Anyone see this article in People about Nirvana making the Smells Like Teen Spirit video 35 years later? Hilariously, they neglect to mention where they found the “cheerleaders” in the video, but include two pretty explicit quotes from Courtney Love. Rather odd if you ask me.
I’ve been catching up on Rick Beato’s interviews on his YT channel and just finished the one with Kim Thayil, Krist Novoselic and Jack Endino.
It’s a great interview overall, but at the 45(ish) minute mark, they were talking about how four of the very best vocalists from the 90s all grew out of the Seattle scene, five if you count Andy Wood. I’ve seen plenty of posts on here about ranking their voices or arguing about who is best. I suppose that can be entertaining, but on the flip side, it’s really cool they all ran around in similar circles and came out of the same scene. Incredibly special.
https://youtu.be/tbrXN7x623U?is=YYiEmLyj2re08Rzl
For those of you who are inevitably going to point out that Eddie Vedder is from San Diego, yeah I know, he went to my high school. About that, though, the guys in this interview talked about how each of the big four (Cobain, Cornell, Staley, Vedder) had to find their way to their ultimate voice, i.e. it didn’t start right from day one.
I had a Jerry Cantrell account follow me on TikTok about a week ago. At first, I assumed it was just a fan page with a bunch of clips of Jerry, etc. But no, this guy is impersonating Jerry. Right on cue, he sends me a DM asking my name and where I live. Should I mess with him?
With the 30th anniversary re-issue of Alice’s Unplugged album, I’ve been seeing a lot of folks reference the original reviews of the concert as “mixed,” but I don’t think that’s quite right.
Most critics actually liked it but it didn’t pop off immediately like some other Unpluggeds. Instead its reputation evolved over time. It’s also impossible to separate those first reviews from where the band was in 1996. Layne’s health was an ongoing concern, the band hadn’t toured in years, and nobody knew if the band even had a future.
Then, after Layne died, the performance took on an entirely different meaning. Songs like “Nutshell” and “Down in a Hole” suddenly took on much greater meaning and became part of the band’s legacy. Thirty years later, we’re not just listening to the music, we’re listening with the knowledge of how the story ends. I think that history and evolution plus the fact that the music is still so good, is why their Unplugged has grown into being widely considered one of the greats. Thoughts?