Introduction:

"This blog is not necessarily for lovers of art, it includes a variety of topics and whatever. I'm a painter who likes to know what's really going on in the world today. So you might find anything from Shamrocks to Salmiakki mentioned here on my blog. There will of course be some boring, factual and informational posts, but I'll keep them to a minimum, I promise!

And I might get a bit nostalgic now and then.

So you have been warned!"


- Alan Hogan



Friday, February 20, 2015

Top Hat In Bloom (updated repost)





Kurt Cobain
(February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994)



If he were alive today he would be celebrating his 48rd birthday. Unfortunately on April 8, 1994 Kurt Cobain was found dead after committing suicide by shooting himself at his home in Seattle. While not a huge fan of the singer and his band Nirvana, I did enjoy their sound and I witnessed the impact it had on a lot of people, mostly those of my younger brother's generation in the early nineties.




Kurt Cobain and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth

Dublin, 1991










One concert I recall hearing about while living back in Ireland was their support gig to Sonic Youth at the 'Top Hat' venue in Dublin on 21 August 1991. I recall this gig as I was more a fan of Sonic Youth at the time, and it was a concert I really wanted to be at, but I just couldn't get a ticket. This concert at the Top Hat was held just one month before Kurt Cobain's band Nirvana released their biggest album called Nevermind and it was the first time Irish fans got to hear their biggest ever hit Smells Like Teen Spirit. That moment must have been really special I reckon.




Here's an advert for that concert which I kept from a magazine at the time. (looks like the magazine printed the wrong date!)















Nirvana played support to Sonic Youth at a gig the previous night in Sir Henry's Pub, Cork before heading to Dublin.  

Here's an audio clip of their song 'About a Girl' from that gig.






It is known that Kurt Cobain felt a spiritual connection with the city of Cork while he was there. He researched his family name and concluded that it may have originated from this area of Ireland. It is without doubt that Cobain and his music was and remains much admired in Ireland, and I imagine that he will be remembered once again by Irish fans when fellow Nirvana band member Dave Grohl returns to Ireland in 2015 with his own equally good band the Foo Fighters to play at the mighty Slane Castle. That promises to be something special I reckon.  
Kurt Cobain can be heard in this interview below with rock journalist Jon Savage on July 22, 1993 talking about such ancestoral notions and other issues such as his parents' divorce and the impact of other bands on his music. The video is wonderfully animated by the people at Blank on Blank, (Cobain was found dead in April 1994)



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