Kurt Cobain died 10 years ago on this date -- Who cares?
On the radio this morning there was an announcement of some sort indicating that this week would be "Nirvana Week" and that different DJs would be playing Nirvana tunes more frequently, including some things rare and never heard before. My first inclination was interest, since I had just finished listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit - It had been a while since Nirvana had struck me as anything other than more background noise. But then I realized that April 5th is "Kurt Cobain Death Day".
If it wasn't openly apparent to you from the attitude of this piece so far, let me lay it out for you: If you are one of the overwrought Nirvana/Kurt Cobain fans who even considered following in his footsteps (though I don't believe that such a person existed before the suggestion made on self-important MTV), by all means follow through and fulfill your Darwinian destiny.
Doesn't anyone else think this story is very overblown? The people to whom it would matter are my age - late twenties/early thirties. If we were dedicated to the band (and hey, not all of us were), we might say something like, "Yeah, that was a shame," and move on with our lives. More likely, if we weren't needlessly reminded of it, we might go on with our lives unaffected.
Really, there is no reason to bring this up. Sure, had Cobain not shot himself in the head with a shotgun, we would probably have had more Nirvana and less Hole, and I agree that might be a good thing. Beyond that, Cobain is just another personality in the long string of victims of pop culture, drug overdosing rock bands, whose corpse the media likes to bring out of the casket and dance around like a marionette while wailing, "Why? Why?" Spare me - spare him - the indignity of this puppet show.
To all of this I scream: "I don't care!" Every year now for ten years the media has asked us to watch them beat this dead horse, presumably in some illustration of a cautionary tale. Yes folks, it would be bad to blow your brains out, but I don't think I need to waste a week of radio time or a minute of TV news to remind you of that. Take no consideration of the thought that piping in that music for a whole week just might kick someone over that edge into oblivion, you thoughtless sentiment whores.
To replace the neverending Nirvana, I'll have to spin up some disks of some truly talented artists that died before their time, but who aren't lamented like the foil-embossed face on the seal of authenticity of MTV News.
