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2666Well, the second book in the series is about Hole. But still.
I grabbed this one randomly even though I knew I shouldn't be spending money on random shit. I was on a post-Christmas spree at the record shop, you know how it goes. I also got a CD player that did not work. Exchanged it for a Twin Peaks vinyl & of course a Live Through This vinyl. there's really no other album in the entire world apart from Live Through This.
But for the book- Live Through This, part one is a biography about Kurt Cobain & Nirvana, written by Everett True. True was a music journalist, one of Cobain's close friends and knew him before Nirvana skyrocketed to fame. I didn't know that and thought the book was a comic biography about Nirvana because the cover features an ink illustration of the band playing. So when I opened it to see pages full of Times New Roman and the occasional spot illustration I felt incredibly scammed but calmed down and read it anyways. Turns out it's good.
I don't listen to Nirvana much, I was raised in a Hole household (my mom's an og fan). From a zoomer perspective, Nirvana is such an omnipresent part of modern college/grunge/alt culture that I forget that it was a real band with real people in it. Does that make sense? It's not like everyone at college is still talking about Nirvana, it's like Nirvana is such a standard building block of the culture that it's like air. Or a brand. Like how I can't really get into Fleetwood Mac because when I was a kid the rock radio station used Dream On's riff as their station's tagline, so it's the 94.5FM song to me forever. And you know the age old H&M Nirvana T-shirt boomer joke.
Now it feels weird to listen to Nirvana because of the intimacy of some of the stories True shares in the biography. I remember being, like, nine, and probably Teen Spirit was on the radio (probably 94.5) and my mom was talking about how everyone was interviewing Cobain and asking what the lyrics meant, and everyone was convinced they were full of deep meaning if you could decode them, but Cobain always asserted they meant absolutely nothing. I think this conversation also influenced what I thought of Nirvana from then on. But True's biography puts it in a different light, now it seems more like an angry retort to a press invading his life and trying to dissect not just his songs but everything about him. The songs mean nothing, fuck off.
The book hasn't gotten me into Nirvana. Maybe it's gotten me even less into Nirvana. Reading about MTV Unplugged, how the suits were threatening to fuck things up between the band and their friends on the label if Nirvana didn't perform, it just makes it more uncomfortable to listen to. And True mentioning how the cheers you hear in the background of the performances are from management. I think it is a really interesting book about fame. True mentions how rock stars either conform to the fame or lose their minds completely. I've always been interested in rock stars, I think they're a fascinating little part of American culture and I can't really put it into words. Lots to do with the spectacle of the whole thing, lots to do with its production and overproduction, fifteen foot high stages, and a bunch of dipshits becoming caricatures of themselves as time goes on. How it's an absolute cash-cow. Is it possible to make rock music just because you like rock music anymore? Is there going to always be a desire to be a rock star in the back of your mind? Rock music is mostly about being a rock star, which is less about music and more about acting like an archetype (the archetype of the Rock Star). Of course there's a lot of writing on the internet about parasocial relationships, and celebrities are people too, but watching some of the big ticket performances i'm always wondering if a real person still exists back there. I mostly think this about Green Day. See: BJA 2004 iHeartRadio incident- Billie is shafted, given four minutes total to perform. He loses it. "I'M A ROCK STAR!" he yells, and then he smashes his guitar. Nirvana was infamous for destroying their equipment at nearly every show. But in 2004 it's tired, and at the iHeartRadio event its tired, he has no control, and the guitar smashing might be interpreted less as pure rage and more as a desire assert oneself as a rockstar, because there’s not much left.
True starts off the book by saying that he hates rock music, he hates the macho shit, he hates how it's the music taste of playground bullies, fake revolutionaries, people who dream of being tough but know they aren't. But he loves rock and roll. "How can I despise anything that has given my life such validity and direction, that has enabled me to communicate with so many others over the years? It’s not rock music’s fault that most people are dumb.” In Scorched Earth*, Jonathan Crary briefly notes that, while music as a whole is commodified, it is one of the last ways youth can construct an organic self-image and connect in a community. Everything else is shopping malls and social media and the Internet. And Green Day keeps putting out bullshit for the tenth year running, making them the absolute epitome of sellout fake-revolutionary corporate slop-rock, and some of it’s even cleverly marketed. The music is shit, but they know what aesthetics to draw on when designing the music videos. We all hate Green Day for what they’ve turned into. In True’s words, they conformed to the fame, like Aerosmith and Metallica and everyone else. All the same, I love Green Day because I’m an uptight loner loser always fucking things up with my short temper, and I’m also always picking scabs off my face, and I love rock music for making my everyday boring apathy into something pretty good to listen to.
*You should read Scorched Earth. And then you should read 24/7. Both are short and absolutely worth it.
I grabbed this one randomly even though I knew I shouldn't be spending money on random shit. I was on a post-Christmas spree at the record shop, you know how it goes. I also got a CD player that did not work. Exchanged it for a Twin Peaks vinyl & of course a Live Through This vinyl. there's really no other album in the entire world apart from Live Through This.
But for the book- Live Through This, part one is a biography about Kurt Cobain & Nirvana, written by Everett True. True was a music journalist, one of Cobain's close friends and knew him before Nirvana skyrocketed to fame. I didn't know that and thought the book was a comic biography about Nirvana because the cover features an ink illustration of the band playing. So when I opened it to see pages full of Times New Roman and the occasional spot illustration I felt incredibly scammed but calmed down and read it anyways. Turns out it's good.
I don't listen to Nirvana much, I was raised in a Hole household (my mom's an og fan). From a zoomer perspective, Nirvana is such an omnipresent part of modern college/grunge/alt culture that I forget that it was a real band with real people in it. Does that make sense? It's not like everyone at college is still talking about Nirvana, it's like Nirvana is such a standard building block of the culture that it's like air. Or a brand. Like how I can't really get into Fleetwood Mac because when I was a kid the rock radio station used Dream On's riff as their station's tagline, so it's the 94.5FM song to me forever. And you know the age old H&M Nirvana T-shirt boomer joke.
Now it feels weird to listen to Nirvana because of the intimacy of some of the stories True shares in the biography. I remember being, like, nine, and probably Teen Spirit was on the radio (probably 94.5) and my mom was talking about how everyone was interviewing Cobain and asking what the lyrics meant, and everyone was convinced they were full of deep meaning if you could decode them, but Cobain always asserted they meant absolutely nothing. I think this conversation also influenced what I thought of Nirvana from then on. But True's biography puts it in a different light, now it seems more like an angry retort to a press invading his life and trying to dissect not just his songs but everything about him. The songs mean nothing, fuck off.
The book hasn't gotten me into Nirvana. Maybe it's gotten me even less into Nirvana. Reading about MTV Unplugged, how the suits were threatening to fuck things up between the band and their friends on the label if Nirvana didn't perform, it just makes it more uncomfortable to listen to. And True mentioning how the cheers you hear in the background of the performances are from management. I think it is a really interesting book about fame. True mentions how rock stars either conform to the fame or lose their minds completely. I've always been interested in rock stars, I think they're a fascinating little part of American culture and I can't really put it into words. Lots to do with the spectacle of the whole thing, lots to do with its production and overproduction, fifteen foot high stages, and a bunch of dipshits becoming caricatures of themselves as time goes on. How it's an absolute cash-cow. Is it possible to make rock music just because you like rock music anymore? Is there going to always be a desire to be a rock star in the back of your mind? Rock music is mostly about being a rock star, which is less about music and more about acting like an archetype (the archetype of the Rock Star). Of course there's a lot of writing on the internet about parasocial relationships, and celebrities are people too, but watching some of the big ticket performances i'm always wondering if a real person still exists back there. I mostly think this about Green Day. See: BJA 2004 iHeartRadio incident- Billie is shafted, given four minutes total to perform. He loses it. "I'M A ROCK STAR!" he yells, and then he smashes his guitar. Nirvana was infamous for destroying their equipment at nearly every show. But in 2004 it's tired, and at the iHeartRadio event its tired, he has no control, and the guitar smashing might be interpreted less as pure rage and more as a desire assert oneself as a rockstar, because there’s not much left.
True starts off the book by saying that he hates rock music, he hates the macho shit, he hates how it's the music taste of playground bullies, fake revolutionaries, people who dream of being tough but know they aren't. But he loves rock and roll. "How can I despise anything that has given my life such validity and direction, that has enabled me to communicate with so many others over the years? It’s not rock music’s fault that most people are dumb.” In Scorched Earth*, Jonathan Crary briefly notes that, while music as a whole is commodified, it is one of the last ways youth can construct an organic self-image and connect in a community. Everything else is shopping malls and social media and the Internet. And Green Day keeps putting out bullshit for the tenth year running, making them the absolute epitome of sellout fake-revolutionary corporate slop-rock, and some of it’s even cleverly marketed. The music is shit, but they know what aesthetics to draw on when designing the music videos. We all hate Green Day for what they’ve turned into. In True’s words, they conformed to the fame, like Aerosmith and Metallica and everyone else. All the same, I love Green Day because I’m an uptight loner loser always fucking things up with my short temper, and I’m also always picking scabs off my face, and I love rock music for making my everyday boring apathy into something pretty good to listen to.
*You should read Scorched Earth. And then you should read 24/7. Both are short and absolutely worth it.
now I've stumbled here
Date: 2026-01-19 03:48 am (UTC)Re: now I've stumbled here
Date: 2026-01-19 05:50 am (UTC)Thank you! I think you're spot on in your analysis. There's so much to say about image and stagnation when it comes to rock stars. I think the ABBA Voyage thing hits it on the head, it’s like a postmodernist’s dream come true. Now physically aging doesn’t matter, maturing isn’t an obstacle, as long as likeness rights are secured death probably doesn’t either, you can always sell the experience of being young, wild, and free. I think the packaging & selling of that experience is at the heart of much rock music.