The seating cliques in the main cafeteria on my university campus were set up similarly to the regular friend group clusters you saw in high schools across America. Jocks in one spot, the women’s soccer team across from them. We didn’t have a football team, but because the women’s soccer team won championships year after year, they filled the football slot immediately. Plus, they threw the best parties. Those ladies, the coolest people on campus with the highest GPA of any sports team, were mostly from Canada. But those expert student-athletes, from the other side of the Great Lakes? Knew how to grind to dancehall, Jack.
Black folks were in another spot, although there were divisions and cliques within the Black collegiate demographic (I attended a predominantly white university in the Northeast); preppies ate close to the exit because they were “special,” and the white fraternities and sororities were over by the window overlooking the campus bridge so they could instill fear in the incoming pledge class. And then there were my people: The campus radio station staff and the university newspaper staff. We sat all the way at the end, like some far-off Russian outpost. I loved those two groups because, to me, they had snippets from all the campus cliques, rolled into one
roiling entity of conversations: Disagreements about Brand Nubian (some white folks thought they were too militant) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (at the time I thought George Clinton producing one of their early albums enabled them to assume they had achieved some type of “ghetto pass.” They had not.). The death of journalism through the oncoming programming of “happy talk” broadcasters reading the nightly news off of teleprompters, and why somebody doesn’t pull the damn plug on Aerosmith’s 17th comeback already.
Yep, an argumentative lot we were. Geeking out to music and journalism. Having focused conversations instead of, well…small talk. We weren’t the coolest, but dammit, we thought we were.
My man Dwayne Brown from Bedford-Stuyvesant, “Bed-Stuy, Do or Die,” Brooklyn, New York, would always bust my balls about hanging with all those skinny white dudes, listening to too much rock. “Don’t forget you are Black, Bro,” he joked. He knew I had a big ear and always tried to give new and different shit a chance, but he enjoyed busting my balls all the same.
Until one day I was walking to my radio/journalism table, and D-Brown grabbed me, pointed to the tinny-shitty speaker in the ceiling, and said, “Why can’t I get this out of my head?” He started to explain why Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” haunted his thoughts: over coffee, during class, amidst romantic times with his lady, and even when studying for a test. “For some reason, that opening guitar riff, ‘Chug, chug, chunga-chug, DAA-DAA! Chug, chug, chunga-chug, DIT-DIT!’ pays rent in my brain. Why is that?”
I honestly have no idea what my answer was, but more importantly, it didn’t matter.
Nirvana broke through to people who couldn’t care less about this little scruffy rock band formed in Aberdeen, Washington, founded by lead singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic. Their lead singer was weird-looking. Vulnerable. Had substance abuse problems, wore skirts on stage at times, and delivered performances that felt bizarrely human. All of these qualities, which had no business being upfront, created a persona of authenticity for everyone. It’s hard… in fact, I wasn’t looking for a new alternative rock band; that department was already well stocked. Thank you. Nor a new scene called “grunge,” or even for a second thought—well, maybe I need to upgrade my wardrobe with some flannel.
NO. Like much of America, Nirvana landed on people who had the least idea of what they were about, but somehow, like me, they got hooked. Nirvana was unpolished, a bit unhinged, and not a band put together by a label. It’s hard to fake that much pain. Suffering. That, along with the music, cut through everything. And affected all people.
Nirvana, who got officially credited with ending the popularity of hair metal, achieved unexpected mainstream success with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the first single from its landmark second album, Nevermind (1991). A cultural phenomenon of the 1990s, Nevermind was certified 13 times platinum in the U.S. Imagine that. Even Michael Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous was only certified 8 times platinum.
What’s the reason? It’s not easy to place. Alienation. White kids finally rebelling against their parents, many years after Reagan fucked up America? Young music listeners tired of being played by corporations and being stuck with slapdash bands put together for immediate market domination?
It could be a lot of things. Or maybe young folks saw in Cobain a young, open-minded man questioning all the shit anyone in his generation should be questioning?
It’s unfortunate that we really don’t get any answers until Cobain’s death and MTV releases Unplugged. Then… we hear Bowie, Leadbelly, and The Vaselines, deconstructed, and very few Nirvana cuts, much to the chagrin of MTV. The recording, made in New York, live in front of an audience five months before Cobain’s death, was not intended as a farewell. You hear Kurt’s origins, Grohl playing with brushes, and Krist on an accordion. This concert was going to be their “get away from the business” performance, where they covered their influences and origins and also put a fire in the sky, suggesting maybe where they were going next.
Master producer Steve Albini, who produced their last record, In Utero, had some thoughts on the band in a 2013 interview for Uncut: “Kurt was under a lot of pressure, so I can’t really fault him for the way he behaved. He was a dope fiend. He’d just had a baby. He’s dealing with millions of dollars and people who all want a piece of him. How would anybody react under those circumstances?” stated the producer on the last studio album for the group. “The long and short of it is, the band Nirvana—totally normal guys. Punk rock guys in a working band, totally normal. Every single other person involved in their life was a pure piece of shit. Pure parasitic piece of shit. There are people who were in Nirvana’s camp who will think, ‘He can’t be talking about me.’ I’m talking about them.
“Those people lied to my face and the band’s face, took advantage of the band’s naivety, and got them hoodwinked into signing ridiculous deals; embezzled money from them; and made them pay for absurd bullshit. Every single other person involved in that band’s career was a piece of shit.”
So while Kurt may be fading in and out of being dope-sick, and Albini is stating the reasons why, and the fans, the audience, the Greek chorus, and millions of onlookers observe this train going off the tracks, they still feel something unfeigned, attempting to resurrect from the heap of unattended supervision Cobain had become. You hear his voice cracking in certain stretches on the Leadbelly track, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?“; he’s giving an unshielded assessment of where he is health-wise, and the fans hear it. But the gatekeepers don’t. Those facts lie in the truth of this concert, which doesn’t get release consideration. Until he’s passed. Maybe it’s the dearth of Nirvana songs on it that somehow made the session not as viable previous to his passing.
But on its own, with or without unfortunate circumstances, America finally gets the answers about Nirvana they were asking the moment they heard that intro to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
