By Robert Duncan
Like it or not, this is about context. I mean, you could attempt to be cold and professional. Do a consumer guide: These tunes don't hold up to their plugged counterparts (except maybe "All Apologies"). The covers are unexpected, but underdone. And somehow the video is better, at least, the first time. Strictly for wimps or, ahem, diehard fans. Otherwise, don't bother.
And it might be true. In another context.
You could be tough love about it. Plunge into the whole suicide thing and say as many did, as his wife did, that anyone who kills himself is an asshole, a chicken, a complete loser. You could even bring up Frances Bean. What a bastard.
And that might be true. In another context.
On the other hand, you could admire his courage. You could say that in songs like "Pennyroyal Tea" Nirvana offers the aural equivalent of open heart surgery. An unobstructed view of a tormented soul in every catch and caterwaul.
You could be purely personal. Shed a tear for one who really speaks to you and never before so intimately.
You could hold him up as a generational hero, the avatar of the new pop revolution, who here reaches back - in both form and substance - to reveal his kinship with pop revolutions past; from Leadbelly (whom he describes as "his favorite performer") to Bowie. And who, in effect, bids to become a generational hero.
You could rank on them for selling out to MTV. And give him shit for the banter, for name-dropping David Geffen, and for sounding - when taken out of context - perhaps perilously close to the kind of rich rock star he makes fun of.
You could even praise them for not worrying about all the assholes who were sure to rank on them for going on MTV.
Then again, you could be cynical. If not about Kurt or the band, then about the surrounding industry, and about fans like us. Shotgun as ultimate career launcher. And this little package as just the beginning of a never-ending splatter-movie of contrived product.
And all of it would be true. In other contexts. And you're tempted to say that, when the memory is no longer fresh, future pop pundits will be better able to judge, better able to assess Cobain's pitifully sparse oeuvre outside of the portentous context. But, in fact, future pundits will have to plow through ever greater accretions of myth, the inevitable pop pentimento. And, as sure as pop past is pop prologue, they're not going to be willing or able to scrape through.
Instead, some future Oliver Stone will make a movie of it. Grungemania.
So it's too bad that this is inescapably about context. And you want to take points off the Cobain legacy for imposing it on us, and on himself. But there it is, real as rot. And while Nirvana Unplugged is not in any context a masterpiece, it is part of the proof of one who raised his voice to speak truth. And in that context it is rare and precious and enduring, if not quite as enduring as the silence that has followed.