Disco Nirvana

Funny clip with Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and current leader of Foo Fighters, talking with Pharrell.  Grohl reveals the disco inspiration for his playing on Nirvana songs!

saw this pharrell x dave grohl clip last week and i’m still sitting here shook pic.twitter.com/BFlI2zUwpv

— mike taddow (@MikeTaddow) July 4, 2021

Smells Like A 14-Year Old On Ukelele

This is 14 year old Feng E with his interpretation of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.  The playing and arrangement is brilliant bringing out the beauty in the song's melody and brooding bass line.

I Feel Stupid & Contagious

I first heard it on my car radio. The musical landscape was grim at the time.  A solo guitar, then the pounding drums crashing in along with the full bore electric guitar assault, which then subsided into a subtle guitar and bass line. Who is this?  What is this?  This is incredible, this is exciting, whatever it is!  All I felt was a sensation starting in my spine and moving up into my brain.  It was only a few days later when I saw the video and found out who'd done the song and its title (FM radio was too cool to reveal those essentials).

Smells Like Teen Spirit was released 25 years ago tomorrow, placing it on the midpoint between the release of Revolver by The Beatles and today.  Nevermind, the Nirvana album containing the song was released two weeks later.

It's still a great song; it gets the same reaction from me it did all those years ago.  Nirvana was a talented band.  Kurt Cobain could actually compose melodies and the group had a sense of sound dynamics so they weren't always just bashing away.  But it was still difficult to listen to a lot of their music at one time - Kurt was also a sick puppy, and it was just too depressing except in small doses.

Anyway, here's Smells Like Teen Spirit, followed by an outstanding cover by The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain (on which you can actually understand the lyrics).  

The Man Who Sold The World

It's difficult to do a good cover of a David Bowie song.  Here's one done right - The Man Who Sold The World infused with Nirvana's characteristic melancholia from MTV Unplugged.

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With The Man Who Sold The World

I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed

I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died alone, a long long time ago

Who knows? not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the Man who Sold the World

And don't forget astronaut Chris Hadfield's great take on Space Oddity done from the International Space Station.

And finally, from the opening night of Bruce Springsteen's 2016 tour just a couple of days ago, is Rebel, Rebel.

Polly

November is THC's least favorite month.  All of a sudden it's getting dark really early.  By the end of the month the trees are barren and it's becoming colder and bleaker with a long, unending winter looming ahead. or, as Bill Murray put it in Groundhog Day, "It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life".  Now that THC has depressed himself (and possibly his readers) perhaps it's time for a song and there was no one better at depressing music than Nirvana.