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Battle of the Bands 90s

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Westenn:
This is my once in a blue moon music rant. I am on Youtube and a video of Nickleback vs Creed vs Nirvana shows up. At first, I'm like, "How can they compare those bands with Nirvana" but then, I start thinking, Kurt Cobain was cool not because of the music, really, but because he was, "whether you like me or not, I'm still gonna be me, doing my thing". In reality, if you were to compare the Seattle Bands, Soundgarden is the best band. Nirvana was a fluke, Pearl Jam is great but they are like Metallica in that, they play safe music. As far as Alice in Chains, STP totally blew them away in so many ways and STP isn't even from Seattle. I mean, I was there, I saw it and heard it all. This overbloating of Nirvana stumps me to this day. So yeah, you can compare Nirvana to Nickleback and Creed, for sure. Yeah, they pumped out great songs but how many people did Nirvana go through to get there? How many in Pearl Jam? Then if you compare Soundgarden and STP, STP was the top live band at that time, period. I was there I saw all of them live, multiple times. Well, Nirvana I only saw once and they were alright.

NickLorenza:
I don’t want to disrespect your opinion of the matter. You definitely have a leg up on me since you’ve seen Nirvana live in person. I definitely can tell you your post made me think as I’m doing laundry.  I agree with you in part from the angle that Nirvana wrote much simpler songs compared to the other big four. Cobain definitely wasn’t Eddie Van Halen. Kids who are inspired to pick up a guitar and learn to play can figure out most of Kurt’s songs with relative ease and not a ton of practice time. So in that sense, I get what you’re saying. If music was strictly about complexity though we would all be listening to classical composers or prog rock. So there’s obviously many different factors in a band’s appeal. A fluke though??? Eh, I’d borderline agree with that on the grounds that they were in just the right place at just the right time, surrounded by just the right sequence of events. That’s what made them a global phenomenon the likes of which we really haven’t seen since.

Where we probably disagree is I feel that there was definitely something special about Nirvana. There was a point in time where they really were a force to be reckoned with live. They were just such a well oiled powerhouse of a machine. I was just watching some live footage of them on YouTube last week and was totally blown away; because as I’ve aged I think that I had forgotten just how good they were. Kurt always gets all the credit, but really he was super fortunate to have the rhythm section he had. Dave had good talent with amazing over the top presentation of it on stage and Krist is a very very underrated bassist in my opinion. He really made those songs what they were. Nirvana had a fury, an energy about them, that I don’t quite think other big four quite matched. That is what made them special. Pearl Jam in the early days where Eddie is all over the place and full of energy is very entertaining, but there is distinctly something much more raw about Nirvana. To me Alice In Chains made great recorded albums, but I’ve never really felt their live show was anything special.

I can agree that Soundgarden is probably the most musically talented band of the big four. If you’re strictly talking Seattle bands from that time period, I think Love Battery wrote some tunes that were really interesting. Have you ever listened to their “Dayglo” record?

Here’s something to think about though.... I think this also perhaps kind of plays into why you might also find Nirvana to be overrated...  To this day we still see Nirvana everywhere. They sell their shirts to kids at Target for fuck’s sake. One thing that separates Nirvana from the rest of the bands of their time, STP included, is that we never got to see them age and fall out of style as a band. They burned out while on top instead of fading away. As a result, they become almost folklore legend. Every time you see a video of that band playing, Kurt will never be any older than 27. We never got to see them fall out of style or make a record that totally flopped commercially.

What if Kurt would have lived? Things might have turned out very differently. He had an addiction like Scott did. Perhaps he would have had the chance of taking the same path in life of burning bridges that Scott took. Then Nirvana wouldn’t be the merchandising darling cash cow that they are. If he have done that you wouldn’t be seeing their shirts for sale everywhere in 2021 and they would be viewed almost in the same way as STP is today. STP was the biggest band in America there for a bit in the mid 90’s but are often overlooked today because of Scott. It’s a shame. Reverse the roles and envision how things might be different. What if Scott would have passed in say 1996 while his band was super huge and Kurt lived until a hard life caught up with him at 50. Things would be different. Kurt would have had the chance to fall out of style, age, and fade away; yet, the only images we would have of Scott would be young Scott.

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