August 27, 2004
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WITH THE LIGHTS OUT, IT’S LESS DANGEROUS
i think i was a junior or senior in high school when i first heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. what used to be the coooooolest radio station on the planet, 92.7 WDRE (R.I.P.), always played the newest alternative songs. in this case, they played Teen Spirit at least six months before anyone heard it. truly revolutionary.
to understand the impact of this song you have to understand the context. in the 70′s and 80′s, throaty, cigarette screams over harsh guitar mayhem was strictly in the realm of heavy metal. metallica was still relegated to white trash tapedecks. van halen was considered hard and heavy. they all had long strands of straw for hair and the word “headbanger” actually defined a something specific.
i was in high school and cranked up the radio when this song aired on WDRE and my korean friends winced. i think i even heard the words “devil worshipper” in there somewhere. how could i switch from OMD’s Sugar Tax to this headbanging music? to them i say, how the fuck could you not? Teen Spirit rocked! Dee Snider, the Twisted Sister frontman, described this song as “the death knell for heavy metal”. so true. so true. in came these skinny guys that looked like skate punks from the most obscure music subculture and basically commandeered the metal sound and said “fuck you, it’s mine.” headbangers have been scrambling ever since.
listen to cobain screaming is damn lungs out. even the video for Teen Spirit showed the chaotic and anarchic mayhem that heavy metal always strived for. ever see that video? total mayhem! (incidentally, i found out much later that a guy i used to know is in that video for a glimpse.)
the kick ass commercial success of Teen Spirit pretty much opened the door for today’s hard alternative rock bands and shut the door forever on traditional metal shits like anthrax and slayer. it forced metal musicians to adapt, “pop”-ify their image or shut down entirely. the dark gothic images that were once synonymous with metal culture are gone. we now have The Osbournes on MTV and Alice Cooper buying school supplies for his daughter in Staples commercials. Metallica sounds more like alternative rock now (or does alternative rock sound like metallica?). true angst belonged to kurt cobain because he really just didn’t give a fuck. can you say the same about metallica? metallica, those fucking douchebags that shut down Napster because they thought it was eating at their profits? nope. metal turned weaksauce and the skinny suburban skatepunks somehow cornered the market on anger. metal died, alternative started rocking and we all rejoiced.
Comments (13)
i miss The Scorpions
Kurt Cobain…rip. i loved nirvana and still do.
unlike cgroovin, i can’t eat something that greasy to recoup. it’ll just make me barf…although, i’m still waiting for that to happen. dude, i totally can’t hang anymore..sigh.
goddamn. memories.
wdre is gone? i haven’t listened to them since hs too, but i thought i listened to it for a bit a year so ago … until i got static again. their signal was always weak, but definitely a cool station.
that was a good song by nirvana. too bad he died…so much talent…tsk tsk tsk.
i was in JHS the first time i heard that song… too young to drive, so my friend’s older cousin used to drive us around blasting it. ah…. haha
not a skatepunk. not really really grunge altho alot of my friends did turn into that. some turned hippiechic. i had many flannels and cords. and birks. HAHA. u?
haejang gook? isn’t that made from cow’s blood. eh…no thanks. but i can go for some, what’s that chigae called…you know the one where they throw all the left-over in. yeah…that one.
nirvana was the soundtrack of my youth. anyways, did you ever catch that documentary on the seattle alternative scene? it had early pearl jam, nirvana and sonic youth in it. i forget the title.
best friend who became my unofficially adopted sister. my parents took her in, emotionally and financially. she was introduced to the whole extended family [btw on my mom's side, she has an unofficially adopted brother so this was familiar and welcomed]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782008119/o/qid%3D937705085/sr%3D2-1/104-6812300-1785544
i love devil-worshipping music. i’m their clan leader. headbangin’ – bleh. punk rocks! but yes, i remember teen spirit…i was in grade school and i was one of three kids in my class that listened to/liked it. what a bunch of losers in that class.