Why 90s rock? And FREE LESSON!!!

Nirvana & Seattle Grunge

Hello again…

Thank you to those who took my last poll on which S2C lesson to add next to my rock of the 90s series. It looked like Nirvana, and the Seattle grunge scene were in the lead but at the close of the poll it was a tie with the mysterious death of Kurt Cobain. I made the executive decision to go with a little Nirvana back story before diving into the dark depths of conspiracy theories, so today’s free lesson is the former, see below.

I mentioned in my last post that I would revisit the question, “Why a rock of the 90s lesson series?”

Well, there’s a few answers to that question, so I’ll start with the first.

I graduated from high school in 1991. On New Year’s Eve of that year, I attended one of my first concerts (without my parents) completely by accident. My closest friend at the time had an older brother who won tickets to a show over the radio. He was strictly hip hop, and this being a rock show, he gave the tickets to his sister. I ended up being the plus one to see a sold-out performance with Red-Hot Chili Peppers as the headliners. The openers were… wait for it… Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Rumor had it Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix were backstage. How’s that for a piece of 90s pop culture history?

I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you for being jealous but little thanks to a cheap bottle of Cook’s champagne, I remember far less of the concert than I would have liked.

I was a big Chili Peppers fan (still am) and I liked Pearl Jam too but was less familiar with Nirvana.

But when I heard that aggressive F5 chord, reverberate through the sea of partially clothed sweaty young moshers, it caught my attention. Through blurry eyes, I spotted a magenta haired Kurt Cobain wearing a babydoll dress, as he masculinely thrashed his guitar on stage. In that moment, I fell in love with grunge. What else was an 18-year-old girl to do?

Anyway, (or shall I say… oh well whatever never mind…) for this reason among others I decided to set my young adult novel series, The Michael Chronicles in the 1990s.

But in the interest of keeping this brief, I’ll talk more about that in the next post, once I’ve completed the lesson on the mysterious death of our magenta haired hero.

Happy Spelling!