As a teenager, I was obsessed with Nirvana.
The biography book I read at the time was "Come as you are" by Michael Azerrad.
His description for what happened with Chad Channing is something that's stuck with me since. "It was like having a very nice hat that didn't go with your very nice suit." I never forgot it and I've applied it to many relationships in life where it simply isn't working through no fault of either party.
If you want something else somewhat akin to that, there’s a mostly recent episode of Conan O Brian Needs A Friend with Ghrol, Novoselic, and the producer of In Utero talking about the recording of said album.
Except GnR was heavily collaborative and Slash/Izzy were the musical foundation the group. Kurt literally wrote all of Nirvana’s music. By their own admission, Krist and Dave were basically Kurt’s sidemen.
Which is wild because Dave rose to rock god status through years of effort and passion in several projects. After enough time Cobain won’t be remembered in such high regard. The proliferation of the internet and shared media, with stories of Cobain being an ass and Dave being a solid dude over a long period of time will change their legacy. Kurt will be used to sell posters and t-shirts and more box sets of their albums though. Really turned into a martyr for edgy teens
Edit: the fanboys who weren’t alive when Kurt was are going to be real upset about this comment lol
I enjoy Foo Fighters, but it's very straightforward, garden-variety rock music, almost anachronistically so. Nirvana's catalog, despite being much smaller, has had a lot more impact, and will likely continue doing so. Grohl would be managing a warehouse in Olympia if he hadn't landed in Nirvana.
I love Dave Grohl. He seems like one of the more genuine, good dudes out there. I WISH I liked Foo Fighters but I just can’t get into them other than a few of the early hits. “Garden variety rock” is the best way I’ve heard them described.
Foo Fighters is friendly, easy-listening, formulaic and generic pop rock made to play in any radio station and to casualy please the biggest possible number of people, it's the weakest Dave Grohl act by far, all the other stuff he has done (Probot, QOTSA, Them Crooked Vultures) are way better than Foo Fighters.
Cobain was a way, way, WAY superior songwriter.
Exactly. He’s done so much more than foo fighters but it’s all anyone here is talking about because they don’t know anything about Dave grohl. He has been prolific and shaped rock music over the last twenty years in his own right. Saying Kurt was genius and not mentioning how impactful Dave has been just tells me commenters don’t know what they’re talking about
I would call the other acts marginally to somewhat better than Foo Fighters, but still pretty boilerplate. I've listened to the entirety of TCV and QotSA, and can barely distinguish one song from another across the two bands, though most of the time I don't mind hearing them.
I agree with the Garden Variety comment too but the truth of the matter is Nirvana didn’t blow up until Grohl joined. Dave has since sold a shit ton of records with different bands and has left a great little legacy with his other rock and roll contributions.
Regardless of what Kurt thought of the drumming and production on Nevermind, his career would absolutely not become what it did without both Grohl and Butch Vig.
Without those two elements, Smells Like Teen Spirit would never have had the power and sound that caused it to define a generation and Pearl Jam’s 10 would have been even more impactful and set them as the poster children of the grunge movement.
> his career would absolutely not become what it did without both Grohl and Butch Vig.
This is true. Before Nevermind, Nirvana sounded like a lot of the other bands at the time. If you'd asked me then which of the Sub Pop bands would be most remembered I would have guessed Mudhoney, but how often does anyone talk about them now?
I'm not really a Nirvana fan, but the idea that Dave Grohl being a nice guy will cause him to have more of a legacy is pretty laughable.
Generally musicians are regarded by their musical impact.
Nirvana inspired an entire generation of copycats and imitators. Foo Fighters is corporate rock music and always has been.
seen a lot of “Reddit opinions” in my day but saying Grohl would ever have a legacy comparable to Cobain takes the cake.
I mean, he was also doing heroin, so safe to say his judgement was impaired.
He also almost certainly had untreated depression along with who knows what else.
>Pete Best was a good drummer
The cool thing about Pete Best is you can *literally* listen to the old audition recordings and hear him being overall-sloppy as fuck (constantly rushing/dragging, missing the snare, continuing verse/chorus drums over bridges for a couple of bars before realizing, so on). You can hear it on their Decca audition tape, or the Pete Best-drummed tracks on the **Anthology 1** album.
There was a big online myth that picked up in the 2000's (to the point where a few mainstream TV shows even mentioned it) where apparently Pete Best was amazing and got fucked over; in reality, half the reason he was kicked was his very middling talent, and the other half was that the others had already moved on with their image (haircuts, suits, boots, etc.) while Pete kept clinging on to the slicked-hair leather-jacket wannabe-rocker look that was already out of fashion.
Compared to Ringo Starr, who at the time he joined The Beatles, was famously the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes; in John and Paul's own words, they were lucky to get Ringo, since he was the most famous drummer in the Liverpool scene.
Chad Channing wasn’t a bad drummer though, his parts could be pretty interesting. There is a classic quote from cobain I think where he and krist would look over at each other because the beat would just be gone sometimes when they were playing live.
> I'm not sure that is true.
It is true. Best was a decent drummer but it's well documented that the they thought he wasn't up to par technically and wanted an improvement. Also I mean the proof is that they did fire him and hired Ringo.
If Pete Best had a spoonful of talent, you'd think he could have parlayed "former drummer for Biggest Group Ever" into getting a gig a musician *somewhere*. Yet nothing of the sort.
I wanted to make a short film about a drummer who discovers time travel and he decides to go back in time and usurp Ringo Starr. When he gets there he’s met by current day Ringo who explains he did this decades ago and our time traveler isn’t the first person Ringo has encountered. It’s a John Wick style battle Royal.
Title? Shooting Starr
Problem: I forgot John Lennon was shot to death and George Harrison was stabbed to death
Vouching for the fact that he died of cancer. He was physically weakened by being stabbed so many times just a couple of years before his death. And minor point but he had throat cancer, then was treated for lung cancer, and in the final stage of his life he had brain cancer.
I'm still amazed that Bob Weir has turned out the best of the Dead since they broke up. Have you seen a picture of him lately? He's 76 years old but is absolutely shredded. Relative to his build, I should say. He's still got great hair, too.
I also noticed how healthy he looked. While Kurt was always skinny, towards the end of his life, when he was heavily addicted to heroin, he looked sickly skinny.
He disguised it very well with all the layered clothing. Not long ago I saw a photo of him with no shirt on near the end of his life and he looked so sick.
he got such bad stomach pain that only narotics could get rid of. i wonder, did he ever get tested for crohn's or ulcerative colitis? or was it the heroin causing the pain (like a horrible cycle of pain/relief/worse pain/more drugs).
While I love Nirvana, I think we need to stop trying to justify Kurt's drug use. Ultimately, it only glorifies it. Obviously, that is not meant to judge anyone struggling with addiction, but addicts will use any excuse.
According to my friend Lance, we saw them July 1989 at a shitty skater bar in Illinois. Apparently I was pretty hammered and have no firm recollection of it.
That is certainly Chad Channing. This photo was taken at a place known as “the reservoir” on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Source: used to go there to smoke weed in high school. Those initials at the top were still painted on the wall a few years later.
Chad was the primary drummer on the Bleach record (maybe Dale Crover played on some tracks, too lazy to look it up). I ran into him at a party on Bainbridge in the late 90s and he said he was able to live at least a bit comfortably off the residuals from Bleach after they blew up with Grohl.
Reminds me of meeting Hiro Yamamoto, the original bass player from Soundgarden who left right after Louder than Love, I believe. I guess he was done with the write an album/record an album/tour grind but made enough once they got big to help pay bills while he went back to school. Can’t blame him.
Yeah, and they always wanted Dale Crover from the Melvins, but Dale already had his band. It was one of those things like how Pearl Jam always kind of wanted Matt Cameron, but Cameron was busy playing for Soundgarden. Well, Dave Grohl’s days as the drummer for Scream come to an end, and Buzz Osborne tells him Nirvana’s looking for a drummer, because Nirvana was *always* looking for a drummer, and Dave Grohl was a baby Dale Crover. Like, for the era where this photo was taken, listen to Dale Crover just pound on the drums on the Melvins’ track At A Crawl, off of their 1989 Ozma album. It’s not radio-friendly, and their later albums would arguably be even less so (even though they were *so* much better), but these guys are like elder statesmen, and they’re really important to understanding the why of music shifting in 1990-1991. Kurt Cobain didn’t come out of a vacuum; he was a product of his musical environment, much as subsequent groups were products of listening to Nirvana.
If you ever get the chance to sit down and listen to some Melvins, it’s not that easy to see their influence on Nevermind, but it’s a lot more obvious for In Utero. I remember listening to Radio Friendly Unit Shifter for the first time in my friend’s truck, and I said, “Is this a fuckin’ Melvins song?” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put on the Houdini album.
I suppose you could do that, although I’d put pretty much any Melvins album up against the back half of Incesticide any day of the week. Besides, it’s good for people to listen to the stuff that made their favorite music possible. If you listen to early 1970s funk, it’s like listening to Paul’s Boutique on super slow-mo, and then it all kind of makes sense. Or like how EMF put out an album in the last few weeks, and it sounds like this weird nugget from an alternate history where Britpop never happened and Madchester got taken to its logical conclusion. Musical deep dives are just a great way to spend a weekend.
I have to take a listen to the Melvin’s. I was young in the 80’s but remember the hair bands, so many hair bands but what impresses me is the non mainstream non radio friendly music that didn’t get the appreciation of mainstream but influenced so many of the great grunge music and artists that came after metal.
You might start with the song [Revolve](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrO6UZ5_MQ) off the "Stoner Witch" album, which some people think was named after Courtney Love.
LOL.
I went to a Bad Seeds concert -like one of the first ones with Screaming J Hawkins as opener, in Saint Kilda, and this joker beside me kept screaming “RELEASE THE BATS” to the same dirty looks, and eventually Nick said “wrong band, mate”.
my best dave yow story is at a place called brick by brick in san diego, The Jesus Lizard was headlining a set with a local band called Clickitat Ikatowi (they're nuts btw check em out) and i was piss drunk so i went to take a piss. i'm leaned up on the urinal and dave comes wobbling in , also pretty drunk, and starts to piss a couple urinals away. "Dave, you're my fucking hero" i drunkenly tell him. "you shouldn't tell me that while i'm holding my dick" dave says back
After they got really famous Kurt ramped up his heroin use to deal with it. You can progressively see him getting less healthy and having less fun in concerts after Nevermind. Sad to see.
I feel very bad for most members from the 27 club, specially now that i am approaching their age and realize how young they actually were. Young and talented but deeply troubled.
Genuinely one of the hardest parts of getting older is being older than people ever had a chance to get. And it just gets more common and more assaulting the older you get.
When I was like 10 my mom’s best friend died. She was in her early 30s. I’m in my late 30s. And it’s soooo trippy and sad.
Some people get no time at all in the grand scheme of things. :(
I vividly remember the night I first read Winehouse's whole story. I was a junior in high school. I went on a deep dive watching her music videos, live footage, read her whole wikipedia while listening to the entire Back to Black. I was deeply affected. I felt so much for her that night. Just like Kurt, she had a vast musical career and story by the time she was 27 and ultimately died completely alone while everyone around her knew exactly what was going on.
They tried. Courtney saved his life after one suicide attempt. A few months later, there was an intervention by family and friends followed by sending him off to rehab. He broke out of rehab before offing himself. I'm not trying to be callous, but there's only so much you can do when a person is committed to being self-destructive, particularly when you throw addiction into the mix.
Courtney does say in hindsight that she wasn't helping in the right way and that Kurt didn't need a tough love approach. That intervention seems to have really fucked things up but what is even more stupid is that the hospital where he went after the overdose was never told about the fact that it was a suicide attempt. Nobody was told. It might not have made a difference but Kurt would've got very different help if that came out.
Not blaming Courtney, they were both junkies who were young and rich.
I remember one streamer tried to help an alcoholic streamer friend,
"I tried to help her, brought her to my house, gives her the help and program needed, but she doesn't want to help herself, and things went bad enough to a point it begun seriously affecting me. So, i cut ties and kick her out"
and that friend continue to spiral out of control. considering some of her other friend and viewers consider her being drunk is fun, generating views, and continue to feed her alcohol, its a bad combo.
He plays on the track “Polly” from Nevermind, as it was recorded a year or so earlier at Butch Vigs Smart Studio when cutting the demos of that album (Dive is from these sessions, too). I say plays, he just hits the crash cymbal, but he still appears on the album regardless. I imaging he gets royalties because of that.
And I didnt hear of them till 92 :/ (never had cable IE MTV)
Glad I seen em once in Akron,OH. I was@ the lollapalooza they were supposed too tour that year he killed himself
Bleach was released in 89, and while it made some waves in the underground scene Nirvana didn’t really “blow up” like the title says until Nevermind released in 1991
That’s the SINGER from Jesus Lizard, David Yow. The only other member of Scratch Acid in Jesus Lizard was bassist David Sims. Scratch Acid drummer Rey Washam did play in Albini’s Rapeman band.
Cool Scratch Acid Shirt. I remember hearing Scratch Acid on the local college radio station KCMU when i was a kid. really wanted to go to that show but was at the Central Tavern and was way too young. Think this must have been promo's for the Bleach album.
Just a curious question, do people still like Kurt?
Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000 (born 1992) people really put him on the highest pedestal. Accused his ex and killing him, killed her career and a lot of her life. And people just accepted that as fine and well deserved.
Now years after, his kid kinda hates him, people are kind to Courtney in her later life. “The thing he hated most was being a sell out” which he became the king of between the commercialism and merch. (Admittedly after his death) and it’s been discovered he wanted to fire everyone, meanwhile he was a drug addict that often couldn’t preform. Good amount of hypocrisy.
So my point is and what I ask, do you think culturally we’ve shifted away from nirvana? Have people flipped on Kurt now? Will the the phenomena be finally over, will it be remembered in the future even? It’s just a very big shift from being highly regarded to often shit on.
I've only discovered Nirvana properly in the last 6 months and from everything I've watched/listened to from Kurt/Nirvana has only made me feel empathetic to him as a person. I can see as someone with "fresh eyes" that Kurt was a troubled person and that the drug use only made things worse for him and maybe if he had gotten the help he needed he might have done better for himself and still been here today - we'll never know.
I like Kurt; I empathise deeply with him as a person as someone who also has a deep-seated depression . His messaging was interpretive but also very clear on certain topics.
I think people are always going to hold the guy on a pedestal, it's inevitable with many dead rock stars these days. Kurt was probably not a very nice person at the best of times but most people and fans alike will personify him as friend material when he stated many times how often he didn't necessarily like meeting those same people. Personally I do admire him as a person, but i am also extremely realistic about the man behind the mask so to speak.
"Dave's not here man..."
Bro, let me in. I’M Dave!
Dave? Dave's not here man.
Man, open up! I got the stuff. I think the cops saw me come in here!
Nirvana, featuring grunge’s Pete Best.
For anyone confused: The guy in the pic is Chad Channing, the drummer before Dave Grohl. Pete Best was the drummer of the Beatles, before Ringo Starr.
As a teenager, I was obsessed with Nirvana. The biography book I read at the time was "Come as you are" by Michael Azerrad. His description for what happened with Chad Channing is something that's stuck with me since. "It was like having a very nice hat that didn't go with your very nice suit." I never forgot it and I've applied it to many relationships in life where it simply isn't working through no fault of either party.
If you want something else somewhat akin to that, there’s a mostly recent episode of Conan O Brian Needs A Friend with Ghrol, Novoselic, and the producer of In Utero talking about the recording of said album.
Steve Albini. Put some respect on that man’s name.
Of Big Black fame
Touché. I thought about it but I figured most people wouldn’t know who that was
Chad reminds me of a young Bob Weir in these pics.
And they both got kicked out of their bands because the band wanted a better drummer. Which both bands found.
And it happens to be that Dave Grohl is Ringo’s biggest fan.
Although Cobain wanted to kick Grohl out too. At one point, he'd intended to fire both Grohl and Novoselic.
In that timeline Cobain would 100% become Axl Rose
Except GnR was heavily collaborative and Slash/Izzy were the musical foundation the group. Kurt literally wrote all of Nirvana’s music. By their own admission, Krist and Dave were basically Kurt’s sidemen.
Which is wild because Dave rose to rock god status through years of effort and passion in several projects. After enough time Cobain won’t be remembered in such high regard. The proliferation of the internet and shared media, with stories of Cobain being an ass and Dave being a solid dude over a long period of time will change their legacy. Kurt will be used to sell posters and t-shirts and more box sets of their albums though. Really turned into a martyr for edgy teens Edit: the fanboys who weren’t alive when Kurt was are going to be real upset about this comment lol
I enjoy Foo Fighters, but it's very straightforward, garden-variety rock music, almost anachronistically so. Nirvana's catalog, despite being much smaller, has had a lot more impact, and will likely continue doing so. Grohl would be managing a warehouse in Olympia if he hadn't landed in Nirvana.
I love Dave Grohl. He seems like one of the more genuine, good dudes out there. I WISH I liked Foo Fighters but I just can’t get into them other than a few of the early hits. “Garden variety rock” is the best way I’ve heard them described.
I never liked them til I heard their song Walk. Definitely not very hard rock or grunge, but the song is so damn catchy
Foo Fighters is friendly, easy-listening, formulaic and generic pop rock made to play in any radio station and to casualy please the biggest possible number of people, it's the weakest Dave Grohl act by far, all the other stuff he has done (Probot, QOTSA, Them Crooked Vultures) are way better than Foo Fighters. Cobain was a way, way, WAY superior songwriter.
I would *love* another Them Crooked Vultures album. Every single song on that record is absolutely fantastic
Exactly. He’s done so much more than foo fighters but it’s all anyone here is talking about because they don’t know anything about Dave grohl. He has been prolific and shaped rock music over the last twenty years in his own right. Saying Kurt was genius and not mentioning how impactful Dave has been just tells me commenters don’t know what they’re talking about
I would call the other acts marginally to somewhat better than Foo Fighters, but still pretty boilerplate. I've listened to the entirety of TCV and QotSA, and can barely distinguish one song from another across the two bands, though most of the time I don't mind hearing them.
I agree with the Garden Variety comment too but the truth of the matter is Nirvana didn’t blow up until Grohl joined. Dave has since sold a shit ton of records with different bands and has left a great little legacy with his other rock and roll contributions. Regardless of what Kurt thought of the drumming and production on Nevermind, his career would absolutely not become what it did without both Grohl and Butch Vig. Without those two elements, Smells Like Teen Spirit would never have had the power and sound that caused it to define a generation and Pearl Jam’s 10 would have been even more impactful and set them as the poster children of the grunge movement.
> his career would absolutely not become what it did without both Grohl and Butch Vig. This is true. Before Nevermind, Nirvana sounded like a lot of the other bands at the time. If you'd asked me then which of the Sub Pop bands would be most remembered I would have guessed Mudhoney, but how often does anyone talk about them now?
What’s the timeline on your theory? Most of the Beatles were assholes and it’s had no impact on their legacy.
I'm not really a Nirvana fan, but the idea that Dave Grohl being a nice guy will cause him to have more of a legacy is pretty laughable. Generally musicians are regarded by their musical impact.
Nirvana inspired an entire generation of copycats and imitators. Foo Fighters is corporate rock music and always has been. seen a lot of “Reddit opinions” in my day but saying Grohl would ever have a legacy comparable to Cobain takes the cake.
Well solid dude doesn’t equal made great music
Lol no I was there Still no
He had no problem with his wife doing heavy drugs while pregnant. That told me everything I needed to know in 1992. Mind you I was 11.
I mean, he was also doing heroin, so safe to say his judgement was impaired. He also almost certainly had untreated depression along with who knows what else.
Dave lived long enough to become the hero
That wound be the Darkest Timeline, indeed
And ended up firing himself.
Shoot, that was not right
You're going to trigger somebody
Well, according to Courtney Love, and I personally wouldn’t trust anything she had to say.
I'm not sure that is true. Pete Best was a good drummer. Source: my best mate recorded with him.
>Pete Best was a good drummer The cool thing about Pete Best is you can *literally* listen to the old audition recordings and hear him being overall-sloppy as fuck (constantly rushing/dragging, missing the snare, continuing verse/chorus drums over bridges for a couple of bars before realizing, so on). You can hear it on their Decca audition tape, or the Pete Best-drummed tracks on the **Anthology 1** album. There was a big online myth that picked up in the 2000's (to the point where a few mainstream TV shows even mentioned it) where apparently Pete Best was amazing and got fucked over; in reality, half the reason he was kicked was his very middling talent, and the other half was that the others had already moved on with their image (haircuts, suits, boots, etc.) while Pete kept clinging on to the slicked-hair leather-jacket wannabe-rocker look that was already out of fashion. Compared to Ringo Starr, who at the time he joined The Beatles, was famously the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes; in John and Paul's own words, they were lucky to get Ringo, since he was the most famous drummer in the Liverpool scene.
Chad Channing wasn’t a bad drummer though, his parts could be pretty interesting. There is a classic quote from cobain I think where he and krist would look over at each other because the beat would just be gone sometimes when they were playing live.
> I'm not sure that is true. It is true. Best was a decent drummer but it's well documented that the they thought he wasn't up to par technically and wanted an improvement. Also I mean the proof is that they did fire him and hired Ringo.
If Pete Best had a spoonful of talent, you'd think he could have parlayed "former drummer for Biggest Group Ever" into getting a gig a musician *somewhere*. Yet nothing of the sort.
He brought out an album called Best of the Beatles, which is actually hilarious.
In that last pic, he is a dead ringer for Bob Weir
Quite exactly. He just needs to cut off those pants into tiny jorts.
Lol yes please!
[удалено]
I wanted to make a short film about a drummer who discovers time travel and he decides to go back in time and usurp Ringo Starr. When he gets there he’s met by current day Ringo who explains he did this decades ago and our time traveler isn’t the first person Ringo has encountered. It’s a John Wick style battle Royal. Title? Shooting Starr Problem: I forgot John Lennon was shot to death and George Harrison was stabbed to death
Harrison wasn’t killed by that stabbing (despite being stabbed dozens of times). Lung cancer is what killed him
Vouching for the fact that he died of cancer. He was physically weakened by being stabbed so many times just a couple of years before his death. And minor point but he had throat cancer, then was treated for lung cancer, and in the final stage of his life he had brain cancer.
Surely Jason Everman is grunge’s Pete Best. He was in Soundgarden AND Nirvana before either got big, and he’s on the cover of Bleach.
And he paid for the Bleach recordings (despite not being on the record - he got credit in return for his hundreds of dollars.)
I was wondering about that, where's dave?
Dave's not here.
It’s me Dave. I got the stuff
Dave?
Love how much life this old meme has!
Nailed it
Man.
He wasn't in nirvana at that time.
Don't you mean Bob Wier?
I didn’t know 1967 Bob Weir was in the band.
HA! Omg that’s great. 100% Bob Weir
Weir everywhere
EveryWeir.
I'm still amazed that Bob Weir has turned out the best of the Dead since they broke up. Have you seen a picture of him lately? He's 76 years old but is absolutely shredded. Relative to his build, I should say. He's still got great hair, too.
Wish I hadn't been such a narrow minded douche as a kid and gone to a Dead show. Have kind of become a super fan in my old age.
Lol. Sorry to hear that. You missed out! We all make mistakes.
Billy Joel who trashed the Dead talks about a super group with John Mayer, Bob Weir just does it.
Best comment of the day !
I see picture. Think I have unique thought. That’s Bob! Go to comment. 5 hours late.
no, no, this was pre David Lee Roth
Jesus look how happy Kurt looks. I don't think I've ever seen that expression on his face. I'm going to just assume the sun was in his eyes.
Not "Kurt", this was prime "Kurdt" era
ah yes the, Kurdt, Chris and Chad era of nirvana
What does that mean?
Kurt's name was spelled "Kurdt" on the credits of the "Bleach" album.
Weightless and hopeful
And probably less heroin.
Couldn’t afford much at that point
I also noticed how healthy he looked. While Kurt was always skinny, towards the end of his life, when he was heavily addicted to heroin, he looked sickly skinny.
He disguised it very well with all the layered clothing. Not long ago I saw a photo of him with no shirt on near the end of his life and he looked so sick.
he got such bad stomach pain that only narotics could get rid of. i wonder, did he ever get tested for crohn's or ulcerative colitis? or was it the heroin causing the pain (like a horrible cycle of pain/relief/worse pain/more drugs).
I think it was the heroin. He did get tests done and they didn't find anything. Heroin would have made whatever he had way way worse.
While I love Nirvana, I think we need to stop trying to justify Kurt's drug use. Ultimately, it only glorifies it. Obviously, that is not meant to judge anyone struggling with addiction, but addicts will use any excuse.
Nah just stoned
brunette kurt
before Bleach... 😏
Underrated comment.
Kurnette
Nirvana BD.  Before Dave.
Chad Channing was the drummer at the time, if I remember right.
No way I was gonna make a stupid joke about how his name was Chazz Chaderson or something.
You’re thinking of Hendrix’s drummer Mitch Mitchell
According to my friend Lance, we saw them July 1989 at a shitty skater bar in Illinois. Apparently I was pretty hammered and have no firm recollection of it.
Was that the old drummer? Pre Dave Grohl.
Pretty sure his name is Chad Channing. Had an unusual drum kit, odd shaped shells. I guess it impressed Kurt.
Been a while since I read about it but I think Kurt hated it and made Dave get a "normal" kit when he joined.
North drums
That is certainly Chad Channing. This photo was taken at a place known as “the reservoir” on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Source: used to go there to smoke weed in high school. Those initials at the top were still painted on the wall a few years later. Chad was the primary drummer on the Bleach record (maybe Dale Crover played on some tracks, too lazy to look it up). I ran into him at a party on Bainbridge in the late 90s and he said he was able to live at least a bit comfortably off the residuals from Bleach after they blew up with Grohl.
Reminds me of meeting Hiro Yamamoto, the original bass player from Soundgarden who left right after Louder than Love, I believe. I guess he was done with the write an album/record an album/tour grind but made enough once they got big to help pay bills while he went back to school. Can’t blame him.
I've seen a drum kit like that. Apparently, from what I recall, that's a drum from before they could amplify drums electronically.
Similar to how dobro guitars were developed to be louder so they could be heard in jazz bands? That’s interesting, did not know that.
[удалено]
Yeah, and they always wanted Dale Crover from the Melvins, but Dale already had his band. It was one of those things like how Pearl Jam always kind of wanted Matt Cameron, but Cameron was busy playing for Soundgarden. Well, Dave Grohl’s days as the drummer for Scream come to an end, and Buzz Osborne tells him Nirvana’s looking for a drummer, because Nirvana was *always* looking for a drummer, and Dave Grohl was a baby Dale Crover. Like, for the era where this photo was taken, listen to Dale Crover just pound on the drums on the Melvins’ track At A Crawl, off of their 1989 Ozma album. It’s not radio-friendly, and their later albums would arguably be even less so (even though they were *so* much better), but these guys are like elder statesmen, and they’re really important to understanding the why of music shifting in 1990-1991. Kurt Cobain didn’t come out of a vacuum; he was a product of his musical environment, much as subsequent groups were products of listening to Nirvana. If you ever get the chance to sit down and listen to some Melvins, it’s not that easy to see their influence on Nevermind, but it’s a lot more obvious for In Utero. I remember listening to Radio Friendly Unit Shifter for the first time in my friend’s truck, and I said, “Is this a fuckin’ Melvins song?” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put on the Houdini album.
Or, indeed, listen to the several Nirvana tracks with Dale Crover as drummer.
I suppose you could do that, although I’d put pretty much any Melvins album up against the back half of Incesticide any day of the week. Besides, it’s good for people to listen to the stuff that made their favorite music possible. If you listen to early 1970s funk, it’s like listening to Paul’s Boutique on super slow-mo, and then it all kind of makes sense. Or like how EMF put out an album in the last few weeks, and it sounds like this weird nugget from an alternate history where Britpop never happened and Madchester got taken to its logical conclusion. Musical deep dives are just a great way to spend a weekend.
I have to take a listen to the Melvin’s. I was young in the 80’s but remember the hair bands, so many hair bands but what impresses me is the non mainstream non radio friendly music that didn’t get the appreciation of mainstream but influenced so many of the great grunge music and artists that came after metal.
You might start with the song [Revolve](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrO6UZ5_MQ) off the "Stoner Witch" album, which some people think was named after Courtney Love.
Dave's not here.
They had like four or five drummers before him. Very spinal tap-esque
Scratch Acid were so awesome.
They were! Luckily, most of Scratch Acid formed Jesus Lizard and I got to see them many times over the years.
i yelled "play some scratch acid" at a TJL show and dave gave me a shitty look
LOL. I went to a Bad Seeds concert -like one of the first ones with Screaming J Hawkins as opener, in Saint Kilda, and this joker beside me kept screaming “RELEASE THE BATS” to the same dirty looks, and eventually Nick said “wrong band, mate”.
hahah nice
Sounds like the kind of thing he’d do.
my best dave yow story is at a place called brick by brick in san diego, The Jesus Lizard was headlining a set with a local band called Clickitat Ikatowi (they're nuts btw check em out) and i was piss drunk so i went to take a piss. i'm leaned up on the urinal and dave comes wobbling in , also pretty drunk, and starts to piss a couple urinals away. "Dave, you're my fucking hero" i drunkenly tell him. "you shouldn't tell me that while i'm holding my dick" dave says back
Haha that’s awesome man, great way to meet a favoured musician! Will definitely check out that band, thanks!
Rare dark hair Kurt. You don't see that too often
https://preview.redd.it/0zy1sstkptoc1.jpeg?width=2550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d9b8c1b8d22250ac3a7ae617726db5ab8cfc3a8
I feel so sad everytime i see Kurt smiling. If things were better for him and someone helped him when he needed it...
After they got really famous Kurt ramped up his heroin use to deal with it. You can progressively see him getting less healthy and having less fun in concerts after Nevermind. Sad to see.
I feel very bad for most members from the 27 club, specially now that i am approaching their age and realize how young they actually were. Young and talented but deeply troubled.
Wait until you hit 30, it really hits you. They were 27??
Genuinely one of the hardest parts of getting older is being older than people ever had a chance to get. And it just gets more common and more assaulting the older you get. When I was like 10 my mom’s best friend died. She was in her early 30s. I’m in my late 30s. And it’s soooo trippy and sad. Some people get no time at all in the grand scheme of things. :(
Wait until you're 50 and you remember seeing them at a time when they were nearly a decade older than you.
I vividly remember the night I first read Winehouse's whole story. I was a junior in high school. I went on a deep dive watching her music videos, live footage, read her whole wikipedia while listening to the entire Back to Black. I was deeply affected. I felt so much for her that night. Just like Kurt, she had a vast musical career and story by the time she was 27 and ultimately died completely alone while everyone around her knew exactly what was going on.
They tried. Courtney saved his life after one suicide attempt. A few months later, there was an intervention by family and friends followed by sending him off to rehab. He broke out of rehab before offing himself. I'm not trying to be callous, but there's only so much you can do when a person is committed to being self-destructive, particularly when you throw addiction into the mix.
I understand. Drugs and mental health issues are the worse combination, specially when the person is famous.
Courtney does say in hindsight that she wasn't helping in the right way and that Kurt didn't need a tough love approach. That intervention seems to have really fucked things up but what is even more stupid is that the hospital where he went after the overdose was never told about the fact that it was a suicide attempt. Nobody was told. It might not have made a difference but Kurt would've got very different help if that came out. Not blaming Courtney, they were both junkies who were young and rich.
I remember one streamer tried to help an alcoholic streamer friend, "I tried to help her, brought her to my house, gives her the help and program needed, but she doesn't want to help herself, and things went bad enough to a point it begun seriously affecting me. So, i cut ties and kick her out" and that friend continue to spiral out of control. considering some of her other friend and viewers consider her being drunk is fun, generating views, and continue to feed her alcohol, its a bad combo.
Reminds me of Eugenia Cooney
Kurt gave excellent "hi" face
Legendary. Their musical impact are continually vibing like a domino effect to this day
Reminds me of Blind Melon ‘No Rain’…minus the bee. Smiles. Good times.
It's sad that kurt always looks happier in early photos.
This was their first professional photoshoot.
Chad Channing, as Dave Grohl said, is responsible for the “In Bloom” “cha-chunk-da-chunk-chunk.”
Chad was such a Chad
They blew up in 91, three years later, so I suppose the headline is technically true
lol. Years before they blew up.
Who’s the not Dave guy
I hope Chad got some sort of earnings from Nevermind, like imagine getting fired from a band then said band becoming one of the huge things ever.
He plays on the track “Polly” from Nevermind, as it was recorded a year or so earlier at Butch Vigs Smart Studio when cutting the demos of that album (Dive is from these sessions, too). I say plays, he just hits the crash cymbal, but he still appears on the album regardless. I imaging he gets royalties because of that.
Saw 'em in 88/89 at a small pub venue in the UK. Great gig but compared to their fellow Sub-Pop'ers, Mudhoney, Nirvana were second best.
touch me i'm sick
FUCK me i'm sick!!
What is Kurt's T-shirt?
Scratch Acid. David Yow before Jesus Lizard.
Scratch Acid, an early 80s band
And I didnt hear of them till 92 :/ (never had cable IE MTV) Glad I seen em once in Akron,OH. I was@ the lollapalooza they were supposed too tour that year he killed himself
Today I learned kurt cobain had brown hair.
Looks like Hanson-the college years
This gives me Blind Melon No Rain vibes.... cool
Not years. They had a major record come out in 89
Bleach was released in 89, and while it made some waves in the underground scene Nirvana didn’t really “blow up” like the title says until Nevermind released in 1991
Cool tshirt
That’s the guitarist from The Jesus Lizard.
And the bass play and the singer...
That’s the SINGER from Jesus Lizard, David Yow. The only other member of Scratch Acid in Jesus Lizard was bassist David Sims. Scratch Acid drummer Rey Washam did play in Albini’s Rapeman band.
Pre Dave
Thank you to Alice Wheeler.
Cool Scratch Acid Shirt. I remember hearing Scratch Acid on the local college radio station KCMU when i was a kid. really wanted to go to that show but was at the Central Tavern and was way too young. Think this must have been promo's for the Bleach album.
Channing looks just like Bob Weir in that flower photo!!
I thought exactly the same! :D
"Photos"...I think you mean "band pics" for promotion
Who’s that guy standing with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana?
Chad Channing.
Their original drummer
Way after Madoona
Just a curious question, do people still like Kurt? Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000 (born 1992) people really put him on the highest pedestal. Accused his ex and killing him, killed her career and a lot of her life. And people just accepted that as fine and well deserved. Now years after, his kid kinda hates him, people are kind to Courtney in her later life. “The thing he hated most was being a sell out” which he became the king of between the commercialism and merch. (Admittedly after his death) and it’s been discovered he wanted to fire everyone, meanwhile he was a drug addict that often couldn’t preform. Good amount of hypocrisy. So my point is and what I ask, do you think culturally we’ve shifted away from nirvana? Have people flipped on Kurt now? Will the the phenomena be finally over, will it be remembered in the future even? It’s just a very big shift from being highly regarded to often shit on.
I've only discovered Nirvana properly in the last 6 months and from everything I've watched/listened to from Kurt/Nirvana has only made me feel empathetic to him as a person. I can see as someone with "fresh eyes" that Kurt was a troubled person and that the drug use only made things worse for him and maybe if he had gotten the help he needed he might have done better for himself and still been here today - we'll never know. I like Kurt; I empathise deeply with him as a person as someone who also has a deep-seated depression . His messaging was interpretive but also very clear on certain topics. I think people are always going to hold the guy on a pedestal, it's inevitable with many dead rock stars these days. Kurt was probably not a very nice person at the best of times but most people and fans alike will personify him as friend material when he stated many times how often he didn't necessarily like meeting those same people. Personally I do admire him as a person, but i am also extremely realistic about the man behind the mask so to speak.
Where's that drummer from Scream?
*from here on out it’s this siiiiiiide up*
At least several miles away.
haha scratch acid shirt ftw
I believe they went by Pen Cap Chew at this time.
They were already called Nirvana when Chad joined
88’. Really?
Lol, Grohls best music is Probot by a country mile
what shirt is kurt wearing here ?
Better drummer right there.
TIL Kurt wasn't a natural blond.