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Kurt Cobain was a musician who (by his own admission) could only just manage to play the guitar and sing at the same time, who was emotionally unequipped to deal with fame and stardom, and who therefore paid the ultimate price by killing himself, alone, using a shotgun.

I wouldn’t normally mention the anniversary of the death of a rock star, but, Mat, who sits next to me in University happens to run a Nirvana website. It’s something he set up when he was a kid and wanted to play on the web, and because he’s not changed it over the last 9 years (bar the odd kick to keep it standards compliant) it’s become a bit of a famous resource for Nirvana fans everywhere.

Nirvana have two apparent faces - their breakthrough album, Nevermind, has enough noise and anger to satisfy the most ardent mosh; whilst their last studio album, In Utero, with it’s more melodic tracks, showed that when Cobain wrote honestly, his vocal phrasing and composition somehow stripped his soul naked and left him vulnerable, something which gets picked up on by post-Nirvana fans. Since Cobain’s death, their music appears to get adopted by those with an angst surplus; those yearning to show their individuality, but still not fully comforable with (or perhaps capable of) the kind of exposing self expression that Cobain managed.

It won’t change your life, but if you have five minutes to kill I recommend perusing the guestbook to witness the over emotional, under poetic and badly phrased ramblings of kids who were too young to listen to Nirvana when Kurt jellified his brain with a single shotgun cartridge. It’s kinda sweet, and if you were young and dug Nirvana first time around you may see something of yourself.