Jeff Sharlet has a piece on authenticity in popular music. There’s some decent thinking in there (and some sophomore-level thinking), but the two things that struck me were both Kurt Cobain-related:

First, conclusive proof that the 20-year-old version of Sharlet was an ass:

Like many people of a certain age, I remember where I was and what I was doing the day Cobain died. I was in my third year of college, I was in a dorm; friends and I were drinking 40-ounce bottles of Colt 45 malt liquor, and when we heard the news, we laughed. Cobain, the gold standard of rock-star sincerity since his suicide, had long seemed to us like a joke, a poseur, a pretty-boy pop singer for the high-school teens who gathered in herds of earnest weeping within hours of the news.

Wow. I think it’s fair to say one can dislike Cobain’s music and still think the proper reaction to his death is something other than laughter.

The second thing is just sloppy, a quote from Cobain’s suicide note:

“The fact is,” wrote Nirvana’s singer Kurt Cobain shortly before eating the muzzle of a shotgun in 1994, “I can’t fool you, any one of you … The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.” (The italics are Cobain’s.)

“The italics are Cobain’s”? Who in the history of earth has ever used italics in a handwritten suicide note? Underlining, sure — I’ll even buy bolding. But human beings don’t handwrite italics. Check for yourself (about 40 percent of the way down). As I said: sloppy.

(For the record, the best thing to come out of that suicide-note line remains Matthew Sweet’s album 100% Fun.)

24 April 2007

Comments

No comments yet.

Post a comment