Nirvana "Come As You Are"



Kurt Cobain

I'll be honest, I didn't completely "get" Nirvana when they came out.  I was a junior in high school and while I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Monty Python - two things still worthy of obsession - I'd also had my head up the ass of hair metal for the last four years.  When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit the airwaves, I couldn't deny the catchy spirit of the song...but I was resistant; and then Come As You Are came out.  That song really did it for me.  The dark riff and refrain "and I swear that I don't have a gun..." - I loved it.

I'm pretty sure that I learned that riff way back then...but never finished the song.  So, I decided to include it in this project and took it on yesterday.  It's not too hard and it took me about 20 minutes total to learn and play.  I almost don't feel like it's worth doing a video documentation of it as the constraints of my apartment lifestyle will make it hard to approximate the fuzzed out tone and it's just not necessarily that impressive of a song to watch played in such a context.

There are people who argue that Kurt isn't a great guitarist.  But, his influence is undeniable; and the great lesson of his playing is that less is more.  Moreover, his body of work is a great reminder of the real goal of playing an instrument - to create and play great songs.  Writing a great song will always be more important than wowing someone with speedy finger gymnastics.  Moreover, sometimes music simple in construction better allows the complexity at the emotive heart of the song to shine.  As a player, my goal is make the instrument capture a feeling - an emotion or a sense of time and place.  Kurt's playing captured the feeling of my generation's youth better than any other.