People who read this blog know that Nirvana are one of the greatest personal inspirations for me. Besides their obvious talent as musicians and songwriters, they were also a very political and opinionated band. Race, sex and sexuality were issues which they discussed frankly both within and outside of their music.
I recently interviewed Sune Wagner of The Raveonettes for P.I.X Magazine and one of the questions I asked him was how he'd thought the music industry had changed in the last decade since they first started out as a band. His reply was that it was so much easier to communicate with fans and this was a great thing.
I completely agree. Back in the days when articles in Melody Maker and NME were more critiques and structured essays rather than 2 sentence rants about which indie star was spotted in a football kit in Tesco, a feature length interview with a band would be at least 4 pages long. In those 4 pages you would read everything from the latest release, to upcoming gigs, to bands' thoughts on current topical issues. I knew everything about my heroes and this was pre-Google days. The journalism was informative and beautifully descriptive. I honestly felt reading and watching Nirvana interviews that Kurt was talking to me, to us, to his fans. He was a person, a musician, an artist who contemplated, discussed and speculated. He wasn't some too cool for school robot who just watched his bank balance grow all day and couldn't be bothered to communicate both on and off stage like some current bands.
Use of blogs, bulletins, messages these days is a great way of communicating with like-minded people. Unfortunately we will never receive the Everett True or Paul Morley type-interviewer as they are very few and far between these days. This is why we write and post our thoughts out. Because we will always be mis or under represented elsewhere. We don't want you to give us your money by buying gig tickets and records and that's it. We have commenced an open forum for discussion through our music, through our opinions....Whether you want to respond to it or not, that is not our concern. Our main concern is to create, explore and discuss.
Personally I find bands who think they are to cool to communicate directly with fans totally off the radar. Being faux mysterious does not fill me with an ounce of inspiration however someone with an opinion always does. My dear friend Dario gave me an NME Original Nirvana magazine for my birthday which has every single Nirvana interview, review and photo that was ever published in NME from their first ever London show and release up until Kurt's death.
It is littered with beautifully, poignant and inspiring quotes, some of which I have posted below.
'I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock and roll'
About The Breeders:
'They're strong women but it's not that obvious. They're not militant about it at all. You can tell they love men at the same time'.
'I hate tie-dye t-shirts...I wouldn't wear a tie-dye t-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia.'
D-Bird
