Smells Like Pop Culture

In the Fall of 1991, I turned 16 years old.  I was about to get my first car – a 1987 Cavalier – which I thought would allow me to take on the world as I know it.  Of course I would have to choose my soundtrack from my hundreds of CD’s that I had received form various music publishing companies – BMG and the Columbia House were the most popular.  “GET 15 CD’S FOR ONLY A PENNY!” they’d advertise.  It was true – all you literally had to do was mail them a penny and then sign up for the “CD of the Month Club”.  They would then mail the CD of the Month to your house for a reasonable fee.  “Cancel anytime. Keep the 15 CD’s for a penny as a gift.”  The problem was, I never canceled – nobody did.  And after signing up for the CD’s several times under different aliases and using addresses of vacant neighborhood houses, I politely asked my mother for the $16.95 plus shipping and handling for fear of getting in trouble with the law. 

Though I had amassed these CD’s through a brilliant combination of hard work and deception, they were mainly filler records – old rock stuff I felt I was supposed to  already know, greatest hits records of bands who dominated the airwaves of the ‘70s – Steve Miller, the Doobie Brothers, the Eagles, the Cars, etc.  What was in my heavy rotation were my store boughts.  Metallica’s Black Album was still big.  Public Enemy had a new one out.  And when Guns N Roses released both USE YOUR ILLUSIONS Volumes 1 and 2 simultaneously the month before, that’s all I listened to (I wasn’t cool enough to listen to the Cure or the Pixies yet).  Guns ‘N Roses - the band that single handedly crushed the Motley Crue and Poison vibe of parties and needing “nothing but the good times” as the song goes.  Guns ‘N Roses made mainstream rock edgy.  Or so I thought.  And that was all about to change.  Not just music but pop culture in general.  What I consider the last great youth culture movement was about to happen.  And the definition of ‘cool’ was about to get a make over.

At this time a new song with a new sound and a new attitude was being played on the then video playing MTV in heavy rotation: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – Nirvana (awesome band), Nevermind (awesome album), Kurt Cobain (awesome frontman).  And not just on the late night alternative rock show 120 Minutes.  It was a specialty show.  They all were.  If you wanted rap videos, you watched YO! MTV Raps.  If you wanted metal, it was Headbangers Ball.  None of the above music – weird music – was for 120 Minutes. 

I was completely hooked the first time I saw the video.  Everything changed.  The flannel shirts and ripped jeans and overall anarchic attitude towards high school was quite appealing.  It was an ‘up yours’ from all non-cool kids to all of conformity.  We also thought being depressed was cool.  When we couldn’t be depressed enough, we learned that drugs were a major factor.  So then we tried to get ‘high’ enough to be depressed so we could understand why these bands were so awesome. 

Needless to say, a month later Nevermind became my soundtrack and the first CD in my new ride.  It didn’t take long before my preppy jock friends and I became ‘rebels’.  The fashion and trend was given a name – GRUNGE.  (Of course now looking back it was just gloomy, no way out, punk rock.)  You could become grunge for about $150 and an hour of your time at the local JC Penneys.  Next thing you know, every band from Seattle was considered cool and had record deals.

Nirvana entered my life in the Fall of 1991. Kurt Cobain was dead by the spring of 1994.  ‘They’ say your teenage years are your most formidable.  Having lived through what I consider that last great music movement in the US, I would say that ‘they’ are right.