Search Results for: Smells Like Teen Spirit

Seattle – Nirvana’s box set, delayed three years by litigation, was finally released Tuesday, introducing hundreds of thousands of fans to rare recordings and even living-room video of the grunge rockers. The four-disc set, “With the Lights Out,” includes 81 tracks, 68 of them previously unreleased. It was initially planned for release in 2001 – for the 10th anniversary of the album “Nevermind” – but a dispute between Courtney Love, the widow of frontman Kurt Cobain, and the surviving bandmates delayed the project. The sides settled their legal issues in September 2002, allowing work on the box set to resume.… Read more »

Kurt Cobain and his band, Nirvana, spent only three years in the public eye, and they released only three studio albums. But what he accomplished before committing suicide 10 years ago Monday at age 27 – deciding it was “better to burn out than fade away,” as he quoted Neil Young in his suicide note – was remarkable. Beneath this bridge above the muddy banks of the Wishkah River, a troubled young Cobain would come to escape his unhappy home and the persistent gray drizzle of the Washington coast. Among the cracking concrete supports, he would smoke pot and drink… Read more »

Leland Cobain spreads a few yellowing pieces of art across his dining room table. The Aberdeen Museum of History, in the next town over, has asked him to contribute to an exhibit about his grandson, late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. One adorable Christmas card Kurt made for his grandparents at age 13 shows a hapless toddler, fishing, who has hooked the back of his shirt. There are radiant watercolor seascapes and depictions of Disney characters. Then there are the other paintings, in an apartment 55 miles northeast of Leland’s trailer. They are surrealistic, stark and powerful, revealing skeletons, aliens and… Read more »

These days Good Charlotte are on top of the world, but there was a time when Benji Madden felt like taking his own life. “I’ll be the first person to say I have the most amazing life of anyone I’ve ever met, but I did come to certain points of my life where I thought that [suicide] was an option,” Benji admitted recently, sitting next to his brother Joel inside the Sunset Marquis Hotel. His voice trailing off, he quietly acknowledged the role that music played in ultimately steering him away from such a tragic and horrible act. The Madden… Read more »

What everyone always wants to know is: who’s the worst? Meaning: which really famous person out there is a berk whose lack of personality is in inverse proportion to their abundance of fame? And the answer is, of course, all of them. No, it’s not. It’s Jon Bon Jovi. The next question – who’s the best, of course – is more difficult. The interviewees I like are the ones that turn out to be more than you expected, whether that’s more intelligent, or honest, or bonkers, or fun, whatever. And there are plenty of those. Madonna (sharper), Björk (wilder), James… Read more »

The upcoming Nirvana collection, much-hyped due to the inclusion of the previously unreleased “You Know You’re Right,” will feature 14 songs overall, according to the Universal Music sales catalog. The album arrives October 29. Tracks include the song responsible for the former Seattle band’s breakout success, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and three others from the album Nevermind. Five songs from the In Utero era are also featured while three others date back to the band’s pre-Geffen Sub Pop days. A cover of David Bowie (news)’s “The Man Who Sold The World” is also featured. The Complete Track Listing Is: You… Read more »

Portions of the last recorded Nirvana track surfaced online this week, bringing a new twist to the legal debate between Courtney Love and Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. Live bootlegs of “You Know You’re Right” have circulated for years, but until now the studio version has gone mostly unheard. (Love spun the song at a London club in March and provided part of it to “Access Hollywood.”) Although she claims to possess more than 100 tapes of unheard material from the late Kurt Cobain, “You Know You’re Right” has been singled out as a huge potential hit by Love and… Read more »

Napster Inc. can investigate whether the five major labels own the rights to songs they say the music-swapping service infringes, a judge ruled yesterday after settlement talks in the case broke down. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel last month postponed Napster’s pursuit of the issue after the company and the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents AOL Time Warner Inc., Sony Corp., Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group PLC and Vivendi Universal, asked for 30 days of settlement discussions. “That stay has now ended, and the parties have advised the court that they are unable to resolve their disputes,” Patel wrote… Read more »

A decade ago, Tori Amos made a musical breakthrough with an autobiographical tale of rape called “Me and a Gun.” On her new album, Strange Little Girls, she again addresses the subject of female victimization – this time by turning Eminem’s fantasy about killing his wife inside-out. She does so without changing the lyrics to “’97 Bonnie & Clyde,” but by adopting the voice of his dead wife in the trunk of the car, just before her body is thrown in Lake Michigan. “‘Bonnie & Clyde’ is a song that depicts domestic violence very accurately, right on the money,” Amos… Read more »