Whenever I think of "Praying for Time", my brain tries to give me this song. Feels like it might be a spiritual cousin, even if (ironically) it's more "uplifting" lyrically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo0cZRaZs6c
(The The - "Love Is Stronger Than Death")
"History has proven Michael right. Two decades later..."
Three decades later.
I've spent part of this month listening to some of those iconic 1991 albums that just turned 30 (eg, Nevermind), and it makes my head hurt knowing it was that long ago.
/i'm old
Oh, look, another story where Courtney knows better than everyone else, and things would have been better had everyone listened to her. That's never happened before.
For the record: "Teen Spirit" was specifically intended to be the starter single at college radio and 120 Minutes, not some huge hit. "Come As You Are" was believed to be the big single, and was scheduled as the followup. Literally no one believed that SLTS would do what it did, and the "what ifs" are ridiculous because nobody - including her - saw it coming.
(If people are going to argue insane ideas like having "In Bloom" be the first single, we might as well entertain the equally insane idea that they should have gone with Vig's mix of Nevermind, and specifically SLTS - which some people seem to believe is "better" than Wallace's mix. That would have changed the trajectory as well.)
Fun fact: Courtney divested her involvement in Nirvana LLC to Frances in exchange for cash a few years ago. So claiming that she's in any way actively involved in Nirvana's ongoing legacy is specious at best.
Courtney Love has absolutely no business at this point saying anything about Nirvana.
Remember how beer commercials used to use fake songs that sounded vaguely like actual songs?
The first time I heard this song, I was driving through Tennessee, listening to a new active rock station.
I swear to god, I thought "Bodies" was a beer commercial. It was every vague AIC stereotype with nothing lyrics. I kept waiting for the voiceover person to give their spiel about the fresh taste of some new Ice beer.
I was dumbfounded when the guy doing the spiel was the station dj, telling me about this new band and their new song.
Warren might be right about that KISS song being their first (wholly) "outside written song", but if it's true, it's on a technicality.
Gene Simmons occasionally did that trash-can move where he took someone else's song, made a few adjustments, and insisted on taking co-writing credit. Would have been an "outside written song" if he'd left it alone.
Jim Vallance's version of one of those incidents:
http://www.jimvallance.com/01-music-folder/songs-folder-may-27/pg-song-kiss-rock-and.html
Because several of the songs on the self-titled (including at least two of its singles) were accused of being rip-offs of other songs, specifically by Wire and The Stranglers. They were sued by both bands, and settled out of court.
At the time, it was just kinda accepted by fans. "Yeah, they ripped off Wire, so?"
Kinda like this retrospective review from AV Club:
https://www.avclub.com/elastica-s-debut-stole-from-the-best-embodying-britpop-1798237216
The closest you're going to get to that is the (arguably) first instance.
When the someone in the Rolling Stones' camp realized (before the album came out) that "Has Anybody Seen My Baby" bore a resemblance to KD Lang's "Constant Craving", the band gave her (and the co-writer) of that song credit on theirs. Neither Lang, the co-writer, the publisher, or her label asked for credit.
Lang's response: "[It's] quite a compliment."
The upside of this version is that it sounds a lot less like Mooney Suzuki's "Alive & Amplified" now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOtlj0ZgTPI
The original Foo version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfbJCzaEdps
Jack Irons left the band after the Australian tour in March of 1998, before all of the Live on Two Legs shows and those 1998 Vault shows. The Chicago 1995 show is the only one of those he plays on.
There's an unreleased/deleted album of one of the 1998 Australian shows that's the only other official release of an Irons live show. (It was manufactured as a Best Buy exclusive, but was pulled before release, though a few copies got out.)
(Edit: paragraph break after "trajectory would have changed" - the next sentence isn't the "What If" world. Teens today wear Nirvana but not necessarily Pearl Jam, and a current-Cobain world would have Nirvana seen more like Pearl Jam, at best.)
Unpopular thought: if Kurt were still around, I don't think Wal-Mart would be selling their merch. Maybe Hot Topic at best.
At the time of his death, In Utero was faring pretty poorly. The Fall 1993 US tour did okay, but wasn't a huge success. (People have sorta ret-conned Nirvana as being the biggest band in the world in 1993, but that's not true at all - Pearl Jam was curb-stomping them at the time, to the point that Kurt went on record defending why it was happening.) Unfortunately for all of us, Kurt's death made Nirvana legendary.
If he'd lived, they probably would have taken a year off after the Lollapalooza tour, Grohl would've done a small side project, then they would've reconvened to release one more record in 1997. I doubt it would've done any notably better than the same time-period albums from the other Seattle Prime bands (Tripod, No Code, Down on the Upside). People would remember them fondly for that "Teen Spirit" moment, but their whole trajectory would have changed. You might see a teen wearing a Nirvana t-shirt today, but you probably don't see as many wearing throwback Pearl Jam tees. (I'm assuming those are still solid dad-wear.)
On the upside, they probably wouldn't be getting sued for a t-shirt they first made in 1989.
It was both. I was trying to track down the original quote - best I've got is from an Entertainment Weekly issue dated April 8, 1994, via their PR team:
----
Two thirds of the band, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, grew up in Aberdeen, Wash., ”and the only place they were able to get their music was Wal-Mart and Kmart,” the band’s spokeswoman, Janet Billig, has said. ”They really want to make their music available to kids who don’t have the opportunity to go to mom-and-pop stores. They feel strongly enough to make some alterations.”
Can't remember my point in posting that, but it seemed curious that they didn't put a copyright on the front image back then. Btw - original image was apparently released in 1949, which, yeah, not in the public domain in the US.
Sweet, maybe I can sell mine. It smells like box.
Nirvana intentionally made a censored version of In Utero specifically for Wal-Mart, and Kurt went on record explaining that he did so because he could relate to the kid whose only option was to buy stuff at Wal-Mart.
The only major ding against it is that another band wrote almost exactly the same song at roughly the same time. (Genuinely, a total coincidence.)
Oddly, this song was actually released first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFaQ_gPOTks
Not in the piece at the moment - one of the songs from SDRE's unfinished album was released in 2014 on a split 7" with Circa Survive. Enigk apparently dubbed some vocals over a rough mix for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_csX98nqOo
They played a new song during that 2009 tour (unnamed, some call it "10") that might have made the album. The version from the DC show that NPR recorded is solid.
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