And Now A Message From Kurt Cobain

Today is the 19th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide (his body lay undiscovered until April 8th). I sometimes wonder what Kurt would be like today as a man of 46. What would he think about the world of pop culture, and specifically music? I suspect that a lot of the things that left him deeply dissatisfied in 1994 would  be unchanged in 2013. 

When Nirvana hit it big Kurt had a hard time dealing with the changing face of his fanbase. All of a sudden the jocks who had harrassed him in high school were now moshing at shows. By 1999, with the disastrous Woodstock II, those bros had taken over. I'm sort of glad he didn't see that shit show.

Anyway, in 1992 Nirvana released Incesticide, a collection of B-sides and live tracks, and Kurt wrote liner notes for the album. In them he talked about the incredible year the  band had experienced - Nevermind had come out just a year earlier - and all the things for which he was greatful. But at the end of the note, he cme around to something that had been bothering him.

Last year a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song "Polly." I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience. Sorry to be so anally P.C. but that's the way I feel. 

He made a direct plea to those people in his audience, and it's something that I want to repeat here, because I believe it applies to this community too. In the last couple of days I've seen some comments that disturbed me and saddened me, especially on topics of rape and feminism. So I'm going to claim these words as a rallying cry for Badass Digest as well (change the stuff about 'coming to shows' to 'commenting on our articles,' I guess):
 

"If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us-leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records."