Dope.
Cue the mood music please. Usually I don�t do �my golden memories� posts, but how can I resist, after reading Christagau�s faintly condescending bit on Kurt Cobain in this review of the latest Kurt Cobain bio?

The Argument graf is rather stale: �He had little of the self-regard of Mick Jagger, Alice Cooper, Johnny Rotten, Michael Stipe, and none of the vanity or the clothes sense or the theatrical savoir-faire. Yet he wasn't a symbolic Everyman in the manner of Springsteen, John Fogerty, or Garth Brooks, either. He seemed like every born loser who ever failed gym�a geek you could get wasted with, a shy guy whose cuteness cried out for mothering, an arty weirdo with a common touch. So for two or three years, until his suicide registered as an act of abandonment, he gave a generation of losers a hero who felt like a loser himself, even in success�as opposed to a hero whose triumph they could only admire, emulate, envy.�

Here are some words to the wise: trotting out the tired circus animals of r & r, and then diving into symbolic everyman talk, means we have entered the serious E territory. Exit, get gas, do something. �He wasn�t a symbolic Everyman like � Garth Brooks�? Hey, and he wasn�t black, like Charlie Pride. Nor did he have Glenn Campbell�s shopworn Rhinestone dignity, or the early cabaret moves of Lotte Lenya. Etc. I could do this with one hand tied behind my back. Nothing like the negative comparison series to fill out a piece. Nor do I think his suicide �registered� for the �generation of losers� that listened to him as "abandonment" - more like dark fullfillment. Abandonment is a much more parental feeling. The libido out there after Cobain bought it, that old media tonic �outpouring of grief� � the tv sell, the let�s weep for some dead celeb more than I wept for my mom and my mom�s mom � became, in Kurt's case, much scarier and more interesting. He went out like a highschool massacre, our Kurt did.

Also � wanna talk about context? Yes, let�s do. The New Yorker obviously knows squat about Kurt Cobain � otherwise they would never have headlined their story �What Kurt Cobain did for Rock and Roll,� which is something those New Yorker folks think is probably still out there, probably woke up the guy who does the club listings, yeah, man, those youngsters are still boogeying away to Susie Q, man. Hey hey, my my is all I have to say about that.

Now to unroll a little personal history. I moved to Pecos, New Mexico, in 1993, and � I confess it � mostly I was still listening to British Goth, and its narcissistic dead end in Sisters of Mercy (but, caveat, �Vision Thing� still slays me). In Austin in the 80s in certain circles it was hard not to get caught up in Joy Division, the perfect band partly because it was as dead as Ian Curtis, and partly because its continuation, in New Order, turned anguish into such kitsch fake veneer synth that you knew, you knew it had to be critical theory significant.

Anyway, I get to Pecos and move in with David, the plan being we were going to be artistes. Gonna be Mallarme and Manet. When I first arrived I was playing My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult on my little lo fi boom box and I leap out of that little gray Chevy my brother Dan got off this weird Israeli biking freak practically trading her beads for it and the first afternoon, hey, a nice little stash of vodka and cokey-poo (a drug I don�t like, although I�ve snorted my share of it � give me painkillers, just you know, prescription painkillers, tranqs for cats, or anything you can�t find the label for in your medicine cabinet, any day) all waiting to ambush me in the weirdest house Dave could find, this place that was half designed to be a swiss chalet and half designed to be a restaurant, or maybe Batman's hideout in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, with a little twisty iron staircase about three feet wide spiraling you up to the second floor. Where I had my bedroom, which was distinguished by a blanket on the one part of the floor where there weren't books. That first day and night and whatever, time-wise, was maybe symbolic. The alk and the powder. Yes, we weren�t going to shake the art world in the next two years. Instead, we would lie down under its spreading branches, like the peasants in that Bosch painting � dreaming of the land of Cockagne. Fastforward over the details, that involve quite a few dreary art parties, accidents, fights, and neighbors with sawed off shotguns who were not, shall we say, appreciative of the arty gringo package next door. Okay, David had a bunch of tapes, including Nevermind, and I listened to it for the first time. And I got it. In fact, Nevermind became the house tape. When In Utero came out, at first I wasn�t thrilled with �Heart Shaped Box�, which got the big radio play. But then I got In Utero, too. I just got the whole thing. We played these Nirvana tapes into oblivion. There was a period where David was delivering chocolate cup-cakes and other pastries from this bakery in Santa Fe to Albuquerque, (seriously) and sometimes, for reasons I won�t get into, I either did the delivering or went along � and of course we always had the Nirvana cranked. We also, well, were cranked. New Mexican highways are much safer since we moved, let�s say.

So Nirvana comes to ABQ, and Dave, always the smart one of the two of us, gets tickets. We go down there. Plan is to see them, then crash at Ted and Angela�s place. Ted has an almost sacred regard for Nirvana. We go to this big auditorium, and we are frisked. Everybody going through the door is frisked. I guess Rape Me, Date me was the gang song of the moment in ABQ. But I�m what, 34? But we are through, they discover no weapons on us, and of course we have been ready for this. So the next three hours go by in a blur. I jumped into the mosh pit (I hate the term mosh pit, by the way � that is surely a made up MTV word) and got good and thrown around. Thrown back actually against Dave�s nose, at one point, which he claims I broke. No way. In any case, I must have sweated ten pounds from my frame by the time we somehow found our way back to Ted and Angela�s.

The next morning we broke out a sixpack and hopped in the car, and somehow I ended up on the driving side. So I make a casual turn at no great speed in the center of ABQ and low and behold, it�s military pigs. Somehow I turned into an army base. Not only that, but they are knocking on the window, cause somehow I�ve violated a rule. But with Nirvana pumping in me, I wasn�t about to go for the humble shit � no, I keep on my sunglasses and decide to play it all arrogant. Also, I am p.o.-ed that there is an army base in the middle of a major city. In the moment, that seemed to me definitely against the constitution, and much like we were living under some occupying force. Which are points of view I wanted vociferously to discuss. BUTTTT � boys and girls, I must have had a point. Maybe I was right about the unconstitutionality of that base. Cause instead of busting my ass, they simply mulled over my license (to some address in Georgia no longer inhabited by anybody I knew) and � did I have insurance? Must have. So my insurance, too. They mulled, and even called in some more swine, who pulled up behind us. Like we were going to jump out of my little Chevy and really threaten national security. David did point out that if they searched the car, we would be sorry. But at this point I felt it would be better if we went to jail, as it would make the constitutionality point. Well, upshot was that I was merely asked for a local number, which I flawlessly concocted, and a local address, which, by some fatal breakdown in my brain, I actually gave. As in, the real one. Well, it was a P.O., after all.

All of this I owe to Kurt, God bless the boy.