Kurt Cobain Lives – Part 2

This is part 2 in an ongoing serial fiction. Read part 1 and learn how the narrator came to be sitting in an office with the long-dead front-man of Nirvana.

In 1994 Kurt Cobain faked his own suicide. 22 years later he’s ending his self-imposed exile.

“Allow me to introduce my client, Mr. Kurt Cobain. Contrary to popular belief, alive and in the flesh,” Consuelo says.

“No… fucking… way…” is all I can manage.

In 1993 I saw Nirvana play live at the San Francisco Cow Palace, which is basically a stadium. I recall thinking Kurt looked very small on the huge, distant stage. At the time I attributed it to the enormity of the venue and perhaps Krist Noveselich’s absurd height at stage right, but here, the figure on the couch, thin as a rail, was a man of similarly small stature.

Continue reading “Kurt Cobain Lives – Part 2”

Kurt Cobain Lives

Kurt-Cobain-Live-Gig-Upside-Down-Guitar-Solo.jpg

In 1994 Kurt Cobain faked his own suicide. 22 years later he’s come back to “get” Dave Grohl.

“Wait, this doesn’t make sense. Do you know what he wants? Why in the world would this dude want to talk to me? To us?” I ask Martin.

I have Martin on speaker while I Google the lawyer he’s just mentioned on my aging MacBook Pro. The lawyer’s name, the guy who wants us to come see him, is Vincent Consuelo. I’ve heard the name before I think, but I can’t place it.

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Fuck You! You and your fucking Batman

It’s September 1989 and the Irish punk band the Pogues is touring America. They play to a capacity crowd of 1300 people at the Power Center for the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This night it’s immediately clear that lead singer Shane MacGowan isn’t up to snuff. Even while gripping the solidity of the mic-stand, the infamously testy and oft-drunken singer can barely stand. He’s off-tune, off-time and nearly doesn’t make it through the opening number.

the-pogues
The Pogues

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Books I Read in 2015

I’ve gone back and forth internally about posting my reading list for 2015. The most persuasive argument thus far being “Who the fuck cares what I read?” That, however is the central dilemma, native to all writing having to do with one’s self. Where do you get the nerve to think that’s worth writing down? I’ve worked hard to ignore that thought though, because in the end, all writing is an act of narcissistic courage. Look what I have to say! I exist!

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That Time I Took LSD and Got Kicked in the Head at a Butthole Surfers Show

A personal recounting of the psycho-pharmacological experience that was a 1987 Butthole Surfers show.

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The Butthole Surfers

When people asked me as a teenager what I wanted to do when I grew up I, at some point developed a stock answer. “I’d like to be one of three things,” I’d say. “A Butthole Surfer, A Beastie Boy or a Pogue.”

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You Gun People Are Idiots

You people that get your jollies, your reason for living via the use and veneration of a gun are mentally feeble. A gun is a tool, nothing more. It’s a low preoccupation. Further, it’s sad that you worship these things and your “constitutional right” to own such a tool above all else, most notably an innocent person’s life. Can you think of nothing better to do? Why not worship a hammer or perhaps a lawn mower instead? Surely we’d all be better off. Especially you.

Such a condescending statement sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it’s how I feel. I’ve tried to be respectful and hold my tongue, but enough is enough. You people are feebs and I’m tired of you encroaching on my mental space.

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A Veiled Love Letter to New England

Or – an alternate title – “Boston, The Racial Valhalla I Never Knew”

My wife and I went on a trip to New England, where I grew up, to visit my parents. It was pleasant in many prototypically New England ways; the leaves were turning and the angle of the sun painted the world in that most flattering light. Continue reading “A Veiled Love Letter to New England”

Kicking It with Fidlar – The Ultimate Party Band Goes Cold Turkey

Every few years a band comes along and manages to do nihilism right. And with their self-titled debut, the LA band Fidlar took the crown for 2013. The name Fidlar is an acronym. It stands for “F*ck It Dog, Life’s A Risk.”

I was sold on the name, but it was the music that cemented my ardor; these guys brought the goods. Their most popular tune in 2012 was a song titled, “No Waves” a fast paced sing-along, guitar anthem that spoke to me across the generational divide. It begins…

I feel, feel like a cokehead,

I feel, feel like I can’t get drunk no more,

‘Cause I’m on the floor,

Looking for some matches just to cook up a score,

Talk about painting a picture! And the song rocks! I was sold.

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Kurt Cobain was NOT a Retard Fucker!

Back in the 90’s, I nearly wore out my Aiwa boom box (along with its’ trademarked mega-bass-boost button) with the Melvin’s Houdini CD. The box was a rugged piece of equipment and I was convinced it would last forever. It followed me from my dorm room on Washington Square Park, to a tenement building on Avenue C, then across the country for an action packed-black-tar-filled sojourn on Haight Street. It only succumbed some years after my return to the student hellhole known as Allston Massachusetts. Despite the mileage, I’m convinced it was Houdini that ultimately did the mega-bass button in.

 Consider reading the first installment of a new fictional piece I am writing Kurt Cobain Lives In 1994 Kurt Cobain faked his own suicide. 22 years later he’s ending his self-imposed exile.

 

More to the point, my mind was blown when I was introduced to the Melvins. It was so heavy! The sound was so much darker than most of the heavy metal I was aware of at the time. It’s hard, but has a slippery tempo that makes it difficult to put your finger on, still guitar-based, but with drums and vocals used so differently from anything else I’d yet heard. It’s still vaguely punk, but fucking evil as well. I loved it! This was the shit you imagined destroying boom boxes, although truthfully that particular Aiwa boom box lasted longer than it had a right to.

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Arthur Fiedler Was a Firebug

Or a less salacious title: Chris from Rosi, Rest In Peace My Friend

Fuck man, it sucks leaving some dudes behind. Chris, I wish you could have stuck around. You were a good dude. I feel like we would have stayed friends…

Los Angeles, 2015

I used to have this friend. Like 20 years ago now. He wasn’t my best friend or anything, but he was a good dude. He was from Boston like I am, and he’d gone down to New York for college, also like I did. That’s where I met him, down there in New York. He’d gone to Columbia where he was a friend of my friend, Kyle – that was how I originally met him. I knew Kyle because he dated my good friend Adelle from high school. Adelle was my connection to that whole crew up at Columbia in the first place. While I was at NYU, I’d go uptown every now and again to hang with those people.

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