7 May 2014

I LOVE HORRIBLE NOISE

Last month marked the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's untimely death. In my relatively short time on this earth I have already been alive longer than he was.

I'm not going to get all sappy here, but Nirvana was the first real rock band I heard and the first I loved (there had been Oasis, yes, but as a youth in northern England in the mid-1990s I was contractually obligated to listen to Oasis. Besides, this was stronger stuff by far). I was eleven years old in autumn 1997, and when I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for the first time, it was like entering a different world.

Terrible American dad-rock embarrassment Bruce Springsteen once described the snare shot that heralds Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" as sounding like somebody had "kicked open the door to your mind", and I could say the same for myself regarding the albatross around Cobain's neck. The moment the guitar's tone distorted, I was changed for life: I had found my brand, so to speak. Having no real disposable income of my own, its parent album Nevermind took the form of a Christmas gift, and the Christmas that was soundtracked by three noisy longhairs with personal hygiene problems was a happy one indeed.

I think Kurt just found out about Miley Cyrus covering "...Teen Spirit".
That Nevermind was packed with great songs was merely a bonus. To me, the disc was less an album, more a sacred artifact: one to be worshipped nightly and heralded as the finest achievement in human history. Indeed, for a long time I had no interest in finding out if there were other albums in the world: I was tragically unhip as a lad. I didn't even know where you'd go to find them. I knew record shops existed, but had no idea where to find them, or indeed if I was worthy to enter them*. Eventually I dove into practically all forms of music with the zeal of a burn victim leaping into a swimming pool filled with ice cream, but for a good few years there I lived and breathed every word Kurt Cobain yelled on that album.

I said earlier that the album changed my life, and I genuinely believe it did. If I had never heard Nevermind, who knows? I could have grown up to be one of those hapless imbeciles who cares more about who they vote for in The X Factor or I'm a Fading Pseudo-Celebrity, Get My Publicist on the Phone than who they vote for in a general election. I could have grown up to be the kind of person who listens to Top 40 radio and believes it. I could have grown up to be the kind of person who doesn't like music but likes the idea of music, and therefore buys three albums a year: Coldplay, Katy Perry and Robbie arsing Williams. Given that I hail from Wigan, where the glory days of the Casino and its effervescent Northern Soul have long since passed, to be replaced by a truly execrable form of dance music called "donk", these are all very real possibilities.

But because of Nirvana and Nevermind, I didn't. And the reason for this goes beyond the 'shock of the new' I experienced, beyond the great songs and beyond even the tired old 'voice of a generation' bumf that probably drove Kurt Cobain to suicide. The reason I didn't grow up into a musically-apathetic, Top 40 radio-listening cow-person is because of a song that isn't even listed anywhere on the album's sleeve.

NSFW

"Endless, Nameless" is a seven-minute noise jam that grew out of a failed attempt at recording future hit single "Lithium", and consists of Nirvana slowly deconstructing the concept of rock music at a volume loud enough to make pregnant women miscarry. It was appended to the album as a hidden track after the first pressing, beginning some ten minutes after the end of morose album closer, "Something in the Way".

The first time I heard the song, it frightened the daylights out of me. Beginning with a pulsing, bassy guitar note and immediately exploding into distortion and pounding drums, I thought there was something wrong with my stereo. Then I thought there was something wrong with my CD. Then I realised something truly remarkable for a kid whose first CD–another Christmas present, natch–was the chart compilation Now That's What I Call Music 35: I was enjoying it. I could hear on-the-fly songcraft, I could pick out a tune through the chaos. And by the end, when Krist Novoselic plays a merry, folksy melody on his bass followed by the song sputtering to a halt like a dying motorcycle... I wanted to hear it again.

I wanted to hear more of what I would later see Lester Bangs describe as "horrible noise", and my ears would never be the same again. From "Endless, Nameless" and Norwegian black metal, through Iggy & The Stooges and Big Black, to free jazz and Metal Machine Music^, I have always found comfort in horrible noise.

And for that, Kurt Cobain, more than anything, I thank you.


* Worthiness and my own perceived lack thereof has been a recurring theme throughout my life
^ One of only one-and-a-half good albums Lou Reed ever made

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