A memoir of both music and politics, Of Grunge and Government tells Krist Novoselic’s story of how during his years with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, the band made a point of playing benefits—the Rock for Choice show, a concert for gay rights, a fundraising gig for the Balkan Women’s Aid Fund—and how in the ensuing years he has dedicated himself to being a good citizen and participating in American democracy.
In this book he shares stories about making music and making a statement—as well as inspiring ideas for anyone who wants to advance progressive causes, to become a more active part of the community, and to make sure our votes count and our voices are heard.
A memoir of both music and politics, Of Grunge and Government tells Krist Novoselic’s story of how during his years with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, the band made a point of playing benefits—the Rock for Choice show, a concert for gay rights, a fundraising gig for the Balkan Women’s Aid Fund—and how in the ensuing years he has dedicated himself to being a good citizen and participating in American democracy.
In this book he shares stories about making music and making a statement—as well as inspiring ideas for anyone who wants to advance progressive causes, to become a more active part of the community, and to make sure our votes count and our voices are heard.
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Overview
A memoir of both music and politics, Of Grunge and Government tells Krist Novoselic’s story of how during his years with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, the band made a point of playing benefits—the Rock for Choice show, a concert for gay rights, a fundraising gig for the Balkan Women’s Aid Fund—and how in the ensuing years he has dedicated himself to being a good citizen and participating in American democracy.
In this book he shares stories about making music and making a statement—as well as inspiring ideas for anyone who wants to advance progressive causes, to become a more active part of the community, and to make sure our votes count and our voices are heard.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617752230 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Akashic Books |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 280 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
MUSIC MUST CHANGE
Society offers many labels for people who run against the grain. But it's the people on the so-called fringes who actually bring change. Without rebels, rabble-rousers, malcontents, or whatever label we choose to apply, the culture would remain static.
Look around the world at cultures that squash expression — their resistance to change has left them stuck in the 19th century. And while many in our nation disparage those who diverge from the status quo, it's people who made their own way that created the United States. Our founders refused a monarchy whose power was derived from heredity. The notion of a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people shattered the old paradigm. The new republic, the United States of America, acknowledged freedom as a basic tenet of human experience.
Independence in the U.S. guarantees individuals the right to speak. But independence must also speak to us.
It was in 1983 that I walked into a bookstore in Seattle's University District asking for anything by Jack Kerouac. The clerk, with a broad grin, walked over to a shelf and handed me The Dharma Bums. Reading Kerouac confirmed the sense of independence I have always felt. The Dharma Bums is about the journey of life and meaningful connection with people. The story culminates in the classic journey to the mountain, where the protagonist, Japhy, ends up in a fire lookout tower in Washington State. A Zen hermit experience is conveyed in quintessential beat prose; there, alone, he transcends time and self in an exploration of inner-space. Every moment is savored, every simple action a meaningful experience. It's as if he is living his last days on earth. In his subsequent work, Kerouac left the isolation of the mountain to return to society. His world was not confined to the tailfins and poodle-skirts of 1950s popular culture. He lived in the subterranean realm of the beat generation. Subcultures are where many people who are not inclined to adhere to conformity connect with others of the same ilk. Independence is not isolation.
I grew up in Aberdeen, Washington in the early 1980s and had a lot of fun there. But eventually I began to grow away from the party crowd that made up my social life. In the mid-1960s, smoking marijuana was a political statement, the counterculture's answer to the mainstream martini crowd. But by the time it hit my scene, pot was a clichÃ(c) icon, something fundamental to the identity of people referred to as "stoners." There is a certain camaraderie that manifests itself in the course of passing a joint around; unlike sharing a beer, the illegal act of smoking pot demonstrates actual humanity in the face of abstract prohibitions. But to many stoners, marijuana was more about escapism than real liberation. If anything, "drop out" was the only relevant term left of Timothy Leary's famous axiom, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." The stoner message was: "Don't expect anything from me." It was antiestablishment, and petty resistance was sometimes acted out in the world of traffic court, with stoners (like many others) subject to a seemingly endless cycle of DUI and wrong-turn tickets and fines paid on installment. Stoners were in a lower economic strata, locked in a punitive relationship with their government based on issues regarding the secondary task of transportation. It was token rebellion against the forces that threatened a Saturday night party. "Stoner" was a counterculture without a mission.
As far as the music of that scene went, the slick, canned sounds of mainstream heavy metal didn't appeal to me. In 1980, I lived in what was then Yugoslavia for a year. A lot of music came down from London; I heard punk rock and caught much of the ska scene of the time. Yugoslavia also had a homegrown scene with good, diverse music. But when I returned to the U.S., I found that it was hard for punk to make its way to Aberdeen because of its geographic isolation. Still, it trickled in the best it could. I watched New Wave Theatre on the U.S.A. Network or heard punk on Sunday night specialty shows on FM radio stations. Gradually, here and there, I picked up on a style of music I knew was controversial. It eventually gained a foothold, thanks to the efforts of some truly independent young minds.
I met Buzz Osborne and Matt Lukin while working after school in a fast-food restaurant. These fellows were in an actual punk band, the Melvins! And Buzz was not only up on the music, he also had an excellent grasp of the whole ethic of punk subculture. I needed a breath of fresh air and was immediately intrigued. These new sounds were raw and vital. I started buying the music emanating from underground scenes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and other places. Punks were also connected through do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing. Fanzines were the blogs of the early '80s. Anything went with the zines; they not only covered music, there was a heavy dose of politics as well. Of course they were antiestablishment, and most were left-wing, promoting vegetarianism, drug-free living, and anticorporatism. They were truly independent and decentralized, in stark contrast to the mainstream media I was used to. They were part of an alternative economy promoting small, independent business. For me, punk wasn't a fad; it offered meaning in a society that didn't offer enough.
Punk rejected the mainstream — which was just as well, because the mainstream rejected punk. Safety pins through the nose, loud clothing, and spiked hair scared most people. Too many associated self- destructive violence with punk. Punk was supposed to annoy and antagonize society, and indeed it did. In the early '80s, punk rockers were despised and ridiculed by their peers in the stoner crowd; the spiked growl of punk upset the soft feathers of Camaro hairstyles. One time, while standing in front of a club with some friends, we got hit by eggs tossed out of a passing muscle car. Laughing, we wiped away the egg on our tattered flannel with the same hands we used to wash away society's conformity. Self-assured in our personal liberation, ridicule from conformists couldn't upset true punks.
I started shopping for clothes at the Salvation Army in an attempt to subvert consumerism (I had little money anyway). In 1983, cool clothing from the '50s and '60s really wasn't that old; this was right before the vintage/collectable industry started scooping things up. As a badge of my independence, I dressed differently from the status quo, and, unlike some punks, I didn't dress dangerously. I didn't have a mohawk or a studded leather jacket. I didn't throw away my Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin records either. I'd hear punks refuting the old guard — they cast '70s rock bands away as though they were false prophets; those who followed old- school rock ran the risk of being taunted by these self-appointed guardians of the new order. This was simply pop music turning through its cycle of reinvention, but with a big dose of ideology mixed in. Some fanzines were very dogmatic, demanding a purity of ethic. Even though I was a believer in punk, how could I reject the music that gave me so much joy? Where would the world be without Black Sabbath? If punk was about freedom, why conform to some kind of molded identity? If I wanted to wear a uniform, I'd join the military. I believe that punk is a state of mind. It's about making your own way. And regardless of orthodoxy, I felt punk was messianic. In a lot of ways it did save me. An alternative vision didn't have to be stuck in the hippy 1960s — it was reborn through punk! A new generation was offered the promise of liberation from the status quo. And we were given community to boot.
In 1984 I traveled with Buzz and Matt to Walla Walla, Washington to see Black Flag perform. We drove across the state in a 1968 VW van painted like a zebra. Black Flag was on a mission to bring punk to the hinterlands, going out of their way to play small towns off the beaten path. Lead singer Henry Rollins sang of alienation with lyrics like, "Swimming in the mainstream/Is such a lame dream." Their music was slow and sludgy at that point, closer musically to Black Sabbath than the Sex Pistols. But it was also free of the boundaries of genre and era. It was real, and that's all that really mattered. There must have been a few dozen kids in the large community center that held the show. But as far as the mainstream media went, the tour wasn't swimming at all because, like the Sex Pistols, Black Flag was too dangerous.
The Melvins were looking for a new drummer, so I introduced Matt and Buzz to thundering teen drummer Dale Crover. They started practicing at Dale's house, and soon the Crovers's back porch and yard became a local hangout. American hardcore/punk was known for its blistering speed, but by '84 this was changing. Buzz started writing slow and heavy riffs. This dirge-like music was the genesis of Northwest Grunge.
This is around the time I met this person named Kurt Cobain. If I am to speak about independence, I need to mention one of the most independent people I've ever met. Kurt was a completely creative person — a true artist. He had just got a job and found his own place. What a den of art/insanity that was! He tried to make his own lava lamp out of wax and vegetable oil (it didn't work). He sketched very obscene Scooby-Doo cartoons all over his apartment building hallways (they were done very well). He made wild sound montages from obscure records. He sculpted clay into scary spirit people writhing in agony. He played guitar, sang, and wrote great tunes that were kind of off-kilter. Punk, pop, or whatever, it was raw creativity. Kurt held a skeptical perspective toward the world. He'd create video montages as well that were scathing testimonies about popular culture, compiled from hours and hours of watching television. I look back on those tapes as a shattered mirror reflecting the absurd reality of commercial television — perhaps even the world. This wasn't someone who had a hyperactive finger on the record button; those video montages were surreal sociology.
Needless to say, because of his murals, the upset landlady eventually kicked him out. But, even better, he then found a house to live in. This place couldn't have been bigger than 700 square feet. One thing led to another, and Kurt and I started jamming. I had been playing guitar for a few years but had never been in a band. To get things moving, I picked up the bass and played through an amplifier called a PMS, of all things. It was the label on the amp, and to this day I don't know what those initials stand for with regard to musical equipment.
We found a drummer, Aaron Burckhart, and began playing constantly in that little house. We had the most intense jams. We'd simultaneously orbit inner and outer space. It was so serious, if we felt we sucked at rehearsal we were disappointed and we'd sit around bummed out after. It must have been about transcendence. If we didn't get that rush, that otherworldly sense of liberation, we were let down; it's hard to lose God after you've experienced it. These were not cover-song sessions or protracted blues jams. These were manifestations of a psychic dissonance. For all its beauty, I see that dark thread through most of Kurt's creativity.
Songs started coming out of these rehearsals, and we built up a good set list. Aberdeen lacked the venues and the social network to sustain our needs as a creative entity, so we were drawn to the vitality of neighboring Olympia (Washington's state capital), home to the progressive Evergreen State College. Kurt eventually moved to Olympia proper, working nights as a janitor. Though he didn't attend school, Kurt fell in with the liberal- arts students that dominated that town. The school was a magnet for creative people. The music scene in Olympia was fiercely independent. KAOS radio played local and national underground music, and K Records held a stable of original bands. There were all kinds of events, ideas, and people, and a very leftist political element that permeated the scene.
I started working as an industrial painter and moved to Tacoma to be closer to work. Tacoma is a blue-collar town located between Olympia and Seattle. I was painting aircraft factories, aluminum and paper mills, and I joined the union doing the apprentice program. By this time the band wasn't playing much, and Kurt and I decided to ramp things up again. We found Chad Channing to join the band on drums. We built a practice studio in the basement of my rented house with discarded materials from construction sites. This was a very productive time, and the songs for our first album, Bleach, were coming together very well. The scene in Seattle was starting to take off too. There were shows with Mudhoney, Soundgarden, TAD, and others on the Seattle-based Sub Pop label happening all the time. Grungy guitars, sweat, and gallons of beer converged at clubs like the Vogue and the Central. The scene held together with a spirit of camaraderie, and bands were very supportive of each other. The vitality of this world contrasted sharply with the grind of working in mills. I picked up the book On the Road and sure enough, Kerouac struck again. I had made enough money to buy a good van; I figured that all I really needed in life was a bass guitar and the promise of the open road.
I quit my job to be a full-time starving musician. Our band was now called Nirvana and we were starting to make a name for ourselves locally and nationally. Our first album, Bleach, was released in June of 1989. We toured constantly, driving all over North America, playing from British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico, Montreal to Florida, Texas to Nebraska, gigging at dozens of little hole-in-the-wall clubs. I really enjoyed seeing our vast land, playing shows one town and one night at a time. Small clubs were where people on the outside of the mainstream converged. In 1989, it was inconceivable for a band like ours to be on mainstream radio — and forget about television! But there was an alternative universe, and we found it alive and well in most corners of the U.S. That fall, we toured Europe with our label-mates TAD. Europe has its differences from the U.S., but my experience proved that music is an international language — people like to rock out wherever you go. We found ourselves in Berlin the day after the wall fell. We counted a column of little Trabant cars, twenty-seven kilometers long, on the Eastern side, waiting to enter the West. The emotion of history-in-the-making was in the air. The West had much to offer and this wasn't lost on me when I noticed all of the Trabants parked on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's notorious avenue of booze and sex.
In late 1990, Dave Grohl joined as our drummer. His contribution transformed us into a force of nature. Nirvana was now a beast that walked the earth. We toured the United Kingdom as a headliner, drawing good-sized crowds. The press started to write about us more and more. We returned to Washington for another creative and prolific period. We'd rehearse almost every night getting the material together for our second album. We were now at a point where we were selling out every venue in Seattle. And major labels were beginning to sign bands from the underground; every week brought news of another group going with the big labels. Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. had been signed up, along with most of the leaders in the underground scene, as the majors scooped up the cream of the crop. Word of quarter-million-dollar contracts was common. It was a time of optimism in the music business. New technologies were embraced. The transition from vinyl to compact discs was well under way. Labels were flush with the sales of back-catalog artists in the new digital format.
It was the promise of getting paid a decent amount of money and the belief that life would be easier that motivated us to sign a major label deal. The alternative was to slog it out in the same old club scene, and the freshness and romance of that reality was starting to wear thin. We could have ramped up an independent business with all of the elements needed for a DIY operation, but we were better musicians than businessmen. We had to move forward.
In January of 1992, our second album, Nevermind, hit number one on the charts. This was totally unexpected. The label initially printed 50,000 copies of the record — that was supposed to last us for the next year or so. As a result of the sudden success, you couldn't find the album in any stores, but that just added to the mystique. Nirvana was truly a phenomenon. We virtually came out of nowhere and found ourselves plopped in the middle of popular culture. The album broke through with the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It turned into an anti-anthem that rallied the disaffected. I've always felt that the song was an observation of a culture mired in boredom amidst relative luxury. In other words, many have the means to make their own way but choose not to do so. The lyrics don't convey a literal message guiding people toward a sense of liberation. It's simply a comment on a condition.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Of Grunge and Government"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Krist Novoselic.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Music Must Change,
Chapter 2: Music Is Politics,
Chapter 3: Flip-Flop Patriots,
Chapter 4: Alternative Politics,
Chapter 5: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy!,
Krist Novoselic,
Copyright & Credits,
About Akashic Books,