Sock Free Hideaway

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.