dive into something more indie or underground, whereas John almost pimped out his final record, and was in fact devastated personally when it didn't have critical acclaim or mass appeal by his fans. John cared about his Billboard numbers and sales charts, Kurt clearly could care less.