My first impression of Kurt Cobain, even before I knew anything about him, was that he was the kid in school who was painfully quiet, but whose mind was silently screaming. This, I remember thinking, was a kid who had spent a lot of time alone. Not because he wanted to, of course, but because, from Day One, he’d been made to feel that he was alone.

Like you (one can only presume), I have felt the odd juxtaposition of loneliness within a crowded room and written it off as self-manufactured. In Kurt’s case, loneliness was but a byproduct of absolute, unadulterated alienation, he of the broken home with no dad and a mom who couldn’t have given two shits about him if it meant any bit of sacrifice on her part.

If he and Nirvana had arrived at any other time in the history of rock & roll, they’d have gone unnoticed, but, since they came on the scene with their songs of anger and alienation at a time when the youth of this world could no longer maintain a happy façade, their music was welcomed with open arms. Sure, it didn’t happen overnight. Their first album, Bleach, was only a moderate indie success, but it had led to a deal with major label, Geffen, and the strange planetary alignment that would result in the recording and release of an album that would change the world.

Upon its arrival, Nevermind changed little, if anything. I personally remember weeks of watching MTV’s “120 Minutes,” seeing their video, and not being at all moved by the band. Then one day some three months after the album’s release, I turn on the car radio and hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the local AOR radio station. I do a quick check to see if this is, indeed, the right station, because they’re more prone to play an old Pink Floyd or Billy Squier song than something like this. Whether I’ve heard the song before or not, I cannot recall, but, at that very moment, it is the single most beautiful and powerful thing I’ve ever heard. To this day, I remember every nuance of that moment like others remember where they were when JFK was assassinated.

The next day, determined to get my hands on the album this amazing song is from, I run to the local record store and find that I am not alone in my desire to procure said album. As I stand at the register, eager to part with my cash, the guy behind the counter gives the cassette (!) an odd glance — he doesn’t seem to know who Nirvana is, but mentions that a lot of people have been in the past few days looking for the album and that he’d been telling them he didn’t have it. “I should probably order some more of these,” he says as I exit the premises. (more…)