Tag: punk

Dave Grohl is a Clown

Kurt Cobain Lives  –  Part 4

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

This is part 4 of an ongoing serial fiction. Part 1 can be found here.

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When we stop laughing, long enough for us to take a normal breath anyway, I ask Kurt what he’s talking about. What does he mean when he says Dave Grohl is a “clown” and “out of control?” Even as I ask though, I’m pretty sure I know what he means.

“Hubris, man. Fucking hubris,” Kurt says simply, as if he’s said all he needs to. And to me, he has.

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Kurt Cobain Lives – Part 3

This is part 3 of an ongoing serial fiction. Part 1 can be found here and part 2 here.

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

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10 Oct 1991, Los Angeles, California, USA — Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana takes a nap with his guitar at his side at North Hollywood pool. — Image by © Kirk Weddle/Corbis

An hour after walking in, Martin and I exit the lobby of the building. It has stopped raining.

Kurt left the office first, along with his bodyguard, riding down in the elevator having affixed a ski hat and fake okie-beard onto his face. The beard looked truly ridiculous. Mostly he just looked like a crazy person. But then I suppose it’s an effective enough disguise as it’s not like any paparazzi are on the lookout for a dead dude.

Continue reading “Kurt Cobain Lives – Part 3”

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

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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.

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The Pogues

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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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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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So Punk It Hurts

I’ve tried with varying intensity over the years, to generate traffic to this blog. I’ve long imagined that consistency – primarily in the frequency and regularity of updates, but also in subject matter – would be the key to generating traffic. Apparently, I am incapable of either of those types of consistency, so I still don’t know whether this hypothesis is true or not. And I may never know.

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Christmas is Coming – Part 4

The walk to work is endless in the bitter cold. I must will myself forward, re-commiting to the journey with every step. I so badly want to call in sick and just lay around the apartment watching tube – high – but I have to make it to work. I have to get that paycheck, have to get it to the check-cashing store, have to get the drugs in order to get right. Choice has nothing to do with it.

This is the 4th entry in a series. Find part 1 here and part 3 (the previous entry) here. Be forewarned the following is a 4400 word entry (although it’s worth every second).

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