Results tagged “kurtcobain”

In other Courtney Love news, Kurt Cobain's widow has woken up from her decades-long booze and pills coma to find that somebody done gone and stole her money. According to yesterday's Page Six: "some of the people handling Kurt Cobain's estate had lost all the money the Nirvana frontman had left her and their daughter, Frances Bean, her lawyer says. A team of investigators, forensic accountants, and lawyers found that Cobain's estate had been looted of more than $30 million cash and up to $500 million in real estate." In response, they plan on tracking down as much stolen booty as possible and filing civil suits aplenty. Courtney's crazy-ass Twitter feed had no comment.

• This is terrible, but when Seattlest noticed the weird new streetlights on 10th Avenue the other night, we thought, "No need to investigate just yet. Capitol Hill Seattle is probably already on it." And what do you know? They were.
• The Washington Bus has Gary Payton rapping, of course, and an ode to Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles. The only thing better would be GP rapping about Kohl-Welles on the Washington Bus itself.
• After reading Blogazar's post about Kurt Cobain and today's Capitol Hill, we would like to weigh in: Cobain would probably still live in the neighborhood, but he'd never come out of his apartment. He'd just have Zaw and heroin delivered to him on the daily and have a Twitter account.

A generation ago, Seattle's most famous person was a fictional clown who lived in the city dump.

Four mentions trumps Milwaukee or Nashville, similarly sized cities with no direct mentions in Harper's Index. The Index (before we kicked the habit entirely, the only reason we subscribed to the magazine) has a fresh new search interface, which inspired us to go looking. The four mentions make an interesting snapshot of Seattle in highbrow pop culture since 1984: our high rate of CPR training, grunge-a-mania, the cult of Kurt Cobain, and the trumped-up charges against WTO protesters. Of course, our culture spreads indirectly, as well: Starbucks has hit the Index 5 times, Bill Gates 13 times, Microsoft 21 times, Amazon 4 times (though "amazon.com" only pulls up one of those mentions), and Boeing twice.

LIVING LEGENDS: No, not Twiggy. We're talking about the hiphop crew out of Cali, two members of which will be performing at Neumos tonight. The Grouch and Eligh are touring for the holidays (official tour title: "How The Grouch Stole Christmas"), sharing the evening's bill with Bayliens and 206 Zulu cornerstones Alpha P. The duo will release an album called Say G&E in the spring, so attendees tonight should be getting a sneak peek at the new material; we've also heard The Grouch's solo album Show You The World, which fans of underground and indie hiphop (a la Atmosphere) are encouraged to check out.

It was seventeen years ago today, Nevermind made its record store debut, and rock music would never be the same. Nirvana's second full-length album (and the first on Geffen rather than indie Sub Pop), Nevermind solidified the band's trademark loud-quiet song structure and marked a shift in their sound to something bigger than just grunge. While it took months for Nevermind's first track "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to become a surprise hit on the MTV, today's the anniversary of that seminal album being released unto the world. Take the time to give it another listen.

Musicians who remain active in the recording industry for over 20 years usually become internationally famous and aim to save the world, or quietly cultivate a devout fan base by emancipating humanity one pair of ears at a time. Mark Pickerel—drummer, vocalist, and Ellensburg native—has followed the latter career path.

We think of Kurt Cobain’s short, violently-ended life like Clarence Worley does The King’s: "In Jailhouse Rock he was everything rockabilly's about. I mean, he is rockabilly. Mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he couldn't give a fuck about nothing except rockin' and rollin', living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse."

So the lovely and talented Britney Spears has reached that beautiful moment in a young celebrity's life when the media decides they need to draft your obituary. Yes, it seems the AP has concluded that Ms. Spears' mortality is sufficiently imminent they need to prepare for the story. Of course, drafting an obit in advance is an industry-wide practice, but for a 26-year-old? Of course, 27 is just that by kicking the stool out from under her sometime before Dec. 2, 2008.

Yes, it's actually been 14 years since Unplugged in New York aired the first time, on the TV channel that once stood for Music. Fourteen years since you perched on the edge of the couch, possibly stoned, wearing intentionally crappy clothes, your bleary eyes glued to the set. Since Kurt Cobain had just a few months left of his short, tortured life.

Next year’s publication of Itch, Love Stories About Heroin means that if you've been waiting for a full-length, in-depth book about Alice in Chains' Layne Staley—well, don’t get your hopes up.

In central Illinois in the 1990s Seattlest was a wee little college freshman exploring the twin wonders of new music and new drugs. Nirvana, for example, was making some music we got really into, so much so that we learned of Aberdeen, WA, even though we'd never been to the West Coast, much less the Pacific Northwest, or Washington, or Seattle. At nearly the same time we encountered our first vanity steroid users. Some guys in the dorm--non-athlete guys--worked out a lot and then sat around in front of mirrors with their shirts off. "Steroids" they whispered to one another, "I'm starting a cycle." It went around the building like a bootleg tape. "So-and-so's hooking me up." And by second semester there were a lot of little, big men lurching around, popping zits and raging from time to time.

Wait--choke back that vomit. We're making shit up. Speculating doom, if you will. Only half of that title is true.

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then, playing at the Varsity for just one week, is a gift to Nirvana fans, the Kurt-curious and grunge scholars everywhere.

We start things off this weekend with a simple two words from Donte: Muthafucking Justice!

Musical hyphenate-extraordinaire Shawn Smith has been fronting bands and playing solo in Seattle for about 15 years. As recent, local music history goes, he’s as seminal a figure as Kurt Cobain—and more prolific—though not nearly as high-profile. He should be.

Kurt Cobain’s widow and his hometown have a lot in common. Both Courtney Love and Aberdeen have battled substance abuse. Both are scorned for their blighted appearance. And both had a lot of wood running through them in their heyday.

Remember the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, the album that made the band—and the word "grunge"—a household name? A naked baby, swimming blithely in pristine water, reaches for a dollar bill—a dollar bill that's on a large fish hook. The image is memorable for its ironic, dangerous, clear message. Courtney Love didn't catch the meaning. Director AJ Schnack does.

We know that the weather has been rainy and overcast and downright crummy these last few days, but never fear: things are looking up! And just in time for this weekend's Capitol Hill Block Party, which over two days features three stages and nearly fifty bands.

This weekend the National Weather service is calling for mid-70s to 80 degrees. You may want to recover from heatstroke by rehydrating in an air-conditioned theater with other bepinkenned Seattleites, and their melanin-endowed friends savoring their little moment of schadenfreude. (Here's the Seattle Times cheat sheet on the various venues.)

This weekend there are a lot of shows that we recommend you avoid, not that you're going to listen to Seattlest and tear up your tickets or anything, but if you previously had no idea these were happening this weekend you can pat yourself on the back for successfully avoiding any mention of them so far. First Fishbone is playing Studio 7. Stay away. Second, Jello Biafra is in town. Not there's anything wrong with Jello, exactly. Let's just say he draws a particular crowd. Finally, the Gypsy Kings are at the Paramount.

involved with this competition. But no, Seattle. You had to flash those bedroom eyes of yours, do your best (a.k.a. worst) James Brown-ish dancing. You had to beatbox and reach your hand out at the camera like you're beckoning one of those teenage girls to come hither.

Sadly, we didn’t live in Seattle when grunge was born and raucously reigned. British rock journalist Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography—on sale now, just in time for the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death—did. And it sure is tempting to live vicariously through the 600+ pages of his book.

First of all, despite what you read in the Times and the P-I about Donald Byrd's Never-Mind (which came and went over the weekend), it's not all that, as Brendan Kiley says over on the Slog. We've become fans of Byrd's "neo-expressionist" style, but Never-Mind (at this point) is short on style and substance. It came off like "Frank Miller's Never-Mind": an ugly cartoon of drug abuse, of dysfunction, of iconic fame.

8pm tonight, tickets $15-$45 (plus fees)

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, care if I'm old."