Happy Friday! I gotta make this quick, as I have to get downtown to join Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, who is going to be introducing the media to each track this morning at a midtown studio….. Las Vegas breakthrough rockers, Otherwise, have begun recording their sophomore album, tentatively scheduled for a late Summer/early Fall release. Their sophomore release Peace At All Costs, is being produced by Grammy Award winner Dave Bottrill (Tool, Muse, Stone Sour, Godsmack, Staind, Peter Gabriel) at Audio Mix House and Vegas View Recording Studios in their hometown. During the tracking of the album, the band will take a break and fly to Orlando for this year’s WJRR Earthday Birthday fest on April 12th, where they hope to debut a new track. Singer Adrian Patrick had this to say from day one in the studio: “We’ve always felt different from other bands; not just as performers but as people, also. Being in the studio with an elite producer like David Bottrill, knowing his impressively diverse resume & discerning taste in the artists he chooses to work with, only reinforces our resolve. Our next album, Peace at All Costs, will prove what we are capable of.” Nice!….Today, I’m ending the report by sharing this feature from our sister company, Pulse of Radio, about the anniversary of the passing of Kurt Cobain. Tomorrow (April 5th) marks the 20th anniversary of the death of the Nirvana founder at the age of 27. Cobain, who killed himself with a shotgun in a room above the garage of his Seattle home, instantly joined the pantheon of rock legends who died too early, including Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin,Jimi Hendrix, Bon Scott, and more. Yet while many of those artists lived the rock star lifestyle to the fullest, Cobain was branded as something that he, by all accounts, never wanted to be — the spokesman for an entire generation. It’s widely felt that Cobain’s inability to reconcile his inner demons and fear of “compromise” with Nirvana’s massive success drove him to depression, drugs, and ultimately, suicide.Charles R. Cross, author of the Nirvana/Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven and the new Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact Of Kurt Cobain, says it’s hard to believe Cobain has been gone for 20 years: “Well, it certainly doesn’t seem like 20 years. One, it doesn’t feel like, you know, that much of my life has passed. But because Kurt died, you know, and it was so, in some ways a spectacularly public death, it’s just hard to imagine that that much time has gone by.” Cobain did leave behind a small, yet incredibly significant, body of music. Nirvana was one of many bands — including Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone –– to emerge from the Pacific Northwest music scene, where a mix of influences ranging from punk to New Wave to metal fused into what became known as “grunge.” The combination of this heavily distorted sound with Cobain’s pop sensibilities, plus the emotional pull of his vocals and lyrics, catapulted Nirvana to the front of the pack, giving the world and the media a face to put to the entire alternative music genre that got pulled into the mainstream in Nirvana’s wake. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, on February 20th, 1967, Cobain lived with various relatives after his parents divorced. Cobain met bassist Krist Novoselic in 1985, forming Nirvana with him in the late Eighties. The fledgling group drifted through several drummers and kicked around Olympia, Washington, before finally settling into the Seattle rock scene.A six-song demo produced by Butch Vig led to a deal with DGC/Geffen Records, while Dave Grohl signed on as the band’s permanent drummer. The band recorded their second album during the summer of 1991, and the disc, titled Nevermind, arrived in September of that year. DGC expected to sell about 100,000 copies of the record. Instead, it became a colossal hit, bolstered by the single and video, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” An authentic rock anthem, the song captured the alienation, frustration, and apathy of young people worldwide. The song rocketed to the top of the radio charts as Nevermind climbed the Billboard Top 200, finally perching at Number One by the beginning of 1992. The album went on to sell over 14 million copies. In February of 1992, Cobain married Hole frontperson Courtney Love, and the couple had their first and only child, Frances Bean Cobain, in August of that year. Rumors began to circulate the two were heavy heroin users, which led child care authorities to threaten the couple’s custody of Frances. Although Cobain claimed to suffer from stomach troubles, several canceled tours fueled the perception that he was already on a self-destructive path. With recording of a new album delayed, the band’s label released a collection of rarities and B-sides in 1992 called Incesticide. Finally, in the spring of 1993, the band recorded their third album, In Utero. Almost immediately, more rumors surfaced, this time suggesting that DGC was unhappy with the record and threatening not to release it. Nirvana expressed disappointment themselves with the sound of Steve Albini‘s production and re-mastered it. The album came out in the fall of 1993 and, while not quite the blockbuster that Nevermind was, sold strongly and garnered positive acclaim. Guitarist Pat Smear was added to the band for their fall U.S. tour, but the shadows of drug use and depression were growing. Cobain had reportedly overdosed several times during 1993, and on a post-tour vacation in Rome in early March of 1994, he tried to commit suicide with an overdose of the tranquilizer Rohypnol and champagne. Things got worse when Cobain returned home. On March 18th, police had to come to the Seattle home he shared with Love and talk him out of the bathroom, where he had locked himself in and threatened suicide. An intervention by friends and business associates led to Cobain checking into the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles on March 28th, but he fled back to Seattle on March 30th, where he convinced friend Dylan Carlson to buy him a shotgun “for protection.” Cobain spoke with Love for the last time, by phone, on April 1st. On April 5th, he wrote a long farewell letter, took a mixture of heroin and Valium, and shot himself in the mouth. His body was discovered three days later, on the 8th, by an electrician, and cremated on April 14th. A public memorial service in Seattle on April 10th drew 7,000 fans. In the 15 years since Cobain’s death, an acoustic set called MTV Unplugged In New York and an electric live album called From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah initially surfaced, followed in 2002 by a greatest hits collection that featured the band’s final recording, “You Know You’re Right.” Grohl recalled the sessions for that song: “We had some time off before a tour, and Kurt wanted to go in and demo some stuff, so I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do it at this studio down the street from my house.’ And we went down there, and we had three days booked. Kurt came in the last day and we were like, ‘Okay, what do you wanna do?’ And Kurt said, ‘Well, why don’t we do that song we’ve been doing at soundcheck?’ And so we rehearsed it, I think, once, and then recorded it. Kurt did three or four vocal takes, and that was it.” A box set held up for several years due to legal battles between Grohl, Novoselic and Love was eventually released in 2004 under the name With The Lights Out. Despite Love hinting at the existence of numerous demo tapes and unreleased songs by Cobain, none of this material has yet surfaced. Grohl went on to form Foo Fighters, while Novoselic also dabbled in music, most notably with Sweet 75. In recent years, plans have surfaced for a movie, documentary and even stage musical based on Kurt Cobain’s life, although no official word on any of those projects is yet to emerge. But the one thing that is official is that Cobain, along with the rest of Nirvana, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next Thursday (April 10th) at a ceremony in Brookyn, New York along with Kiss, Linda Ronstadt, Hall & Oates, Cat Stevens and others. Nirvana got the nod with their first appearance on the ballot, 25 years after the release of Bleach. Charles R.Cross explained why Kurt Cobain’s music has had such a lasting impact on pop culture: “The music that Kurt and Nirvana created is still considered some of the greatest music we’ve had in modern rock ‘n’ roll. You know, the albums still continue to sell, and as an influence of other bands and the sound of things that we still hear on the radio, I think you still hear the influence of Nirvana and Kurt. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that: I mean, the most notable being the fact that he just wrote incredible songs that touched so many people.” Nirvana’s music brought rebellion, raw emotion, and a punk attitude back to rock music at a time when it was sorely needed. And while Kurt Cobain was anointed as the spokesman — even after his death — for what came to be called “Generation X,” his own tortured reluctance to accept that role mirrored the confusion felt by Nirvana fans over their identity, their gender, and their place in the world. In a declining music business now consumed by slick marketing, endless merchandising and corporate “product,” he may have been the last of his kind. I spoke with Head from Korn and he recalled hearing Nirvana’s music and sensing that Kurt Cobain was already in a lot of pain: “I just remember tripping and going, ‘Wow, that guy must have been like really in a dark place,’ you know. it just shows you, you know, like that life isn’t all about fame and being a rock star and making it and money and all that stuff, you know. It’s about finding like who you are and being happy inside and finding that place, because you can have the whole world and still want to kill yourself. You know, even 20 years later, it’s like a reality check, you know. We should use this, his anniversary of his death, as a reality check.” Be listening on Tuesday night on hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus for some more artist tributes to Kurt Cobain and his legacy….Birthdays this weekend: Today, Buckcherry’s Josh Todd is 43 and Adam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage is 36 and Robert Downey, JR is 49. and on Saturday, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready is 48. |