Twenty years ago...

Three days from now will mark the TWENTIETH anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death.  

D pointed that fact out to me a couple of nights ago as we were preparing for bed and it gave us the "Fuck-Where-Has-The-Time-Gone?!" chills.  

I drank two 40 oz bottles of Colt 45 that night and cried a great deal in my apartment, alone.

Two decades later, I am left pondering the loss and trying to calculate the legacy. 

I just stumbled across this video below and it gives me hope that the music is still helping young people cope with life.  It validates Cobain's artistic contributions as authentic and universal.  

That is what endures, that is what is important.  Many of these teens don't even know how he died and one of actually refers to the genre as "Grudge."

This tells us not to get caught up in labels, just seek out truth wherever you can find it.  

You want to feel old?  That little baby in the photo above is now a full grown woman.  The most recent photos I could find of her are three years old now (Frances Bean Cobain will turn turn 22 in August).  Hopefully she turned out alright like the kids in the video above. 

 

Rock By Kids

Earlier this year, thanks to Mitchell, I saw a duo called Skating Polly play the Empty Bottle.  

I was blown away by the scruffy charm and intensity from these two stepsisters who were just 12 and 17 at the time.  

My courage to write about them back then failed me.  

Because of their young age I didn't know how to talk about them except to say, "look at these kids play!" which seemed reductive and patronizing.  They deserved better than that.  



Then tonight I discovered Unlocking The Truth and I was reminded of that excitement I felt while watching Skating Polly on stage.  

That youthful exuberance is about as close to immortality as we as can hope to get.  The lack of fear & the laser focus becomes harder to maintain as we pass through adolescence and into adulthood.  

Unlocking The Truth - Malcolm Brickhouse & Jarad Dawkins from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

As they say on The Avant Garde Diaries:

There is a particular moment right before fame strikes a young musician – between the full flowering of talent and believing in a dream so pure and strong as to feel bulletproof – which at the same time is almost imperceptible as it is happening. 

How cool would be a collaboration between the Pixies/Nirvana loving girls of Skating Polly and the Disturbed/Metallica fanatical boys of Unlocking The Truth?  

Stranger things have happened - we are living in a world where The Judgement Night soundtrack just celebrated its 20th anniversary.  

Suddenly I look forward to purchasing instruments and lessons for my offspring.  I feel hopeful for the future.  

Skating Polly photo by Jeff Foy

Unlocking The Truth photo by Loren Wohl

Top 10 Sleep Songs

So I didn't get to post last night because my daughter would not stay asleep. It was like she was jacked up on some kind of stimulant.

As I lay on her bedroom floor, trying to lead by example, I started to formulate a list of songs with sleep in the title.

None of these are lullabies and very few could be put in the category of "soothing" but a few of them do tap into the frustration that I (and probably many insomniacs) felt last night.

Search "Sleep" on your iPod. I bet you have at least ten songs to make a completely different list. How do they rank against these? I leave that to you to make your case. Here's my Top Ten.

10) "Talking In Your Sleep" - The Romantics - aka their other hit. This catchy little number came up quick during the process and lodged itself in my head.

9) "Sleep!" - Big Black - not exactly what I would wish for my child or any other. But this whole exercise was a catharsis really.

8) "Sleep Tonight" - Rolling Stones - an overlooked song on an underappreciated album, this one probably comes the closest on the list to my paternal tone as I occasionally rubbed my wired child's back

7) "Sleeping With The T.V. On" - Double Dagger - I love this song from their last EP, Masks & I regret not making it out to their final show here in Chicago.

And hey, by coincidence my last post references falling asleep with the t.v. on, which is something I personally never do. Weird.

"Remember that night when my mouth forgot how to work? And you said 'we are most beautiful when we struggle'. Well, sometimes my life has more beauty than I can handle."

6) "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" - Beastie Boys - thank you Beastie Boys, now I have two catchy choruses running through my head and my daughter is still restless and it is quarter past one.

5) "Sleep Is The Enemy" - Danko Jones - it is sure starting to feel that way. This is a tough track off their last truly masterful album.

4) "I'm Only Sleeping" - The Beatles - thanks to Terri Hemmert's Breakfast With The Beatles program Sunday mornings on XRT, my son can usually identify who is handling lead vocals on a Beatles track. So the Fab Four get the #4 spot because this one might make it on a mix cd soon.

3) "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" - Nirvana - I realize that this is a Leadbelly tune. But I was first introduced to it during the Unplugged session. Ever since the reissue of Nevermind came out I have been pining for Nirvana. I held the $79 4LP set in my hands today and gave it some serious consideration before opting to pay $20 for a Le Butcherettes album. Having a Reckless Records in the Loop has made my lunch hour a dangerous and seductive thing.

"My girl, my girl..." - please go the f*ck to sleep!

2) "When You Sleep" - My Bloody Valentine - I remember reading how Kevin Shields and Co. were trying to capture the sensation of having just woken up from a deep sleep with the vocals on Loveless. They certainly nailed it.

1) "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - The Tokens(?) - I am not 100% who did this tune originally. This is the one that I know and I have heard about a gazillion times. We put it on the first mix we made for my son because he was so into animals at the time. How many car rides have I belted out this song? Impossible to count, really. But in the end, it gets the top spot because it is truly a unique and rocking good time. Just try and keep up with all the crazy stuff they throw in there.

Hush, my darling don't fear my darling, the lion sleeps tonight.