I wonder if there’s a word that means, “sold out through forceful negligent misunderstanding.”
In '93 Nirvana played a concert in Dallas. At my high school in nearby Denton, this concert was part of our teenage folklore because Cobain threatened to walk off stage if the assault of young women didn’t stop. Apparently from the stage he could see girls who were crowd-surfing or in the moshpits being groped. At my school, this made a big impact on the girls who were there. Like a kind of reverence. Think of that–these kids imbued him with this mystic nobility just for insisting that they didn’t have to be attacked.
I wasn’t at the show, but a girl who would soon become my girlfriend was. Later we got married. We just talked about that show last week. Still kind of a big deal. Goddamit.
Unless the answer was “Yes, and I have proof of the whole thing. I was just waiting for someone to figure it out!”, I don’t see what’s interesting about this.
Just in general - that’s also a lot of responsibility put on their shoulders, to single handedly save Cobain from himself - they were not much more than kids, given fame and wealth in an industry that sure as hell doesn’t put the well-being of the artist front and center. The whole thing was a real tragedy that really could have been avoided had the recording industry not sought to wring out every last dollar they could out of the artist, as they like to do.
So, again, I do feel that the OP was a bit dismissive of the struggles he went through. But you do you, I guess.
I don’t know, but it’s not like Cobain wasn’t familiar with the punk critique of the major labels. I guess when they signed to Geffen, they got assurances that things wouldn’t be like that. But at some level, you can’t account for who is going to listen to your music and what sort of messages they’re going to take away. That seemed more of a problem for him than almost anything.
Well, you know how little teen girls are told that kind of thing? That they have the right to not be assaulted? Especially in a space like that (rock concert, even punk shows)! By all accounts he was genuine about his feminism, not just play acting to get girls in bed. A rare thing in popular music.
I was there too! At the time I was waiting tables at the Starlight Diner in Deep Ellum (across Elm from Club Dada) and working at the Borders on Preston.
Every time I scroll past this on the BBS it triggers my inner William Safire; this person’s name sure reads like the answer to the question “if you had multiple brothers with the name “River Cuomo”, would you refer to them collectively as River Cuomos or Rivers Cuomo?”
