The August issue of SPIN Magazine featured the headline 'What does Nevermind mean now?,' an article celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, released September 24, 1991. The article included a plethora of interviews with various entertainment folks about what the album means to them past, present and future. So I thought. Why not share what this album means to me...
I was 13 the year Nevermind was released, but I don't exactly remember when that year I got my hands on the album. My Grandfather was retired but worked part time for Hertz Rental Car company driving cars back and forth to various store locations in Pennsylvania. He was on his way home from dropping a car off near Lancaster when he decided to stop by Mom and Dad's since it was on the way. He handed me a cassette tape with a naked baby on the cover and I was never the same. Apparently someone had left it in the car he had dropped off so he decided to take it for his music loving granddaughter. Mom wasn't a big fan of "this type of music" so there was little to no chance she would have let me buy it on my own so I was stoked my Grandpa came through unknowingly. I had my brother's old stereo system (the kind that had speakers that practically took up my entire room) and before my Grandpa could walk out the door, I ran up to my room to check out this band Nirvana and this album Nevermind. The track "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had been on the radio and MTV by the time I got the album but experiencing the whole album in my own room was a moment I would never forget. For the first time in my 13 years of existence I felt like this music was mine. It came from my generation. I was actually alive to witness it's birth. It didn't feel passed down like the Beatles or Pink Floyd. I didn't know Kurt or Dave or Krist but I knew people like them. I have no idea why, but after listening to "Come As You Are" a million times I had decided that was going to be the song I lost my virginity to...didn't happen, but I kinda wish I that it had.
19 years later I found myself sitting on the beach in Rockaway, NY - enjoying the lazy life of unemployment - reading "Heavier Than Heaven," an amazing Kurt Cobain biography by Charles Cross. Sobbing. It was well known that Cobain had a shitty childhood, but this book spelled it out in tragic detail. I won't lie, it was tough getting through the beginning of the book knowing it wasn't going to get better. Knowing what comes at the end of the book, but, I know this is going to sound cheesy, after finishing the book I actually felt closer to him, like I knew him. I found myself listening to every album I had just to keep that feeling alive.
The truth is we have no idea what would have been if Kurt hadn't killed himself. Would Nirvana have had a sustainable career much like that of Pearl Jam? We'll never know, but what we do know is that this album changed music forever. And gave the "slackers and losers" a sense of purpose and belonging because one of their own had become the new face of a genre dubbed Grunge.
Here are a few vids of my favorite tracks off Nirvana's "Nevermind"
"Breed"
"Drain You"
"Something In The Way"
