I may have mentioned before that I haven't always been a saint. There are periods in my life that are difficult to sort into a coherent timeline. I shall attempt to do so here nonetheless.
For the most part I remember all of the events, some of the details, but almost none of the temporal cues that occured between 1990 and 1996. Maybe I wasn't paying very close attention to the time, a gift the young can afford.
For instance, it's impossible for me to believe that In Utero came out in 1993, 25 years ago today, and Kurt was dead half a year later.
I was in a band at the time called Spyder Merphy. We "rehersed" a lot -- read: we drank a lot -- but we never played an actual "gig." It was the weekend after Kurt's suicide, still pretty fresh on my mind, when a bandmate slipped behind the drum kit during a beer break and said, "Have you heard Kurt Cobain's new single?" then violently stomped the bass drum pedal. Ouch.
I was already in love with In Utero. I'd been a fan of Nirvana since Bleach, maybe even as early as the bootlegged Sub Pop 200 compilation. And Nevermind was a great album as well -- and I'm not being a revisionist here, I loved it -- but it sounded like a band conforming.
In Utero was better in every way that mattered to me; the edges were left ragged. In Utero sounds like a band trying.
I'm an old punk and I still try to live by a strict -- though I must admit, it gets less "strict" with age -- DIY aesthetic. I like In Utero for the same reason I like Pinkerton by Weezer; they are albums you could make yourself. No, not everyone can write as well, or emote as thrillingly, or play with such shambolic virtuosity, but the recordings themselves were within reach. The sound, attainable. The recording wasn't the art, the art was the art. I miss that.
Spyder Merphy broke up not long after. Gradually a couple members just stopped coming to rehersals. I assume that was later in 1994. The rest of the band and I reformed as the Vanderwaals and recorded an EP of our own in 1996. Later that year the Vanderwaals too, were kaput.
The 90s came and went and I think everyone between ages of 20 and 30 during the 90s missed some of it. Maybe all of it. That's too bad because apparently some pretty good music was made then.
ADDENDUM:
Years later, I'd stumbled, bleary-eyed, out of the 90s and found myself lost in a foreign land, Mt. Vernon, Illinois. I wrote "Kurdt" about what I remembered the 90s sounding like from a distance. You can listen to it here.
