BEATS OF LOVE 

18. When Nirvana Came to Britain documentary

I SUPPOSE a proper writer keeps writing through the arduous weeks, whereas I just look at writing through the weary prism of such weeks as a vanity project or a self-indulgence even. I have instead sat knee deep in warming German and Japanese percussive jazz records and playing them loads, deliberating which ones to photograph and write about, before deciding to just play them and instead convince those of you who haven't watched the documentary When Nirvana Came to Britain to watch it.

It's refreshing to watch a documentary that isn't portraying these people as rock stars. They get the point completely, and the right talking heads are on hand to do this subject justice.

In order to connect with one another to make the whole scene homogenous, we all dumbed-down a little by drinking. Escaping our regional dialects, inner-reality, and actual everyday existence in the process. Consequently, when I went to watch bands, I was always half-cut, and I wasn't alone.  

Me and Stu having our Jo Whiley moment

Tony, who found his expression on their stage, wigging out completely, is a case in point. Representative of so many fucked up people like myself. I was there in the Poly with my good mate Stu. Waiting for Tad.

I felt a deep connection with their record label, Sub Pop; its ideals, its acts and its oppositional stance to business as usual. Yet in no time at all, Nirvana was on a major and blowing up big time. With that sense of intimacy lost, their music was relegated from my private listening world to something I listened to via pub jukeboxes. 

It was still their best music but was now captivating everybody else to some extent. Trying to communicate with so many more people who weren't fucked up to change a bigotry and intolerance, synonymous with their straight-laced world, was always going to be a thankless task. Luckily, this documentary focuses more on the survivors and offers a clearer hindsight into the group as a whole because of it. So many artists before and after have feared killing the golden goose of their success, but not them. There's plenty of great footage that illustrates why they were the most fearless band of our times.  Not my personal favourite by a long chalk, but a band that nonetheless changed music forever. 

Their feminine sensibility divided folk, which then made it easier to tell who the cunts were, irrespective of musical taste. A sensibility more relevant now than ever, as tired, aging conservative white men still stamp about like Neanderthal's dividing us. Their short-lived Nirvana phase a lifetime ago.   

Tune in, turn on, oh, and drop out if you haven't already. And wear your feminine sensibility like a badge of honour.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zx9h#:~:text=Between%201989%20and%201994%2C%20Nirvana,a%20generation%20of%20British%20youth.

BEATS OF LOVE 

17. Mise En Abyme by Steve Cobby 

I'M STILL not over my mother's sudden death. In truth, I still feel like a severed branch and I still roll my eyes in disbelief on a daily basis. I did a bit of curating shortly after she died, which was far from perfect, so I know how you can only work in bursts before it all gets too overwhelming. My mother told me my father wasn't the same person since his own mother died and I now understand why. 

That Steve Cobby has produced a whole album to commemorate his mother's life is an achievement in itself. That it's pretty much perfect is no great surprise, but that much of it plays so joyously marks the true testament to her and did disarm me, the listener, somewhat. 

I'm reminded of Ted, my mother's long term-companion and partner who knew her more than anyone, and deciding what songs should be played to commemorate her life. I was digging out John Coltrane, but he simply scoffed his face. His expression barely changed with Ella, but when he saw Dionne Warwick and played the Bacharach & David penned What the World Needs Now, his face lit up. He wanted joyous music. 

I've just got back from a wedding where it felt like I was representing Nigeria. The bride's estranged Nigerian Father (our cousin) was unable to impose a full traditional wedding (thank God), but had influenced the occasion enough to deter his ex-wife, the bride's Jamaican mother from attending. 

The joylessness finally built up to a crescendo pitch during the speeches when it became apparent she was missing. The small Nigerian contingent could feel the hostility aimed at them yet framed it along the lines of nationalism, but I knew different. The bride and groom will regret their decision to connect with their Nigerian lineage over and above honouring their mother. That said, this track, the LP closer, isn't all that joyous. Its harmonica etches into the memory through recurring sequence, as the title suggests, so much graphic imagery, that it becomes a duet with the piano. This plaintive expression, served with threadbare accompaniment, truly captures the essence of such a presence. And truly honours his own mother.

The past becomes as much a part of our tomorrow as the present day. If ever the word intarsia can be applied to music, it is this two-sided blend that marks a poignant refusal of death. The presence is simply too strong for its acceptance. It's why my feelings of severance will eventually heal, and why the bride and mother will soon be reconciled and come to realize that she, in fact, never missed her daughter's wedding at all. 

Cheers Steve Cobby, a giant among men.   

https://soundcloud.com/sjcobby/mise-en-abyme-mstr