Gen X in decline

(Book Update: Today marks the start of my compiling my first book, mainly a collection of the best of the blog. My progress today was pretty simple but impressive in that I came up with a new title for the book. I feel that “Tawdry Amusements at Respectable Prices” pretty much sums up my writings and my life in general.)

I’ve been meaning to write about this for the past week or so but haven’t had the chance. Last week marked what would have been Kurt Cobain’s 40th birthday. To celebrate that milestone, Courtney Love decided to sell the rights for a Nirvana song to a video game (and a baseball one at that). I saw a lot of differing reactions to this news from disgust to apathy but one really stood out. It was a claim that the only reason people care about Nirvana is because Cobain killed himself. Someone honestly wrote that if that had happened to Pearl Jam or Soundgarden or Alice in Chains they would be remembered while Nirvana would be forgotten.

To which I say that is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in print.

You can claim that there were better bands than Nirvana, musically speaking. And certainly early death cements a place in music history (a point people constantly raise to me when I go off about the brilliance of Jeff Buckley). But those two things do not negate the social impact of Nirvana. Other bands had lead singers die early (Blind Melon, Alice in Chains) but no one would get up in arms because they sold a song to EA Sports. But we do that for Nirvana because we, as the last bastions of Generation X, are protective of our memory.

Because it was during my first semester of college that Smells Like Teen Spirit hit the airwaves and I can tell you that there was no more important band in the alternative scene than Nirvana. Pearl Jam was probably more popular because they were more accessible. They didn’t break their instruments on every song and people could look at Eddie Vedder and go, “Oh, he’s sensitive”. Kurt would show up to interviews wearing a dress. But that was the way that the music scene was viewed when Kurt died. There was Nirvana and Pearl Jam and a whole bunch of bands in the “other” category.

And when he died it wasn’t a quick news story. People were in shock and disbelief. I can still tell you what I did that weekend. I had to go to the mall to get a Fotomat picture of myself for the GRE exam and while doing so I picked up a copy of Sarah McLachlan’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”. I spent the night alternating between watching MTV’s coverage and studying for the exam and the next day I took the test and then drove to Chicago to attend a wedding. I remember those days better than I remember entire years. It wasn’t as if we were walking around campus as if a national tragedy had occurred. But I think it marked the moment when Generation X realized that its brief moment in the pop culture spotlight was ending.

Because Gen X was always going to be a blip on the pop culture radar screen. We’re too small demographically so it just isn’t profitable for the media companies to focus on us. Two years after Cobain’s death the Spice Girls were topping the charts. A few years later the invasion of Britneys and Christinas and Justins overtook the pop charts and those years of Alternative Nation on MTV were long past. And that’s why we remember Nirvana, because we can use their rise and fall as the benchmarks for an entire generation.

I can’t imagine what Kurt would be like at 40. He was definitely burning the flame at both ends. At best he would’ve done what Eddie Vedder accomplished, pull out of the spotlight by doing your own thing. It’s not that Pearl Jam has been making world changing music but they have stayed active and vibrant for the past decade. Maybe he just would have disappeared from the radar screen and performing the occasional college tour playing to kids who were listening to Barney when he was at his best (Kurt not Barney). But, as sad as it is to say, it is almost better to remember him as a flash of light than as a fading star. To see Kurt Cobain at 40 would just remind me of what I already know. That I’m growing older, that the world is slowly passing me by, and that if I want to change the world I have to stop talking and start acting.

(Side Note: For anyone wondering, this is my 600th post to the blog. I can’t believe that number or that I’ve been writing five nights a week for over two years. I’m going to keep this going until I hit 1,000 and then I’ll decide from there. But still, 600 nights of sitting down and typing out my thoughts. Who would have known…)