A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

I WANT TO BE THE GIRL WITH THE MOST CAKE: To commemorate this blog's one-year anniversary (tomorrow), have a little fun and provide a little extra to you, my loyal readers (as well as the people who are just hoping for the free pizza), I decided to seek out Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, one of this blog's favorites, who was happy to chat with me yesterday about his new book, the alternarock explosion of the 1990s, the contemporary scene and future of rock music.

I think you'll enjoy our conversation a lot, and it will appear here as soon as I have some time to transcribe my notes.

In the meantime, a preview. Because it all comes back to Nirvana, right? (And then back to the Pixies, but you know what I'm saying.)

We were talking about Nirvana, and how troubled Cobain was by the band's success. "They didn't know what the hell was going on," DeRogatis told me.

He visited Cobain at his home a few months before his death. "It was a beautiful house on Lake Washington, but it looked like a slum," he told me. "He had a thrift-store couch in the middle of the living room. They had no idea how rich they were."

Which he then linked to, and I will now for you, a 2002 interview he conducted with Courtney Love, contained in the book, and one particular Love quote which he called "creepy":

[Cobain biographer] Charlie [Cross] has this theory that there was always suicidal ideation, and there was no way around it. I think that's bull; ideation can be replaced with other ideation. Now, I have a theory, and it sounds vulgar, and it sounds shallow, and it's capitalism coming from a capitalist. But if we were around folks who knew luxury, who were our generation, who had money, who were flying on Lear jets, who were drinking fine wines, who were feeling great fabrics, who knew what Ming was, and fine art, and thread count, things might have been different. We didn't experience what [R.E.M. guitarist Peter] Buck experienced when he was living next door. We didn't have STUFF. We didn't know about food. We didn't have a cleaning lady! Wealth makes things nicer -- it does, and that's just a goddamn fact! We were rich people, and we didn't get to BE rich people. And I think that luxury might have replaced [Kurt's suicidal] ideation.

If only Kurt had been introduced to the Pottery Barn in time, Courtney. . . .

More on Nirvana, true rock experiences, bands that have become "corporate self-perpetuating success machines," the importance of Trent Reznor and more, as soon as I have time to type it up.