Kurt Cobain at 40
I remember when MTV Unplugged in New York was released in 1994, seven months after Cobain’s death. My friend was still wearing her white “RIP Kurt Cobain” t-shirt regularly, which had a huge print of his face on the front and 1967-1994 in black letters across the bottom. I asked her when she was going to stop wearing the shirt, and she simply replied “never.” I knew it was a touchy subject with her, so I didn’t take the conversation any further. Like her t-shirt, Unplugged didn’t stray far from me over the next year and at the time it felt like the last piece of Cobain we were going to get. I treasured that album. Eventually, my friend phased the t-shirt out of her wardrobe, but none of us ever really phased Nirvana out of our lives, like many other tweens/teens at the time they were that one band that got us into music for good.
I still see a good deal of “Courtney Killed Kurt” t-shirts. What does this have to do with anything? Nothing at all…