The Roots - How I Got Over

For almost two decades, The Roots have remained a beacon of musical and intellectual quality in the mire of a hip-hop scene that has undergone constant fluctuation. For a casual hip-hop listener like myself, The Roots embody everything that is best in the genre: powerful lyrics, aggressive production, and a stellar live show that stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries. Lead MC Black Thought has never shied away from a bit of modern wisdom rapped with spirit and intensity, backed by the always-excellent production and percussion of drummer ?uestlove (I'm going to try to write that name as few times as possible for the sake of my sanity). Unfortunately, their unique approach to hip-hop has always kept The Roots more or less out of the commercial spotlight, though fans of the genre will undoubtedly appreciate their influence. This trend has never really changed, so whenever the band decides to release an album, it always comes as both a surprise that they continue to successfully reinvent their music and a disappointment that their type of work isn't less prevalent in the popular music scene.

The band's latest effort, "How I Got Over," comes after they have been thrust into the spotlight by virtue of being Jimmy Fallon's late night band (probably the only thing of value Fallon has ever been associated with). On a large scale, the album marks a significant departure from the band's last release, "Rising Down," which was 16 tracks of caustic hip-hop fury at its finest. This time around, The Roots find themselves more or less in relax mode. "How I Got Over" contains some of the most laid back material the band has ever released, largely as a result of its chilled-out, almost ambient production style. As usual, the songs are anchored around ?uestlove's beats, which are as solid as ever, if not particularly remarkable here. More surprising is the use of piano and light synth samples that seem to float around the drums. These musical choices have the dual effect of creating an exceptional flow over the album's duration while making the individual songs nearly blend together. As a cohesive product, the album works particularly well in this regard; it is listenable on a broad scale in a way that "Rising Down" was certainly not. Unfortunately, this makes "How I Got Over" difficult to engage in on the intimate, smash-your-face way that makes much of The Roots' material so effective.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem that the band's recent exposure has altered their poetically realistic worldview. Black Thought seems as inspired as ever, engaging in topics ranging from religion, modern discourse, poverty, and so on. As usual, guest appearances abound here, with P.O.R.N., Truck North, the Dirty Projectors, and various others offering their stylings to the record, but none with the same power as Black Thought himself. His disgust with the state of modern media is apparent on "Dear God 2.0," the album's first standout, where the MC observes, "technology turning the planet into zombies/ Everybody all in everybody's dirty laundry," and asks, "Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?" These are deep issues for any rapper, and Black Thought tackles them with courage and intensity. For all the uncertainty contained in the first half of the album though, The Roots seem to offer some reconciliation. On "The Fire," a notable collaboration with John Legend, Black Thought raps a kind of fierce determination that was previously absent from the album: "You can't escape/ the history you was meant to make/ That's why the highest victory is what I'm meant to take/ You came to celebrate/ I came to celebrate." Coming from Black Thought, it's a convincing sentiment, and is ultimately the emotional high point of the album.

More than anything, "How I Got Over" is the most mixed bag The Roots have created in years. In the end, enjoyment of the album will likely come down to the listener's mindset. Longtime fans, especially those who enjoyed "Rising Down," may be disappointed by this album's laid back tone, mostly devoid of musical aggression. However, listeners are also encouraged to take in "How I Got Over" a few times before making judgment; its ideas are rapped in such density that it merits repeated listens. Though it lacks a significant number of excellent songs, the album works well enough as a whole that the dedicated listener will forgive the absence. If nothing else, "How I Got Over" proves that The Roots are as observant as ever, and are perhaps even hopeful about what they see.

6.9/10

Stream the album for free here.

How to Destroy Angels - EP

Those readers who have followed my blog or who know me personally will know that I am a diehard fan of both Nine Inch Nails and its key member, Trent Reznor. This week, How To Destroy Angels, Reznor's first project since declaring Nine Inch Nails to be on hiatus, released its debut online, a free six-song EP. The band features Reznor along with his new wife Mariqueen Maandig (formerly of West Indian Girl) and longtime colleague and multi-instrumentalist Atticus Ross.

Early clips and suggestions from the band's members suggested that HTDA would at least be influenced by Reznor's musical signature, but differences in sound were evident from the start. Most notable of these is the introduction of a female vocalist in Maandig, whose undulating whisper provides an intriguing change to the sound that Reznor more or less perfected in two decades of Nine Inch Nails. The first single, "A Drowning," finds Maandig at her most aggressive, breaking over the song's mix of fuzzy electronics and distorted guitars to lend a firm foothold on a song that focuses mostly on atmosphere. The song is unique in this way, because for the majority of the EP, Maandig's vocals are mostly used for texture, rarely rising above a soft lilt.

Thankfully, the combination of her voice and Reznor's signature electronics seems to work, at least for a short set like this. Though the EP certainly isn't short on atmosphere, its greatest strength lies in its percussive hooks, most of which are reminiscent of late era Nine Inch Nails. Computerized distortion blares in tandem with the more organic sounds of keyboards and occasional strings, creating a synthesis acoustic and electronic that recalls tracks from Reznor's masterpiece, "The Downward Spiral," while incorporating the harsh soundscape of "Year Zero." The EP's final single, "The Believers," represents the most complete fusion of these elements. The song's acoustic elements lend a tribal feel to the heavy percussive beat, punctuated by bursts of the static and fuzz that made "Year Zero" memorable. Maandig's vocal restraint also contributes here, an almost instrumental sigh that intones, "We are the ones who still believe." Focused without being constrained by its own direction, "The Believers" is the strongest number of the set. Indeed, it seems that Reznor has found inspiration in this new project, in which he is free to explore sonic realms outside the darkness embodied in Nine Inch Nails. Likewise Reznor, and the musicians around him, truly do seem to believe that they are on the road to capturing something musically unique.

Despite this, it occasionally feels that the group loses direction. "BBB" commands, "Listen to the sound/ Of my big black boots," a line that seems ridiculous by itself, let alone repeated ad nauseum as it is. It's an unfortunate lapse, because musically, "BBB" boasts one of the tightest, sexiest grooves on the album. It's certainly a hook worthy of Reznor's extensively sexual canon; it's just a shame that the chorus line comes off so hackneyed. Fans will easily forgive the oversight, though, and it remains one of the set's only weak points.

On a large scale, "How to Destroy Angels" accomplishes exactly what it intends, introducing a new brand of industrial pop backed by the genre's undisputed master. Fans of Nine Inch Nails will undoubtedly seek to locate the record within the NIN catalogue, but this EP really needs no history lesson. It knows its strengths and plays to them well, drawing on powerful contributions from each member (Atticus Ross' bassline on "Parasite" is one of the best in years), and it inspires hope for the band's future. In the past, Reznor was at his best when he sought to construct cohesive, complex albums without shying from the power of a great hook. A short collection like this, successful as it is, makes us wonder what the trio plans for its first full-length release, presumably later this year or early next. If nothing else, let it be said that "How to Destoy Angels" shows great promise, and it proves that age and marriage, at least for Reznor, are not creative obstacles in the least.

8.3/10

Get the album here.

Return to Cookie Mountain

Recently, Metacritic.com named Spoon the band of the decade, based on a number of arbitrary criteria that don't seem to have a whole lot to do with the music Spoon released and supported by my friend Hugh at Warm Sound, Aqueous Transmission. I don't much care for Spoon, so I've decided to defend my own pick for band of the decade, TV on the Radio. I've decided to start with a review of their second album, “Return to Cookie Mountain.” Though TVotR (as they will henceforth be referenced) released an excellent EP (“Young Liars”) and an full-length record (“Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes”) in 2003 and 2004 respectively, their sound did not reach its deserved fruition until “Return” was issued in 2006.

TVotR's unique combination of funk, rock, and electronic elements is more fully explored in this second album, largely due to the explosive production of David Sitek. Though the band employs diverse instrumentation and unique lyrics, “Return” features a broad, epic sound that is almost entirely unheard of in the realm of indie music, which relies so frequently on instrumental minimalism and stripped-down production. The synthesized soundscape of “Province” provides an early indicator of the album's musical color, featuring the elegantly harmonized vocals of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone over an expansive background of electronic sound. “Hours,” meanwhile, represents the best vocal melody on the album, where Adebimpe regretfully states, “You listened for the truth/ Just too bad they lied.” The song's mournful, dirgelike vocal bridge highlights Adebimpe and Malone as perfect vocal counterparts; the album plays on this interchange through its duration, and it remains one of the record's greatest strengths.

Instrumentally, “Return to Cookie Mountain” benefits greatly from the addition of a live drummer in Jaleel Bunton, whose percussive skills provide a sense of groove that was strikingly absent on TVotR's previous releases. Bunton's work finds ways to remain relevant over the constant barrage of melodic instrumentation, most powerfully so on the frenzy of “Dirtywhirl” and in the churning grind of the album's closer, “Wash the Day.” However, no song on “Return to Cookie Mountain” finds a better balance of musical ferocity and lyrical presence than on the album's brilliant centerpiece, “Wolf Like Me.” The song's primal beat feels like a chase through the wilderness, paralleled by the deranged intensity of Adebimpe's vocals. The terror in his voice betrays a savage honesty; when he confesses, “My heart's aflame,/ my body's changed, but god I like it,” you're forced to believe him. Malone's late entrance into the song is a conciliatory decree: “We're howling forever,” he cries. The end result of these elements is undoubtedly the best song on the album, and a strong candidate for best song of the decade. With the whole of “Return to Cookie Mountain” revolving around the song as an emotional anchor, one can't help but feel that TVotR is a band striving to illustrate a universal torment caged in the intricate rhythms and broad progressions of their music. The result is an excellent album, almost certainly the year's best, and a candidate for best of the decade.

9.5/10

Pretty Hate Machine: Happiness in Suffering

This is a piece I did as a writing sample for school. Let me know what you think.



Trent Reznor, frontman and creative arbiter of industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails, has always been something of an enigma as a musical artist. While his roots lay in the burgeoning synth-pop movement of the 1980’s, Reznor’s development as a musician and composer are somewhat abstract, owing largely to the stark originality of his creative catalogue. By the early 90’s, Reznor had established himself as the father of industrial music, spawning a variety of well-intentioned imitators that never managed to replicate his commercial and artistic success. Strangely, though, this fame seems largely to have been retroactively attributed to Reznor’s early work; at the time of his 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine, the majority of critics either ignored or deemed the album mediocre at best. Despite this fact, Reznor has become recognized as one of the best composers, producers, and performers of electronic music in the world, though a great deal of his material employs traditional instruments.

Likewise, Pretty Hate Machine has developed as one of the markers of change in the popular music of the 1990’s, partially because of the excellence of its composition, but also because of the intense originality and striking honesty of its lyrical content. Instrumentally, the album relies heavily on synthesizers and electronic percussion, making sparing use of electric guitars as backing textures. Famously, Reznor recorded the album during a stint as janitor at a Cleveland studio, working exclusively by himself through the entire album. Reznor’s solitary nature at this time is apparent in the music; moreover, his intense loneliness serves as the album’s primary source of power. Drawing from this, Reznor finds time in the album’s relatively sparse ten songs to explore love, faith, addiction, and every possible response to each. Though his lyrics have an undeniable tendency towards the dramatic, Reznor’s musical and vocal skill never leave his words feeling anything short of entirely genuine.

Most striking about the music Pretty Hate Machine is the strange juxtaposition that Reznor creates from the very first beat. “Head Like a Hole,” the album’s classic opener, features an infectious dance club beat under Reznor’s frustrated growls against some nameless controller. This musical contrast continues throughout the album, and it partially explains why Pretty Hate Machine has garnered so much cult success since its release. More interesting, however, is the voice that rides the ever-present beat. Reznor’s always dramatic, often tortured voice lends to the music a presence that is inconsolably alienated, yet deeply human. This is a trend that is evident through the caustic rage of 1992’s Broken EP and refined to musical and lyrical perfection in 1994’s masterpiece The Downward Spiral, though neither album did so with the shocking originality of Pretty Hate Machine.

Beyond the melodrama of Reznor’s words, the most dominant trait of Pretty Hate Machine is the apparently solitary theme of every song. Tackling serious subjects like religion and addiction is no meager task for any songwriter, and Reznor’s strict focus on the individual makes them seem altogether inaccessible. However, the initially terrifying intimacy of his words betrays their unique beauty. Paradoxically, Reznor’s lyrics here are so intensely personal that they become undeniably universal. Consider the agonized confession of “Terrible Lie”: “Seems like salvation comes only in our dreams/ I feel my hatred grow all the more extreme/ Can this world really be as sad as it seems?” Here, Reznor’s religious torment, though based in personal questions, reflects the rejection of spiritual faith in an increasingly secular society striving to maintain religious influence. Likewise, when Reznor states in “Kinda I Want To,” “I know it’s not the right thing…but kinda I want to,” his rejection of sexual repression echoes a society in which youth were previously taught to ignore their sexuality entirely. More broadly, Reznor’s talent of humanizing the unrelatable translated into an album of uncompromising social power, establishing Pretty Hate Machine as the harbinger of a generational attitude that was reflected in all art forms throughout the 1990’s.

At first glance, the timing of Pretty Hate Machine’s release has as much to do with its relevance as does its content. Debuted at the end of 1989, the album has the unique position of being one of the last major works to arrive on the popular music scene before the decade changed. However, to state that the album’s release date is responsible for its importance would be to shortchange its quality. Specifically, Pretty Hate Machine’s themes seem both to mirror and to predict the angst and social disconnect discussed by more commercially popular bands like Nirvana. However, aside from some basic thematic similarities, the Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails strove to illuminate vastly different subjects. Where grunge explored boredom and apathy, Trent Reznor depicted a deep-seated personal disease that directly affected 90’s youth as a whole. In essence, Reznor cried the pain of a generation without a meaningful cause or sense of unity, one that did not fit the mold constructed by the social powers of its time. By picturing himself as an outcast, Reznor created through Nine Inch Nails a sense of common struggle in which the archetypal pariah became intimately human. Likewise, more than any other artwork of its time, Pretty Hate Machine and the deliberate honesty of its lyrics preserve the vulnerability of isolated youth while speaking to the common repression, fear, and religious anxiety of an entire generation.

Short Story

This is the first time I've put any of my fiction writing up here, so comment and let me know what you think.



I boarded the bus outside of a post office in the small town near school. The air outside had been cold, and I had no gloves. I carried my bag over the snow-draped paths, dragging it where the snow was too deep. The bus was warm, filled with a thick air like breathing through wool. Stumbling down the aisle, I bumped a few passengers here and there with my backpack before finding a seat near the middle, not too far back but certainly not in the front. I stretched my legs down the aisle (I like aisle seats; windows are always cold) and rested my head against the seat, waiting for the bus to move.

It was late, but I didn’t mind. I sat and allowed the contents of the bus to wash over me: I heard sounds, people talking, dulled cars outside the window, more talking. I was a sponge on the rocks, eating what passes (I should have been a sponge). The bus lurched, finally, but I continued to listen. Eventually the sponge found something it couldn’t digest, a bit of stone floating in the current, an inquisitive fish. A conversation, just behind me, was already in progress; I sat and chewed on it.

The bus continued to move. Its drone undulated in my ears, a consonant vibrato rising and falling like a sitar’s drone. Behind me they played out an endless discordant solo for two voices, minimal yet piercing, shaking with the subtle madness of a string held to wood, scratched by an untaught finger. It cried of connections cut and spliced, arranged out of key. I soaked and soaked, the deep bass of the engine mixing my meal as I ate. Though I chewed hungrily, I could not swallow the unrelenting tinkering of the dual strings, and I spat.

The window was too near, and I felt its chill against my arm, urging my skin to rise and meet. The landscape is nearly white, flecked by the grays of horses and pale yellow of dead wheat. As I watched, the horses and the wheat and the cars stood flat and without depth against the filthy window of my moaning coach. And not without considerable disappointed, I thought myself this window, attached to this tonedeaf instrument, flecked with the world’s dirt, its mud, its roadkill. I looked on, a gray-eyed onlooker on a clouded real. My habitat was carpeted and cushioned and cramped, room for one only, and I lost my vision to the crush of this world’s wheels over gray snow.

The bus finally stopped, and its muteness stunned me. Making myself thin, I stepped into the aisle and out of the vehicle. I looked back once; my instrument sat mute and voiceless, unseen to eyes of brown or blue, and I walked. I’m sorry if my bag hit you. It was an accident.

The Kanye West Debacle (and the Larger Issues at Stake)

I know I’ve been neglecting the blog for the past few weeks, but I’ve been busy as hell. I’m gonna try to update more frequently from now on.

Ok, so I’ve got beef. As you likely gathered from the post title, it’s with Kanye West. I know everyone’s riding the Kanye hate-train right now, and I want to get in on the fun.

So here’s the situation. Taylor Swift wins the VMA for best female video or whatever. Two sentences into her acceptance speech, Kanye runs onstage and interrupts her, since, obviously, no one was thinking of how amazing Kanye West is at the time. He grabs the mike, stammers some bullshit about how he’s happy for Taylor Swift, but you know, Beyonce’s video was just the shit.

Alright, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Pretty much everyone even vaguely in tune to music culture at this point knows that Kanye’s a self-important douche. There’s a staggering amount of evidence pointing in this direction, including his belief that he would be a major player in the modern Bible. This isn’t exactly news at this point, so what’s the big deal, right?

It’s actually kind of strange that we’re all so amazed at what he did to Taylor Swift. This is just the latest attention grab for a musician who sees himself slowly but surely fading from the public limelight, whose product has been declining in quality since 2005’s “Late Registration.” Many musicians take this transition hard, and even the best have their head-shake moments (check Pete Townshend’s last 20 years of pretentious crap for proof).

Unfortunately, Kanye is something of a different case, due in part to the changing nature of today’s music industry. The vast network of labels, producers, and musicians, along with evolving technology, have allowed artists to musically intermingle in ways that would have been thought ridiculous two decades ago. As a result, Kanye West has been involved in some way with an incredibly vast amount of material released in the past ten years. He’s shoved his puffy cheeks into virtually every major hip-hop act from the past ten years, and even before that, to a lesser extent. And, to be honest, a decent amount of this material is pretty damn good. He’s a valued and respected producer in hip-hop circles, and his record sales are perennially ridiculous.

All talent notwithstanding, though, Kanye seems to have formed a somewhat distorted vision of himself as the speaker of a generation of musicians and music listeners. While he’s certainly popular, he fails to realize the undisputable truth about the music listening public: that it will either turn on, devour, or simply forget almost any musician, no matter how popular or talented. This has happened time and again, and few artists are immune; Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson have withstood the public fury better than most, and Kanye is definitely none of the above.
The more important issue here, though, is that the public seems to have a soft spot for this man. It buys his albums, attends his concerts, and most importantly, forgives him every time he does something like this. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, I’ll admit. I love The Who, despite Pete Townshend’s alienating his fellow musicians, for just one example of many. The bottom line is that people seem to love Kanye’s music despite his rampant dickery. This seems to say that, at least in this case, people care more about the music than they do about the musician.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ll always love the music of some artists who are not exactly paragons of good personality, but at the same time, I think I would rush to defend any musician who I truly respected if he did something like Kanye has done. I guess I just want it both ways.

Anyways, the point I guess I’m getting at here is that we should at least try to stop giving people like Kanye such an attentive audience. Sure, listen to his music (if it gets any better; “808s and Heartbreak” was flat-out terrible). But at least try to ignore his cries for attention. At least that way, maybe he’ll get past this self-loving midlife crisis and stop annoying us all.

The 5 Bands With the Most Insufferable Fanbases

It’s obvious that everyone has their own unique taste in music, and everyone likes different bands for different reasons. However, there are a few bands around that, for some reason, inspire the most annoying people who absolutely worship them either for stupid reasons or in ridiculously annoying ways. These are the five bands that I think suffer from this more than any others.

5. Tool
Okay, I’m going to be honest. I fucking love Tool. They were one of the most musically and thematically interesting bands to come out of the grunge-metal underground scene in the 90’s, and for the most part, they’ve only gotten better over the years. All criticisms aside, Tool features some extremely talented musicians, most notably drummer Danny Carey, who is without doubt the best drummer in rock, and is probably in the top ten in the world. Vocalist Maynard James Keenan, though sometimes annoyingly pretentious, remains an excellent frontman and voice for one of the best live acts in music today.

However, I must be honest and say that Tool attracts some of the more annoying fans of the bands I consistently follow. From my experience, the cultlike fanbase is composed largely of rednecks, nerdy quasi-goths, and wannabe spirituals. Even more annoying than these living stereotypes are their frequently vocal opinions. If you enjoy Tool’s music, you probably know that one of their central messages is the idea that people should think for themselves. While this is all well and good, Tool’s fans somehow exclude the band themselves from this mantra. Toolheads constantly watch the band’s every move, a practice which has lead to fans practicing religions that were made up by the band in order to fuck with said fans (Google “Lachrymology”). Even more annoying is the near-Messianic image some fans have bestowed upon Keenan, who eats that shit like candy and turns it into new ways to fuck with people. Now, I enjoy the fact that Keenan has a sense of humor, but his fans should probably realize at some point that he’s kind of an asshole. That doesn’t mean you can’t like him or his band; just take them for what they are.

4. Metallica
I had a hard time deciding who to put in this spot, but I eventually settled on Metallica, if only for the fact that I don’t really like them. I admit that I find Metallica to be one of the most colossally overrated bands of the past thirty years, and that fact might taint my view of their fans. I don’t think I’m completely unjustified in that belief, though. Mostly, I dislike Metallica for spawning hundreds of terrible thrash metal acts, such as…oh, fuck it. I hate thrash metal.

Metallica fans love to talk about the band in two ways: how “fucking awesome” their music supposedly is, and how incredibly influential they are. Both of these claims are flawed, and here’s why. First, Metallica didn’t write good songs. They wrote songs for people to call “fucking awesome” while swinging their greasy hair in my face. Usually this involves writing a decent riff and repeating it under inane lyrics about riding the lightning. I can’t think of other examples because I don’t want to go listen to their music again. Metallica fans are utterly convinced that the band members are the most talented people in the history of nerdy pale guys, and they are wrong.

Secondly, on the issue of perceived influence: Metallica fans love to tout how the band supposedly created a whole new genre, and how they have remained relevant for so many years. This is probably the more annoying claim. These people need to realize that influence doesn’t matter if the music wasn’t any good to begin with. Besides, this idea is simply wrong. Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and other such bands did it first, and did it way fucking better.
Also, the band members are douchebags. Fact.

3. Pink Floyd
Again, I gotta be honest. I like Pink Floyd’s music a lot. Most of their catalogue, especially “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and “Dark Side of the Moon,” is shockingly creative, and has the musical quality to back it up. That’s really all I’ll say, because I don’t like any other aspect of the band itself.
The group members have proven themselves time and again to be self-absorbed, whiny pricks. Except for Richard Wright; he was mostly cool. Actually, I’m really just speaking of Roger Waters and Brian Gilmour. Songwriting skills aside, neither of these individuals are nearly as talented as they think they are. In fact, they both think they’re so fucking good that they’re too good for each other. The near-constant feud between these two is annoying as hell, and I’m sick of hearing about it.

What about the fans, you ask? Well, the main problem is that their fans are mostly just like the band itself. Creepy, passive, and self-absorbed to the extreme, Pink Floyd’s fanbase is a suicide cult waiting to happen. They also suffer from Tool syndrome; that is, waiting with bated breath for the band’s next move, constantly praying for a reunion tour and whimpering at every failed attempt. That’s the other thing. I’m so tired of hearing about Pink Floyd reunions. They did it for Live 8, and it sucked. I’m sure they’ll do it again, and it’ll still suck. Waters and Gilmour have become washed up yacht clubbers, and no amount of moaning from their fans will change that.

2. The Grateful Dead
Far be it from me to deny the coolness of the 60’s-era San Francisco jam movement, but I don’t really like the Grateful Dead. Actually, they have some really good songs. They just couldn’t play them live. I’m serious. I hate the Grateful Dead’s live sound. It’s boring. I can kind of see where it might be fun to take a shitload of acid and get sweaty with a bunch of dirty hippies…wait. No, I can’t. That sounds terrible. I can’t stand hippies.

That’s what bothers me most about this band and their fanbase. The only way to enjoy their music is apparently to do what I just described. That is not a good statement about any band. These people are so convinced in how good the Dead are that they really don’t see how bland and uninteresting the music actually is in a live setting. They have no edge, no surprise, no energy. They’re one of the few bands that I just really don’t understand. I don’t get why everyone on the planet thought (and still think) they were the best thing since sliced bread. It just makes no sense to me, and I guess that’s why their fans annoy me so much. Maybe I’m just missing something, some delightful bounce to the music that makes them fun to listen to in a crowded room for four hours. I doubt it, though.

1. Nirvana
You probably knew this was coming at some point, but here it is anyways. I’m in the middle of the road on Nirvana. I don’t hate them, but I don’t really like them either. I certainly don’t understand the worship they get from again grunge fanatics and poser high school kids. Anyways, my problem with their fans is similar to my problem with Metallica fans. Nirvana fans love to preach about how Nirvana gave a voice to a generation, redefined music, yadda yadda yadda. I call bullshit.

Now, I don’t deny that Nirvana was a very important band in the grunge movement. Their muddy sound and dispassionate lyrics paved the way for dozens of post-grunge bands the world over. However, they’re definitely not the best band from the start of the grunge movement. Soundgarden was more musically complex. Alice in Chains was darker and more brutal than Nirvana could have ever hoped to be. Pearl Jam was so much better than Nirvana that it’s hardly worth talking about, not to mention far more relevant and genuine.

More important, though, is how Nirvana’s fans have betrayed the memory of their angsty hero, Kurt Cobain. Supposedly, Cobain’s reasons for committing suicide centered on his revelation that he had become what he started out hating. His initial rebellion against the social expectations of youth crumbled when the entire fucking country started agreeing with him. As pretentious as his motives may have been, worse still is how his fans have continued to emulate Cobain to this day. Through their efforts, a mediocre songwriter has become the subject of fevered rumor, the emblem of mainstream “rebellion.” Nirvana’s fans just don’t seem to understand that rebellion isn’t cool if everyone thinks it is.