Here We Are Now, Introduce Us!

Good afternoon and what is up everyone? My name is Andrew, and I am going to be guest-blogging here for the next few months! I am really excited to share some of the books I have been reading with everyone, starting with a subject that I have been infatuated with for many years: grunge music.

My high school years began when grunge music broke like a wave across the United States. It was the fall of 1992. Nirvana, a band from the Pacific Northwest, was in the process of knocking Michael Jackson-the King of POP off the peak of the Billboard Music Chart-the number one position. Nirvana could be seen and heard everywhere in this time before the Internet was our source for all things entertainment. On MTV, their video “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was played relentlessly, and they destroyed their instruments on Saturday Night Live, an event seen by millions. At one point, seven of the twelve songs on their second record, “Nevermind,” were being played on the radio. They were by all standards-the biggest rock band in the USA. This was 1992.

Now thirty years later in 2022, what was once the biggest band in the United States has transitioned into legend. Their troubled but gifted lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994. Their drummer Dave Grohl, moving on after the tragedy began a band named Foo Fighters (RIP Taylor Hawkins). That band has now arguably become one of the best rock bands of a generation. Even still, as thirty years have passed, when you look around this campus as well as society-you will see Nirvana t-shirts. Their music and legend have endured.

It's against this introduction I would like to reveal to you my first book, Heavier Than Heaven, the biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross.

Heavier Than Heaven is the biography of Kurt Cobain. It is written by Charles R. Cross who was the editor of a biweekly newspaper called The Rocket. The newspaper served the Pacific Northwest, and its main goal was to serve as a document of local music scene of the region-mainly Seattle. Cross began to cover Nirvana well before the band became a worldwide phenomenon. This gives him credence, as he begins the origin story of one of the biggest stars and tragic suicides of our time.

And what do we find out about Kurt Cobain? Anything new? Anything interesting beyond the music, the last of which was recorded almost 30 years ago? Yes dear reader we certainly do. If you are a little more seasoned like me, you may have some questions of what Cobain was like-this book helps you to understand him better. Or, are you a younger fan who has seen the t-shirts, heard the music, and maybe has seen or read about certain conspiracies surrounding his passing? This book can help make sense of some of those things as well. It is a truly tragic and heartbreaking story about a kid, really, a young guy who became the voice of a generation.

Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross

ISBN: 0786865059

Publication Date: 2001-08-15

It has been twenty years since Kurt Cobain died by his own hand in April 1994; it was an act of will that typified his short, angry, inspired life. Veteran music journalist Charles R. Cross fuses his intimate knowledge of the Seattle music scene with his deep compassion for his subject in this extraordinary story of artistic brilliance and the pain that extinguished it. Based on more than four hundred interviews; four years of research; exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries, lyrics, and family photos; and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobain's life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, success, and the adulation of a generation. Charles Cross has written a preface for this new edition, in which he recounts some of the events regarding Kurt Cobain and this book in the past two decades since his death.

Cobain Unseen by Charles R. Cross

ISBN: 9780316033725

Publication Date: 2008-10-27

An unparalleled look inside the brilliant mind of one of America's most revered rock legends, Cobain Unseen collects previously unseen artifacts and photographs from the estate's archives to form a fascinating portrait of the creativity, madness, and genius of Kurt Cobain. Personal items and photographs take readers deeper inside Cobain's life than they've ever been before, and interactive features, such as Kurt's handwritten sticker-sheet of Nirvana name tags, facsimiles of unseen journal pages, and gatefolds of his graffiti-embellished guitars make this an essential keepsake. An audio CD showcasing spoken-word material by Cobain, some of it never before released, will be included. Accompanying the previously unpublished images and memorabilia is a compelling biographical narrative by New York Times-bestselling author Charles R. Cross.