It Came In Through My Bathroom Window: Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

There's literally a window high on the shower wall in my bathroom, and just now, I hear Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blasting from the neighbors next door. I haven't experienced that in years. These days, it seems like when you hear this song up in the club or whatever, it's mashed up with 50 Cent or whatnot. I'm from New York, and folks back East are wonderfully loud and obnoxious, and are more than happy to pump whatever their favorite music is loud enough so you can hear it too, no problem. Also, back in the day, when we all had to listen to the same radio stations (it wasn't satellite radio and internets back then), you had the privilege of listening to a repeating playlist of popular tunes 1,000,000 TIMES PER DAY. In the case of Matchbox 20, this was a bane. With "Smells Like Teen Spirit," this was a miraculous boon.

While this may seem like the most obvious thing to post about on your 90's blog, it is the most obvious earthshaking event of the Nineties, other than when Kurt threw in the towel in '94. I remember when this video premiered on MTV in 1992, my Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson-soaked brain absorbed it in shock and confusion. Ninth-graders were abuzz at school the next day about the weirdo white boys with dirty hair and dirtier guitars.

Please enjoy "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Come As You Are" mixed with an interview of Nirvana in the bathroom. I always loved Nirvana interviews, especially Kurt, because they were playful, funny, but always intelligently threw off the interviewer and the audience with disinformation and irony, kinda like yummy young Dylan in the "Don't Look Back" days.



Please do check out the 2006 documentary "About A Son" if you haven't already. It is basically a series of interviews that the journalist Michael Azerrad conducted with Kurt Cobain in preparation for the book he wrote about Nirvana, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. It's very intimate and Kurt is lovely.