#one day i will write about the way her music expresses dissatisfaction with existing inside of traditional society ->

[iphigeniacomplex]

asking me what i want to do after college already like well frankly im gonna take my working papers and turn them in im handing over my pencil and pen i wont be needing my broom again ill bloom by day ill bloom by night and blooming will be my delight. yeah im going to walk around wearing the morning sun and everything. sorry.

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: Nevermind

The second studio album from Nirvana was released in September 1991 via DGC Records. This release would be their first on that label, as well as the first album to feature new drummer Dave Grohl. The album initially begin as a project for Sub Pop with producer Butch Vig attached to it at the suggestion of the label. They traveled to Madison, Wisconsin to record at Vig’s studio in early April 1990. At this time, the group recorded eight tracks including “Lithium,” “Breed,” “In Bloom,” and others, but Cobain was still working on more material for the record. On April 6, the band played a local show in Madison, but the singer strained his voice putting on hold temporarily the recording sessions as they had a short Midwestern tour that same week. After the tour, drummer Chad Channing announced his departure from the group putting everything on hold once again. Krist Novoselic and Cobain had seen the band Scream featuring drummer Dave Grohl and were impressed by his playing. By lucky coincidence, his group broke up around that same time. Grohl contacted Novoselic to see about an audition. He would join the band shortly thereafter as the bass player would say with Dave “everything fell into place.”

By this time, Sub Pop continued to have major financial difficulty, which worried the group. Cobain made the decision to forgo working with such an independent label, but instead signing with a major record company. After shopping around for a few months, they signed with Geffen Records imprint DGC after a recommendation by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. The label would suggest a number of producers for the second album, but Nirvana held out to continue to work with Butch Vig. The reason behind this came in the fact that they were comfortable with him. Another factor was that he did not ask for percentage points upon the release of any album. The group recorded the LP at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California in May and June 1991. In an interesting twist, they needed gas money to actually get to the studio to begin recording, so the band played a show for extra money where “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be performed for the first time. The other new song that had not been worked on in the previous sessions was “Come As You Are.” The recording sessions lasted 8 to 10 hours a day as Grohl and Novoselic completed their parts in a matter of days. Cobain‘s work took a little bit longer as he added more guitar parts and put the finishing touches on the vocals. He would sometimes only finish writing lyrics just before he would sing them for the album. Butch Vig would say that he only could convince Cobain to double track his vocals when he told the singer that John Lennon used to do it. The producer expressed frustration with the Nirvana frontman. “He'd be great for an hour, and then he'd sit in a corner and say nothing for an hour." Nirvana was unhappy with the first few mixes of the album after they finished recording. They made the decision to bring in another producer to do the mixing. Eventually, they decided to bring in Andy Wallace, who had worked on Slayer’s 1990 album. Krist Novoselic she would say, “We said, 'right on,' because those Slayer records were so heavy." Nevermind would be mastered at the Mastering Lab in Hollywood. Howie Weinberg began working on the record despite the fact that nobody else from the band had arrived yet. By the time everyone had gotten there, he was essentially done. After the release of the record, the band expressed a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with how it sounded. Everyone in the group felt that it was too commercial. Kurt Cobain said, “Looking back on the production of Nevermind, I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk rock record." Butch Vig would later say in an interview that it was the artist in Cobain that made him complain like that. One simply could not say in public thank you for helping to create an album that sold 10 million copies.

The major influences for Kurt Cobain during the writing of Nevermind were Pixies , the Smithereens, REM, and the Melvins. He intentionally wanted to emphasize melody in a much more emphatic way on this album. A key development came when they released the single “Sliver” before Grohl had even joined the group. The singer said it “was like a statement in a way. I had to write a pop song and release it on a single to prepare people for the next record. I wanted to write more songs like that." His goal from the onset was to write power chords that could be combined with punk rock guitar riffs. He would use the example of trying to combine the Knack or Bay City Rollers with Black Flag. One new feature of the music on the album emerges in the band's employment of extreme dynamics, meaning that there exist abrupt changes from quiet to loud verses. Guitar World would say this about Cobain‘s playing on this album. “Kurt Cobain's guitar sound on Nirvana's Nevermind set the tone for Nineties rock music." Dave Grohl would later say that the singer always stressed that the music came first, not the lyrics. He was still writing lyrics halfway through the recording of Nevermind, while Vig has said that some of the lyrics are inaudible anyway. "Even though you couldn't quite tell what he was singing about, you knew it was intense as hell." Later on, Cobain would complain about journalists trying to understand him through his lyrics. “Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?" Charles R. Cross, author of the Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, would claim in his book that half of the songs on Nevermind are about Kurt Cobain‘s ex-girlfriend Toby Vail. The first line of “Drain You” was something that she had actually said to him, “One baby to another said 'I'm lucky to have met you.” He modified the lyrics to “Lithium,” which had been written prior to meeting her in order to reference his relationship with her. The phrase “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was something that she came up with while living with Cobain. It was originally meant as a joke, but the singer took it as some sort of revolutionary phrase. Krist Novoselic would later comment that the track “Lounge Act” is undoubtedly about Vail.

The working title of the album had been Sheep, which Cobain thought represented a funny inside joke as to who would buy the album. The origin of that title comes from the public's reaction to Operation Desert Storm. The singer decided to change it to Nevermind because he also liked the fact it was grammatically incorrect and symbolized how he felt about life. Nevermind also referenced one of Cobain’s favorite albums by the Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks. He does mention the title once in the track “Smells Like Teen Spirit:” “oh well, whatever, never mind.”

The famous cover of the album was conceived by Cobain as well after watching a television show with Dave Grohl about water births. They first tried stock footage of water births, but the images were much too graphic for an album cover. They finally found at least one photo that may work, but the company wanted $7500 to use the photo. Finally, a photographer went to a pool to find a baby for the picture. The actual baby they found was someone named Spencer Elden, the son of a friend of the photographer. Eldonwood recreated that picture for subsequent anniversary photos for the album throughout the years.

The album debuted at 144 on the Billboard charts, but by January the record was number one in the country. The success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” saw the demand for the album spiral in such a way that the record company could not keep up with the demand for a time. Geffen Records needed to stop printing any other albums released around the same time, so they could make more of Nevermind. At its height, Nevermind sold 300,000 copies a week. The LP would be certified platinum in November 1991, a mere 13 months after its release. The president of Geffen Records would say this to the New York Times. “We didn't do anything. It was just one of those 'Get out of the way and duck' records." The members of Nirvana seemed relatively unconcerned about the success of the album as Novoselic would say in an interview that achieving gold record status was cool, but not that important to him. By the time of their European tour in 1992, the sales of the album made any marketing ideas previously planned by the record label to be unusable.

Another interesting thing that came about through the phenomenal popularity of the album was the fact that not many places actually reviewed the album at first. Most of the reviews remained positive, but they seemed to stress the potential of the band. Entertainment Weekly’s David Browne would give the album an A minus, while the New York Times would say, “With 'Nevermind,' Nirvana has certainly succeeded. There are enough intriguing textures, mood shifts, instrumental snippets and inventive word plays to provide for hours of entertainment." The best review probably came from Everett True of Melody Maker, who had this to say. “When Nirvana released Bleach all those years ago, the more sussed among us figured they had the potential to make an album that would blow every other contender away. My God have they proved us right.” Not everyone loved the album though as evidenced by the Boston Globe saying that the record was for the most part generic punk rock. The greatest achievement of Nevermind was the fact that the record brought Seattle grunge, which later became alternative music, into the mainstream. The bands, the fashion, the culture that existed in Seattle now had made its way to Madison Avenue. The album led to the success of other groups like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, and so many more. Please check out the article later in this book on the story of grunge for further discussion on the cultural legacy of Nevermind. Rolling Stone named the album number six in its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, as well as number one on its list of the Greatest Albums of the 1990’s. In 2001, VH1 would poll over 500 rock writers and journalists for the greatest albums of all time, which led to their choice of Nevermind as the number one album. In 2005, the record was added to the national record registry put together by the Library of Congress. Even Pitchfork would name the album number six for the decade of the 1990’s. The site wrote, “Anyone who hates this record today is just trying to be cool, and needs to be trying harder."

[auskultu]

The Rolling Stones: Our Fans Have Moved On With Us

Keith Altham, New Musical Express, 4 February 1967

LET US consider that unique phenomenon – the Rolling Stones' public image!

When the Stones began rolling approximately three years ago they founded their personal approach upon a direct appeal to young peoples' impatience with authority and the basic premise that no one likes to be told what to do–especially a teenager. The Stones became "the defiant ones"—representatives of the eternal struggle between youth and the aged; champions of the "it's my life and I'll do what I like with it" school.

The parents spotted the declaration of war upon their authority and rejected the Stones – the Stones promptly rejected the parents.

Today there exists a huge social barrier between the older generation and the Stones – a barrier which some critics argue must be broken if the group are to "appeal to a wider market" and make the transition like the Beatles into films. Since their early days the group has progressed immeasurably both musically and lyrically – take a good listen to 'Ruby Tuesday' – and Jagger, with the exception of that recent abortive presentation on the Palladium TV, is without equal on stage as an agitator and interpreter of musical excitement.

Any improvement in the group as entertainers has been largely overshadowed by the regular bursts of shock publicity and personal life exposes in a National Press apparently as dedicated to a policy of "with the Rolling Stones only bad news is good news" as the group themselves are to their uncompromising attitudes and opinions.

I took up the subject with Brian Jones in a bar off Kensington High Street last Monday, where he supped a pint of Guinness and flicked fag ash into his untouched oxtail soup at irregular intervals.

"Why should we have to compromise with our image?" posed Brian. "You don't simply give up all you have ever believed in because you've reached a certain age.

"Our generation is growing up with us and they believe in the same things we do – when our fans get older I hope they won't require a show like the Palladium.

"The recent pictures of me taken in Nazi uniform were a put-down. Really, I mean with all that long hair in a Nazi uniform, couldn't people see that it was a satirical thing? How can anyone be offended when I'm on their side? I'm not a Nazi sympathiser.

"I noticed that the week after the pictures of me taken in that uniform appeared there were photographs of Peter O'Toole in the same newspaper wearing a German uniform for a film he is making. But no one put him down for wearing that!

"The photographs taken of my flat in a terrible mess recently was another misrepresentation. An Italian film company was filming in the room and we pushed everything into one corner to make room for the camera crew. We were not even aware of the photographs that were being taken were for publication in a paper here.

"You've seen my flat – I don't live in that kind of mess normally. I've complained to the Press Council about the whole episode."

At this point enter Mr. Keith Richard in his maroon leather jacket, University of Hawaii T-shirt and orange necker-chief, full of apologies for being late as he had forgotten it was his chauffeur's day off. How does he see the possibility of coming to terms with the older generation as the Beatles appear to have done? "You can't suddenly become accepted overnight by cutting your hair, putting on a suit and saying 'Look, aren't I nice? – it's not us – it's not honest, and why should we?" asked Keith.

"We haven't got the same PR set up as the Beatles," added Brian, "Anyway, I think you must realise that certain of the Beatles share a great many of our ideas and opinions."

We moved on to just who exactly are the Stones fans now. Brian obliged by describing one who had 'passed on.'

"'Margaret Stokes' was a Stones fan three years ago but she 'copped' out," he said. "Now she's probably married with a kid and another on the way. She and her husband go to the same pubs as her parents and they are both bored with life. If she goes to see a pop group at all she'll go and see Dave Dozy and Speakeasy!

"Sometimes we get the old characters like the one we met in a country club over the weekend. He came up to us and said he was a fan and that he'd been in the business 40 years and prophesied that we'd be all right 'as long as you keep yer 'armonies." "Our real followers have moved on with us – some of those we like most are the hippies in New York, but nearly all of them think like us and are questioning some of the basic immoralities which are tolerated in present day society – the war in Vietnam, persecution of homosexuals, illegality of abortion, drug taking. All these things are immoral. We are making our own statement – others are making more intellectual ones.

"Our friends are questioning the wisdom of an almost blind acceptance of religion compared with total disregard for reports related to things like unidentified flying objects which seems more real to me. Conversely I don't underestimate the power or influence of those, unlike me, who do believe in God.

"We believe there can be no evolution without revolution. I realise there are other inequalities – the ratio between affluence and reward for work done is all wrong. I know I earn too much but I'm still young and there's something spiteful inside me which makes me want to hold on to what I've got.

"I believe we are moving toward a new age in ideas and events. Astrologically we are at the end of the age called the Pisces age – at the beginning of which people like Christ were born.

"We are soon to begin the age of Aquarius, in which events as important as those at the beginning of Pisces are likely to occur. There is a young revolution in thought and manner about to take place."

Returning the conversation to any kind of level related to pop music proved difficult and a chance remark of mine as to Gene Pitney's marriage brought the retort, from Brian.

"You've been trying to reduce the conversation to that level all afternoon!" However we did manage to ascertain what they thought of Max Bygraves' action on the Palladium last week when he produced a can of arcosol and sprayed the stage on mentioning the Rolling Stones by name.

"Brilliant," said Keith sarcastically, "I mean all that and 'Tulips From Amsterdam' too!"

"Did he do it without wearing a wig," retorted Brian. "I mean that's a bit avant garde for Max Bygraves – putting down the Stones without wearing a wig!" We stepped over Max Bygraves and conversationally circumnavigated the death of President Kennedy – something else that Mr. Jones has very definite opinions about – and cares about almost obsessively. A neat swerve in discussion bought us to what if anything or anyone is following the Rolling Stones.

"I'd like to see the Move," said Brian. "They are really an extension of our idea of smashing conventions. Those kind of smash ups they have – destroying TV sets, cars, etc., are all a part of dissatisfaction with convention.

"Pete Townshend's tendency to smash guitars is a physical reproduction of what is going on in his mind – I wish he'd write a book!"

A somewhat disturbing interview was rounded off by Brian insisting that the Muzak version of Ravel's Bolero was turned up over our heads – "it builds to a great climax" – and we finally left the restaurant – Mr. Jones in his Rolls – Mr. Richard in his girl friend's dirty red sports car, and me by cab.

Nothing it seems is going to change the Rolling Stones – except perhaps old age!