Why I don’t speak ill of bands anymore

I’ll admit it: In my younger days as a musician, I could be as insufferable a snob as the best, er, worst of them. I had my opinions, and I wasn’t at all afraid to let them fly, regardless of who was listening. And a lot of those opinions were negative assessments of other bands and musicians.

That’s changed over the last few years, though, and just the other day I saw something that reminded me of why.

As an indie author, I have a Facebook profile. It was originally intended as a vehicle to promote my books, but reality (and algorithms) set in, I realized organic social was no longer a particularly effective medium for that, nor was it a very productive use of my time. So these days, I mostly just use it to fart around when I have some spare minutes, mostly with other authors doing pretty much the same thing I am.

I saw a post from an account I don’t follow, but for some reason the machines (algorithms again) think I should. I’d seen this person post before, and never thought all that much one way or the other. Just another writer doing the social media thing, and that’s perfectly fine.

Except this time this person was going out of his way air his opinion that Nirvana sucked.

Now, first, a couple of observations. Whenever I see or hear this specific opinion, around 90 percent of the time I can immediately tell you two things about the person expressing it: one, they’re an older member of Gen X who came of age when hair rock was very popular, and two, they’re not a musician.

But going back to his opinion, while it’s safe to say that I do not share it, what irked me about it was that he felt the need to throw it out there without any kind of consideration for what that music meant to other people.

Yes, just like I used to do.

The thing is, for a lot of us grunge-era Gen Xers, Nirvana wasn’t just any band. They meant something more than that. I remember the precise moment the first time I heard them. “Nevermind” dropped about six weeks before I turned 16 and got my drivers license. That album, more than anything else, was the soundtrack to my emerging freedom.

And for those of us who were the artsy kids, you know, the band geeks and theater nerds, the kids who filled their notepads with sketches, the ones who read a lot of books — the kids who typically got picked on or even beat-up by the jocks and the popular kids, a lot of us felt a connection to this band that we hadn’t felt for any kind of music before.

Because we could tell that this music was for us.

We could tell it was made by people like us.

This was loud, aggressive rock music that harnessed all of the messiness and, yes, anger of what it was like growing up and it wasn’t for the goddamned jocks.

Rock music, especially heavier rock music, was previously something made for the meatheads. It frequently wasn’t particularly sensitive, and on the rare occasions it was intelligent it just came of as, well, geeky.

Nirvana wasn’t like that. Nirvana was cool. Nirvana didn’t give a fuck about all of the bullshit rock bands up until then reveled in. They didn’t wear costumes or have a laser light show. They didn’t play migraine-inducing, self-indulgent solos or write songs in indecipherable time signatures. They weren’t playing music to get laid.

No, Nirvana was basically three guys who were just like us and the people we hung out with. Michale Azerrad said that on first meeting Kurt Cobain, he realized that Cobain was just like the stoners he’d known in high school. “I knew this guy,” he said. And somehow, we knew him too.

And then, all of a sudden, they were the biggest band in the world. And the world, of music, of fashion, of popular culture, started changing around them. Those changes made the world feel a little friendlier for us.

And seemingly just as quickly as it all started, Kurt Cobain killed himself.

We found out 30 years ago today, and for some of us the recollection still hurts. Much like the way I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard their music, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news.

I’m not going to get hyperbolic and say that Nirvana saved my life as an angsty teenager. But I certainly will say that they made it much better than it would have been without them. And who knows, I wouldn’t be surprised if their music, and the cultural changes that music spurred, actually did save some kid’s life somewhere. Music can do that sometimes, y’know?

Anyway, I stopped saying shitty things about bands and music that I don’t care for, maybe as a part of growing up to some degree. But also, because I don’t want to say something like that about someone else’s Nirvana. I don’t want to hurt someone for liking something, especially when that something may have been the one difference between a good day and a bad one. Or even good years and bad ones.

There are still plenty of bands, musicians, songs, albums, etcetera, that I don’t really dig. But who and what they are, I’ll be keeping to myself.

Go on and love what you love with your whole heart, and don’t let anyone ever make you feel bad about that. Those things are important parts of who you are.