I have to disagree, Bob... Kurt Cobain stood for nothing. He's no hero of mine, so I don't need to respect him. As for those millions that do, its just a sign of the times... people can write whatever they want on the blank slate that is/was Kurt Cobain. Millions think we've been visited by aliens, and that Saddam had WMD. So what?
Since I took DIY to heart, in fact to an extreme degree, and I have the demented idea that I'm a better hero for myself than anybody else (except Chomsky) I'll just quote something I sent to a yahoo list I'm on the other day. The specific provocation was somebody quoting Cobain on Leadbelly like it meant something, but it's a one size fits all rant:
You have to take what Cobain said about anything with a grain of salt, of course. He'd say whatever he thought would gain him cognoscenti points, like telling people that his first concert was The Melvins when it was really Sammy Hagar... listening to what we were playing on KAOS and making lists so he could drop names later and people would marvel at his familiarity with bands like Young Marble Giants or the Meat Puppets... sucking up to people like Calvin Johnson, while privately holding a very different opinion. He kept his opinion to himself until he could afford to cast people like Calvin aside:
"I made about five million dollars last year and I'm not giving a red cent to that elitist, little fuck Calvin Johnson. No way! I've collaborated with one of my idols, William Burroughs and I couldn't feel cooler. I moved away to L.A. for a year and came back to find that three of my best friends have become full blow heroine addicts. I've learned to hate riot grrrl, a movement in which I was a witness to its very initial inception because I fucked the girl who put out the first grrr-style fanzine and now she is exploiting the fact that she fucked me. Not in a huge way, but enough to feel exploited. But that's ok because I chose to let corporate white men exploit me a few years ago and I love it. It feels good. And I'm not gonna donate a single fucking dollar to the fucking needy indie fascist regime. They can starve. Let them eat vinyl. Every crumb for himself. I'll be able to sell my untalented, very ungenious ass for years based on my cult status."
I can feel sorry for the guy, his self-loathing in the last paragraph is obvious, but his comments about Tobi Vale (in a letter to Tobi Vale, though apparently unsent) are contemptible. Tobi is a shrewd operator, a very smart publicist with a knack for self-promotion - but that is one thing that I never ever saw her exploiting. She's paid her own way, and she's done remarkable things, none of them were boosted by her association with Kurt Cobain (I feel differently about Courtney Michelle Harrison). [on rereading this, perhaps he wasnt' talking about Vale perhaps it was Kathleen Hanna - or somebody else. I can't think of any of those women who did what he's saying here - I think it happened in his own narcissicist mind, and nowhere else]. Also, Calvin has never tried to get any mileage out of an association with Cobain. There isn't room for anybody else on his pedestal.
Anyway, it was not a surprise to me when Cobain killed himself - he had no sense of self, he didn't know who he was, it must have been easier to extinguish a self that he didn't know, or perhaps that didn't exist.
Just a long-winded explanation for why anything he might say about Leadbelly is meaningless. You could take nothing he ever said about anything at face value .
Courtney Love may be insane, but whether she signed the contract or not, I'm sure there was no agreement that Kurt could sing "You Give Love A Bad Name". Bon Jovi is everything Kurt stood against. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" killed hair metal, now you've got him singing this pop tripe in a video game?
You might say it's only a video game, but that's disrespectful. We must honor our heroes. And you may not care, but Kurt Cobain is still a hero to millions, the icon of a generation. Why not have an animatronic JFK spewing Richard Nixon lines?
Activision should destroy each and every copy of Guitar Hero 5. And only release it when this footage/game play has been eviscerated.
This is a crime against the history of rock and roll. What were they thinking?
Rust never sleeps and commerce is always ready to dishonor the past.
If they don't destroy and redo, we should boycott their profitmaking, gluttonous product.
Money might change everything, but it doesn't EXPLAIN everything!
http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=-UuAoEW5MbI&eurl=http%3A% 2F%2Fwww% 2Erollingstone% 2Ecom%2Frockdail y%2Findex% 2Ephp%2F2009% 2F09%2F01% 2Fkurt%2Dcobains %2Dguitar% 2Dhero%2D5% 2Dnightmare% 2F&feature=player_ embedded
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