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Saturday 12 November 2011

Nirvana for Christmas #1 Campaign





My Brother works for William Hill, the betting company, and informs me that they're giving out even odds on Nirvana securing the #1 spot this Christmas, thanks to a facebook campaign to see them take the spot over Justin Bieber, and this year's X-Factor winner. In response, I just feel there is one question I should probably ask...


DO ANY OF YOU RETARDS EVEN FUCKING LIKE NIRVANA?


It's an honest question - Nirvana was never about becoming popular, or making money, and they sure as hell wouldn't be proud to make it to the Christmas #1 spot. In fact, this campaign seems to stand for everything the band despised. And just to top it all off, you know which song the campaign is calling for people to buy?





That's right, Smells Like Teen Spirit. If you're a regular, you'll recall my rantings against the song back in February last year. If you're not a regular, allow me to recant a couple of facts that every casual nirvana fan knows:


Nirvana's first album, Bleach, was not overly successful. For Nevermind, they decided to go in a slightly different direction, with a proper producer and decent mixing. Smells Like Teen Spirit itself was written as Kurt's version of a Pixie's song, with strong overtones of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" thrown in to boot. Kurt wrote it as a popular song - essentially, he wrote the song as a joke, to reflect on the direction the new album was taking. Smells Like Teen Spirit was an example of the extreme he was worried they were being pushed towards with their new sound and rising popularity, and wrote the song, in essence, as an act of rebellion. In effect, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was for 'Nevermind' what 'The Real Slim Shady' was for 'The Marshal Mathers LP'. It was an overly pop-sounding and catchy track, designed to make fun of the genre, and the group's steady path towards it. Nirvana was a raw grunge band, and found themselves falling into the mainstream world of pop music, so fought back with a parody of what they thought of pop. Cobain is known to have despised being made to play the song at live shows, because he hated the fact that Nirvana was being remembered as 'The Band who made that catchy track, Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Though, presumably not as much as David Bowie hated having kids come up to him and say how much they loved the fact he did a cover of a Nirvana song...



Pictured: The Exact look Bowie gave to anyone who said this. Don't even ask what happened to the people who complimented Dylan on his cover of a Guns 'N' Roses song...


So, essentially, encouraging people to buy 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' this Christmas is the biggest "Fuck You" we could give to Kurt Cobain's corpse, short of Courtney Love making a movie of his life with Rob Schneider in the lead role...



Rape Me, my friend...


Nirvana is not the type of band who would want a number 1, nor were they the type of group who would want to win some stupid race like this. But even if they were, they sure as shit wouldn't want 'Smells Like teen Spirit' to be the song everyone bought. Now, I have no idea what Dave Grohl's opinion on the song was, but i know that both Cobain and Novoselic hated it. Why not pick a Nirvana song the group were actually proud of? My vote would be on 'Heart-Shaped Box', but since it's not an overly catchy song, why not 'Come As You Are'? or 'Lithium'? All famous, instantly recognisable songs, but also songs the band actually liked and were proud of. And why stop at Nirvana? Since the band wouldn't have wanted to make it Christmas #1 anyway, why not buy another track from and early 90s grunge band? Hell, why not:






Better yet, why even pick a grunge band? Why not pick a song from an era where getting to the top of the charts wasn't considered a bad thing? Why shit in the faces of great musicians, when others would consider seeing their song reach #1 a great triumph? You know what I think we need to all need to buy to try and get to Christmas #1 this year?



See, it's funny because Kris Novoselic is Croatian...



Voice



Whilst we're on the subject, just a slight redaction I wish to make. upon viewing A Serbian Film for a second time, i realize that, what I had thought was meant to be a twist, and believed to be overly-predictable, was in fact always supposed to be obvious, and was not predictable, but inevitable. I had gone into A Serbian Film expecting a Horror Film along the lines of Saw, and so picked up on the similarities without judging the film on its own merrit. For this, I apologize. The movie is actually better than I gave it credit for, and now I'm worried I'll have to rewatch buffy the Vampire Slayer in case that's actually decent in some way I hadn't noticed before.


Actually, fuck that. that movie was shit.

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