There are few things more fraught for a writer or artist than approach­ing a sub­ject that has already passed into pop­u­lar leg­end and myth. This is sure­ly the case with Kurt Cobain, who—deservedly or not—attained a sta­tus as cul­tur­al icon unsur­passed by any mem­ber of his gen­er­a­tion. Cobain com­mit­ted sui­cide an almost unbe­liev­able twen­ty years ago today, and some recent approach­es to his mem­o­ry have been, well, awk­ward to say the least. First, there is the ama­teur­ish com­mem­o­ra­tive stat­ue in Cobain’s home­town of Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton. Var­i­ous­ly described as “bizarre,” “hideous,” and resem­bling a “cry­ing wino,” the mawk­ish statue’s exis­tence is made even more pathet­ic by the fact that Cobain’s home­town didn’t care much for him in life, and the feel­ing was mutu­al. Now Aberdeen wants to cash in, declar­ing a “Kurt Cobain Day.” Aberdeen May­or Bill Simp­son hopes the stat­ue will become “just as big as Grace­land, even­tu­al­ly.” Cobain had a mor­bid sense of humor, but I doubt know­ing he’d be turned into a kitschy tourist des­ti­na­tion would have light­ened the despair of his last days.

As exhib­it B, I offer the media’s cultish fas­ci­na­tion with new­ly-released police pho­tos of Cobain’s death scene. The cov­er­age prompt­ed a CNN arti­cle with what Dead­spin spin-off The Con­course called “The Worst Kurt Cobain Lede Ever” (they go on to mock said lede mer­ci­less­ly, and deserved­ly). Atro­cious though such cov­er­age may be, there’s good rea­son beyond nos­tal­gia, hero-wor­ship, or sick fas­ci­na­tion to revis­it Cobain’s lega­cy. On April 10, Michael Stipe will induct Nir­vana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for­mal­ly enshrin­ing the once scruffy out­siders in the hal­lowed com­pa­ny of ulti­mate rock insid­er-dom. This ges­ture might make some peo­ple (maybe it’s just me) feel a lit­tle con­flict­ed. After all, wasn’t it pre­cise­ly the grandiose, pop­u­lar-kid cul­ture of halls of fame that drove Cobain to the mar­gins, where he did his best work, and ulti­mate­ly drove him to hate what he’d become—a star? In his strange sui­cide note, we see Cobain beat­ing him­self up for being unable to live up to the hype—unable, as he put it, to be a “Fred­dy Mer­cury” and “rel­ish in the love and ado­ra­tion from the crowd.” There’s some­thing, per­haps, almost trag­i­cal­ly insen­si­tive, how­ev­er well-inten­tioned, in posthu­mous­ly turn­ing Kurt Cobain into Elvis.

One might con­sid­er such things while watch­ing the 2006 BBC doc­u­men­tary above, The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain. In con­trast to the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of most Cobain-relat­ed media, its tone is dry and unaf­fect­ed as it can­vass­es the reluc­tant rock star’s life and death, inter­view­ing fel­low rock stars, band mem­bers, and jour­nal­ists, as well as reg­u­lar Joes and Janes who knew and inter­act­ed with him dur­ing his trou­bled youth in Aberdeen. Much more than its title sug­gests, the hour and twen­ty minute doc works well as a biog­ra­phy of Cobain and a brief his­to­ry of Nir­vana and the Seat­tle scene that birthed them. An Aus­tralian mag­a­zine accu­rate­ly describes the film thus:

The doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views with Nir­vana band mem­bers, friends, and wit­ness­es of his where­abouts dur­ing that dread­ful week. The DVD also focus­es on his incred­i­ble tal­ents, show­ing the mak­ing of the track Drain You, excerpts from Smells Like Teen Spir­it, In Bloom, Come As You Are and more. Also fea­tured is the sto­ry behind the con­tro­ver­sial Nev­er­mind cov­er and an inter­view with the star. 

Opin­ion on the film’s qual­i­ty is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, strong­ly divid­ed among Nir­vana fans on Youtube. But as you sure­ly know, with all such wide­ly sen­sa­tion­al­ized sub­jects on the inter­net, it’s gen­er­al­ly best if you don’t read the com­ments.

You can find The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Last month, De La Soul cel­e­brat­ed the 25th anniver­sary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Ris­ing by let­ting fans down­load near­ly their entire back cat­a­log of albums for free.

This month, the hip hop trio is giv­ing away new music — their mix­tape “Smell the Da.I.S.Y.,” which fea­tures their col­lab­o­ra­tions with the late-great hip hop artist,  J Dil­la.

Hap­py down­load­ing.…

You may nev­er have heard of “Dylanol­o­gy” before, but rest assured that the field cov­ers the intel­lec­tu­al ter­ri­to­ry you sus­pect it does. Even if you have heard of Dylanol­o­gy, you may nev­er have heard of A.J. Weber­man, the man who holds rea­son­able claim to hav­ing fathered the dis­ci­pline. In John Reil­ly’s musi­cal­ly bio­graph­i­cal 1969 short film above, The Bal­lad of A.J. Weber­man, we wit­ness the tit­u­lar Bob Dylan obses­sive engag­ing in one of his many research meth­ods: in this case, the also neol­o­gism-anoint­ed pur­suit of gar­bol­o­gy. This “sci­ence” has Weber­man go through Dylan’s trash “in order to gath­er scraps of evi­dence to sup­port his the­o­ries,” says the dili­gent fan’s entry in the web’s Bob Dylan Who’s Who. These the­o­ries include, accord­ing to Rolling Stone’s Marc Jacob­son, the notion that “Dylan, the most angel-head­ed head of the gen­er­a­tion, had fall­en prey to a Manchuri­an Can­di­date-style gov­ern­ment plot to hook him up to sen­si­bil­i­ty-dead­en­ing hard dope.”

The page also men­tions that “after three years of self-pub­lic­i­ty” as the “world’s lead­ing Dyla­nol­o­gist,” Weber­man “final­ly met Dylan in 1971.” But much of his noto­ri­ety comes not just from hav­ing met Dylan in the flesh, not just from habit­u­al­ly dig­ging through Dylan’s garbage, and not just (or so he claims) hav­ing tak­en a right­ful beat­ing at the hands of Dylan, but from hav­ing con­versed with Dylan, can­did­ly and at length, over the tele­phone. These chats even­tu­al­ly emerged on vinyl as the album Robert Zim­mer­man vs. A.J. Weber­man, and you can hear the whole thing at Ubuweb, or below:

Intro­duc­tion

Jan­u­ary 6, 1971

Jan­u­ary 9, 1971

“The con­ver­sa­tions were record­ed in Jan­u­ary, 1971, in the weeks fol­low­ing a demon­stra­tion out­side Bob’s NYC apart­ment orga­nized by Weber­man [ … ] a mis­guid­ed 60’s rad­i­cal who felt (cor­rect­ly enough) that by the ear­ly 70’s, rock music had ceased to be a force for rad­i­cal polit­i­cal upheaval in the U.S. and had been co-opt­ed by the estab­lish­ment,” writes one con­trib­u­tor to the Dylan Who’s Who. “Like any of Bob’s songs, they must be heard to be tru­ly under­stood.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Final­ly Makes a Video for His 1965 Hit, “Like a Rolling Stone”

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Hear the Nev­er-Before-Released Bob Dylan Song “Pret­ty Saro” (1970)

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

This spring, one of the best-pre­served Strads in exis­tence will go up for auc­tion at Sotheby’s. Built some time between 1700 and 1720, dur­ing the very best peri­od of Stradivari’s work, the vio­la is a real rar­i­ty, one of only ten in exis­tence. Maybe that jus­ti­fies the start­ing price of $45 mil­lion. What does that prized strad actu­al­ly sound like, you might won­der? Filmed by The New York Times, the clip above fea­tures David Aaron Car­pen­ter (called “The Hottest Vio­list of the 21st Cen­tu­ry”) play­ing Suite No. 3 in C by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. If you’re a vio­la afi­ciona­do, we would be curi­ous to get your take on what you hear.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

A Stringed Salute to AC/DC and Guns N’ Ros­es