Love Stinks

Long day yesterday. Plopped down last night in front of the TV to eat my meager dinner. As I’m munching edamame (don’t ask, wife is out of town) I here the tell-tale guitar line from Nirvana’s Breed. My ears perk up like Scooby-Doo’s when Fred says “pizza.” I started listening to Nirvana the summer of 1991…the one just before my freshman year at Purdue. Later, in the fall Nevermind busted through the charts with the rest of the Seattle scene in hot pursuit. Anyways, I’ve always really dug them. But tonight was a different story. To my horror, the song was being used to hawk 2K Sports’ new baseball game MLB 2K7.

I’m no longer a baseball fan. That train left the station years ago when the Dodgers traded Piazza and with the advent of the disgrace that is inter-league play. But that’s not the point. Nirvana songs are something special. Not the most musical of the era, nor the most poetic, but they stood apart from everything else.

When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, Courtney Love inherited the majority of the bands publishing rights…the majority being 98%. That in itself blows my mind that Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic had only A PORTION of the remaining 2% to divvy up between themselves. In 2006 Cobain passed Elvis as the highest grossing dead celebrity…that’s how lucrative Nirvana’s catalog was. With this in mind, Courtney sold a 25% share of it in early 2006. Rolling Stone reported in an article that that figure was “in excess of 50 million dollars.” I guess she needed some new shoes.

Love said in support of her actions, “My goal is to keep the music very true to who the songwriter was and what his passions and tastes would be.” I’m pretty fucking sure that Cobain didn’t plan on having his music used to hawk video games. If someone had the foresight to install a tachometer in his coffin, it would show him spinning at redline. Breed’s opening lyric is “I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, care, care if I'm sold.” I’m not sure this is what Kurt was thinking about when he wrote that.

Twenty years ago Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson) bought most of the Beatles musical catalog from Yoko Ono. He then sold the rights for the song Revolution to Nike. They then used it to push tennis shoes made in Philippine sweat-shops (those little nimble fingers). When Paul McCartney was asked how he felt about that, Sir Paul…always the gentleman…replied something along the lines of “I would have rather that not happened.” Don’t quote me on that, it was a long time ago.

I’m pretty sure Grohl would have some stronger words if anyone bothers to ask him. Me? I’d like to give Courtney a nice, swift kick in her baby-maker.