About nine months ago me and Chris Jones had a conversation about bands' fan bases. It came up when he got on Radiohead's case by dissing their fans. ("seriousness is not the same as intelligence no matter what virginal Radiohead fans say") and I said, yeah, I love Radiohead but I don't like most Radiohead fans I meet. The ones twenty five and older tend to be pissed off about kid a, which I don't understand at all. Was kid a really that unsettling? Its seems like a fairly normal album to me. Albeit a good one. The ones younger then twenty five are either hipsters or mainstream music listeners who I have no idea what they're doing around Radiohead or, yes, the virginal ultra-serious type. Of course there are always people I meet who likeRadiohead and are cool but generally I would bet against it. If we were to take guesses on weather I would get along with someone or not based purely on they're list of favorite bands, seeing Radiohead would not be a good sign to me.
So me and CJ started thinking, what would be a good sign? A band who's fan base was cool more often then not. I couldn't think of anything. Chris mentioned the Velvet Underground and I guess that's pretty accurate. In the months in between then and now this question has stuck in the back of my mind and I've pulled a few others out. Cap'n Jazz, Owls, Dirty Projectors, its a little bit hard for me to imagine too many idiots like these bands but still all of these still didn't quite do it for me and so the question still hung around the back of my mind.
Today I came up with a solution. Nirvana. Perhaps it was just in Albany but Nirvana is stuck in a weird place. They were so intensely popular with the generation directly preceding us and they strike a chord with almost every middle schooler to the extent that they become the epitome of uncool to the casual fan. As per the intense fan, they're hard enough that the indie pop crowd sees it as testosterone fueled bull shit and they're soft enough that the metal and punk crowd sees everything post-Bleach as commercialized sentimental crap. Which leaves the only people who would openly declare a love for Nirvana as being ones who didn't care about all that crap, and who could see Nirvana's unquestionable brilliance, and who didn't mind being considered the definition of uncool by all parties involved. I guess it also leaves the middle school crowd... and those still have not broken free of the middle school state of mind... but still. Its hard for me to imagine anyone over 15 with a unapologetic love for Nirvana being someone I couldn't respect.
You see? This is an epiphany to me these days. Its fucking meaningless.
lonely? maybe. or maybe not it all depends
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