Kurt (2)

Course, I don't know music the way I know poetry. The bands I'm thinking of are all signed to mainstream record labels, so there's going to be an element of watering down in their work, of some smart-arse at the label or some coke-addled producer influencing the band to go in a particular direction, so they can guarantee sales that will ensure nice profits over and above recording costs and everybody's fat salaries. It happened with Nirvana too: by all accounts their album "In Utero" was vastly better before it was finished (why did Kurt agree to detrimental changes if he was so hardcore? on the documentary they said he "gave up", which given the passive nature of the man and the heroin habit that drove him has some credibility.) I know of fifty men and women who are creating great poetry today in almost complete obscurity; and maybe ten among them whom, with the perspective of time, we'll realise were as good as anything that has been thrown up since Ginsberg finished writing "Kaddish". So it's probably not any different with music. I just don't know the bands because I'm too busy chasing after obscurity in the literary world.