Remember going to the record store, browsing for hours, listening to tons of recordings on headphones, soaking up the culture and that vibe we can all feel in our memories, but can’t describe with words?
Remember getting the tape, even though you really wanted the record (that you could make into a tape), because you could listen to the tape in the car, right away?
Remember getting home and listening to the whole album, both sides of it, for the very first time?
Remember buying a CD because the single was great, only to discover that you spent 18 dollars on a piece of shit, and you were stuck with it?
Remember discovering a record that did not have a single bad track on it, and how rare that was?
I don’t know how many of you share similar experiences, but I suspect it’s not zero.
This is where we all expect me to dump on streaming or something, right? That’s not what this is about.
I love the convenience of streaming. I love the access to basically the entire history of human recordings, so when I feel compelled to listen to The Andrews Sisters and Tones On Tail in the same day, it doesn’t involve a trip to the mall. I love massive playlists of music they don’t play on the radio, that I can shuffle into my own sonic time machine. I can do all of those things I remember (except for going to record stores; I’ll still do that whenever I can), with the added bonus of never being stuck with a shitty record, ever again.
But I’ve noticed that the playlists have taken over, and I haven’t actually listened to a full album in a really, really long time. Like, other than Pink Floyd records, which must be listened to in their entirety, always (I will not be taking questions at this time), it just hasn’t occurred to me to listen to, say, all of In Utero.
I reset the counter on DAYS SINCE I LISTENED TO AN ENTIRE ALBUM to 0 last night. I really wanted to hear Drain You (yes, I know it’s off Nevermind, and I was just talking about In Utero; settle down), I saw the cover for In Utero, just sitting right there like, “Remember me? Let’s have a cuddle.” And I was like, “this is the best idea anyone has ever had.” I pushed play, then sat there and listened to the whole thing for the first time in … I’m going to describe the amount of time as “an embarrassment”.
Wow, I forgot how much I loved this album when it came out, how I played it on repeat in the car, on the boombox CD player when we played street hockey, how it was such a revelation to young me. I’d forgotten a couple of the songs, too, so it was like discovering them for the first time all over again.
When it ended, I immediately listened to all of Bleach, followed by Nevermind.
I remembered those days, before Smells Like Teen Spirit was everywhere almost over night. I briefly thought about an entire generation that grew up hearing it as just another track on Now That’s What I Call Arena Rock While Missing The Point Of The Lyrics, Volume 5, and how the context for them and Gen X is so profoundly fucking different. Mostly, I remembered how much I loved all three of these records, how much I loved Unplugged, how I played them all as loud as I could stand, and how devastated I was when Kurt Cobain died. I remembered how angry I was at him, back when I didn’t know how to feel any other emotion if I was hurt or felt a loss.
ANYWAY. When the last note of Endless, Nameless faded, and I had fully experienced all of those memories, it occurred to me that I had listened to the entire Nirvana studio catalog — the band that will likely go down as my generation’s Beatles — and it was just over two hours long. Holy shit. They changed an entire generation in, like, 120 minutes (that sounds cooler if you imagine it in Kurt Loder’s voice) and I can’t even imagine what they would have done if Kurt hadn’t died, and they’d stayed together long enough to do their American Idiot. …right?
I then took a moment to be grateful, and to admire Dave Grohl, for having the strength and courage to carry on and form Foo Fighters, which is another band that means a lot to me. He’s talked about feeling intimidated around Kurt, not believing in himself as a writer, and doing whatever it took to power through it all because he had to. In my own way, I can relate to that. I think a lot of us can. And to carry on after Taylor Hawkins died, too? Jesus Christ, man. Dave Grohl doesn’t know I exist but I am so sorry for the loss he has experienced. May their memories be a blessing.
I still love grunge, even if it hurts my heart when a kid calls it Classic Rock. But I’m old and out of touch. Who is this generation’s Nirvana? I mean, it’s probably Nirvana, but who is speaking to kids the same way, now, as they did, then?