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Originally Posted by dead_battery
i still like nirvana, they were at times a really amazing band. i just think there is so much wrong with the way they did things and their influence hangs over a lot of people like a bad cloud. and they are also symbolic of a dead end that is still largely with us and that now, they are a part of history.
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Disagree with this completely, Nirvana's impact, while be no means intentional, was to the the post-1990s what the Beatles were to the post-1960s, a door opener for so many other great bands. For Nirvana, when major labels were out scouting and Nirvana became a symbol of this "underground" wave into the mainstream, it changed entirely the record industry. Previously, major studios and major distributors controlled music and access to music. THEY decided what was distributed, what was profitable, what was marketable. When they stumbled onto Nirvana and the "grunge" movement, it changed things fundamentally. Suddenly indie labels had power, authority, and distribution. Majors were letting indies more or less do their thing because it was making everybody money. By the 2000s the entire structure had changed, major distributors realized that even small volume bands that didn't push a lot of units, still added up to a lot of profit if several of them were distributed. Distributors and major labels changed their business model, away from focusing on hyping mainstream bands on television and radio towards distributing and supporting indie bands and even DIY bands, but in bulk, and making up the difference through a high volume of bands rather than a high volume of records sold through one or two "big" bands. Now? Small labels and underground bands have access and opportunity without inherently having to sell-out. Indie bands and labels have just never had it so good, its the best of both worlds, and its in part due to Nirvana demonstrating effectively that small, indie bands can have enough impact to even knock of all-time greats like Michael Jackson.
As to Nirvana, I will only reiterate once more, Nirvana weren't an overtly political band, there was NO MESSAGE, they were just a band, having fun, making records and playing shows. People get what they get out of it, but the band was not trying to make any statements, not trying to change our society, they were just playing their music, and people happened to really dig it. Much like with Hendrix, it was all the vampires and hanger-ons who destroyed them, not they themselves.