Sean Nelson's "Dead Man Talking" Featured in Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2008

A nice little piece of news.  Sean Nelson (who writes about film and music for Seattle's The Stranger when he's not touring with Harvey Danger or starring in indie films like Lynn Shelton's MY EFFORTLESS BRILLIANCE) has a contribution in the always excellent compilation Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2008, and it happens to be his review of our KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON.

It's a lovely, lengthy piece of writing, which we'd think even if it had nothing to do with us.  Some excerpts:

"The fact that this footage is shot in the present day instead of archival adds a layer of meaning that might not register so much outside the Northwest—which is fine; if it's about place, let it be about place. Seeing the familiar sights—there's Neumo's, there's the library, there's a lot of new condos—under Cobain's soliloquies is a powerful reminder that he's both a building block of the contemporary psychic (and physical) architecture of the region, particularly Seattle, and also in danger of being forgotten—not as a face or a voice, obviously, but as an exponent of a certain regional character. When Cobain was alive, the desire to escape your small town, make a name for yourself, make some music, and make some money presented a genuine dilemma for people schooled in what Cobain (sounding a bit like Courtney Love) disdainfully calls "the bohemian theory of musical revolution."

By the time the film's interviews took place, Nirvana was a global phenomenon and its frontman had had to reconcile himself to being thought of as a hypocrite by the devotees of this theory, whose spiritual center, not for nothing, was Olympia, the very town whose "taste of culture" made him get real about his music. Though he sounds convinced that the bohemian theory was full of holes, there can be no question that the man with a K Records tattoo on his arm was tortured by it while he lived. Surely, Nirvana was the first band for whom the appropriate way to demonstrate true appreciation was to not wear the T-shirt.The then-prevailing idea that being punk meant being real, and being real meant rejecting fame, money, and attention—that barely exists anymore, except as a marginal objection or a quiet personal choice. Even the notion that there's such a thing as selling out is largely obsolete today, partly because of Nirvana's success. In 1992, that notion was central to music culture in the Northwest (and plenty of other places), even as bands vied to swim in Nirvana's wake. If Cobain is a martyr to anything, it's not rock 'n' roll, it's that brutal ideology, which, like all ideologies, was utopian, and therefore built to fail. The film never says any of this, but the thwarted anger in Cobain's voice, and the scenes of a changed Seattle (including Sub Pop's well-appointed new offices) make it impossible not to consider.

(...)

And while it's probably true that he wouldn't have liked the film—too indulgent, too whiny, too many shots of Aberdeen—one can at least imagine that Cobain would've appreciated the opportunity to speak for himself, without the constant interpretation that he so despairingly resisted when he was alive. This is probably the ultimate reason that About a Son is the only way to do a film about Kurt Cobain, who was, for all important reasons, the last rock star: There's no thesis, no exegesis, no attempts to put him in a frame he didn't choose. It's just: Here he is, his words, his version—unfiltered, unmitigated, unmagnified even by his own blinding beauty. And for those of us who really did hang on his every word when he was alive, getting frustrated along with him at the way no one seemed to like him for the right reasons, the film's mandate to humanize a musician who has been handed down to history as a glowering 2-D icon is a welcome innovation.

But that still doesn't make it easy to watch, even all these years later."