7 ms·

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

105 points by wallflower 4y ago

hardwaregeek 4y ago
There’s something very poignant about a father facing messages to his child, trying to communicate and stay in touch, trying to bridge the cultural and generational gap.
- pstuart 4y ago
  Indeed. And distance itself is but a small part -- the gulf of age and hierarchy overshadows that. I envy the author's relationship with his father, and I empathize with the father's relationship with his son.
forgotmypw17 4y ago
https://archive.ph/MXdPg https://archive.ph/MXdPg
BigHatLogan 4y ago
Nice read. Quite touching that his father genuinely tried making a connection to his son, despite the distance, both culturally and physically. I subscribed to the New Yorker recently, and I have to say that it's been nice reading more long-form content that has an ending. There are just a few stories everyday, and every week there's a new issue to read through. And of course the decades-long backlog of stories, profiles, and journalism to go through.
- fassssst 4y ago
  Yea I love getting the actual paper magazine too, nice not having to stare at a screen.
  - philshem 4y ago
    When my paper issue comes, I go straight to the table of contents to see what’s in store for the week. Like a kid in a candy store.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  My favorites are the New Yorker and Harper's. I read both at the local library to save money (I like reading paper copies) https://harpers.org/ https://harpers.org/
- sologoub 4y ago
  This was an entertaining read, until it struck so many cords on immigrant life and kind of became surreally relatable. On the publications, I recently re-subscribed to WSJ after a long time (grad school was the last time I read it regularly). Don’t know if it’s the awful app hiding good content, but I can’t seem to find anything even remotely worth keeping the subscription at full price next year…
trevcanhuman 4y ago
I don't know what to say - yet. I felt this human's story. Touching indeed. But I feel like this was something that HN wouldn't have liked. This was a nice essay but I'm still unsure how it got to the front page. (( Please comment, why did you upvote ? )) I honestly expected some kind of connection with the title and the story. But there really wasn't. Okay, yeah they talked about Cobain's death, life but did it actually have anything to do with his dad ? On another note, I feel the writer. Not having a purpose, that's how I feel right now. One could say that I became slightly HN-popular. Even got several internship offers and I worked for two and a half months. But I barely felt like any of the work I was doing actually served a purpose. I feel lost, this was a good perspective on life stories. But is this just entertainment or do I get any value from it ? Is this just like Netflix and Prime movies and shows that are so far from my own reality that I'm absorbed into it and I feel like I become a part of it and I aspire to some of their values. I also like writing, I feel like software engineering programming as a job isn't for me. edit: spelling.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  If you are asking “what is the meaning of life?”, you’re asking the wrong question (not my quote)
  - trevcanhuman 4y ago
    I somewhat am. I originally wrote this something to look for something that probably isn't on HN. Yes, it is partly the meaning of life. But as I've struggled thru my mid-teens life crisis I never really consider to be 'out' of it. I still constantly struggle to get meaning out of anything. Even school work, assignments, etc. I think to some degree, thinking is driving me nuts. But I didn't mean to say that I did not derive any value from it (as another comment said near here) but that I really did not understand if this was intellectually interesting. It was a nice story, it did get a good development which I enjoyed but I feel like this is just as entertainment, right? I know I digressed, I apologize.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Funny you mention the title, I was also expecting something more along the lines of "My Dad and Charles Barkley" (https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-barkley https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-b...). But it was still a really good read.
bcx 4y ago
I agree. This is poignant indeed. In general over time communication has become far lower cost and more ephemeral. The richness of the faxes back and forth, or handwritten letters from even earlier eras - in contrast with your average SMS message is interesting to think about. Faxes and paper letter existed on paper. How many of us expect to be able to find emails or SMSes from 40-50 years ago? If we could only write one SMS/txt to a person a day, and they responded in 24 hours -- how would that shape our conversations? Does any one expect to be able to get anything out of FB 30 years from now :) ? So much to think about.
- chasil 4y ago
  I had my own domain for many years, hosted on an OpenBSD server in my basement. I've kept all of that on a ZFS volume, and one day when I'm retired, I will open them and read the thoughts of my younger self, and try to remember names I've long forgotten, many of whom are likely long gone. From time to time, I've needed that archive for specific knowledge, but with a clear schedule I will reminisce its breadth.
- eggnet 4y ago
  Liked your comment. The bit about Facebook, I don’t expect anything out of it today let alone in 30 years.
michaelwww 4y ago
The hook for me in "Smells Like Team Spirit" beside the musical goodness were the lines Here we are now Entertain us! It's a primal scream asking "Why was I born? For this crappy life?" Kobain studied philosophy casually as a working class boy like me, so I'm sure he came across Schopenhauer's idea that since life is suffering, it's better not to be born at all. Someone had the same idea before me: There's a naked baby boy swimming in a pool like the cover of the most famous Nirvana album in the upper right of this article: Is living really better than never being born at all? https://bigthink.com/thinking/anit-natalism-david-benatar-sam-harris-waking-up/ https://bigthink.com/thinking/anit-natalism-david-benatar-sa...
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Two anecdotes that you likely already know: Teen Spirit was a deodorant and his friend Kathleen had written “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on the wall. Kurt misunderstood the reference. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit The swimming baby recently sued for the use of his image (and lost). https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/arts/music/nirvana-nevermind-baby-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/arts/music/nirvana-neverm...
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    Yea, I've heard that. I've been to Kurt Cobain park by the river twice and sat under the bridge where Kurt composed Something In The Way. Aberdeen Washington is one of the most depressing towns in the North West because it's was a lumber town with an air of desperation about it. I passed through a couple times and they didn't even a memorial for Kurt for a long time. Now they begrudgingly have a shitty park by the river, which seems fitting. Underneath the bridge Tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets And I'm living off of grass And the drippings from my ceiling It's okay to eat fish Cause they don't have any feelings Nirvana - Something In The Way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gMfdfRRnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gMfdfRRnA Here's a few pictures: https://imgur.com/a/xL0xlB0 https://imgur.com/a/xL0xlB0 https://imgur.com/a/X5OFp5e https://imgur.com/a/X5OFp5e https://imgur.com/a/SRdBtXC https://imgur.com/a/SRdBtXC Cobain made a lot more sense after spending time at the park in Aberdeen
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Maursault 4y ago
With Nevermind, Nirvana hit sort of a nexus in the annals of Rock n' Roll history. What I know is all based on rumor, speculation and conjecture, but I will tell you. The story really begins with Motley Crue wasting a million dollars of their record label's money and not really having a viable product to show for it. Major labels were fed up with rock star behavior, and things were about to change. SubPop was really central to the Seattle grunge scene. I don't honestly know for certain, but I suspect SubPop was a small operation that helped their members promote their own recordings. It is absolutely normal today and how most labels operate, but back in the 1980's, only the major record labels released national records, and unless a band was signed to a major label, they probably could not afford to record in a professional studio, have their tracks professionally mixed and mastered, and certainly not afford to market the product nationally or get shelf space in record stores. So SubPop would (my conjecture btw) take the recordings made by the bands, which traditionally were only considered demos, and just release them as is as the national product. It saved bundles of money, and SubPop, being small, didn't have the resources to front their members studio time anyway. I am nearly certain Mudhoney's first record was probably self-made, and SubPop helped them market their amateur recording --they were already professional musicians by 1985, i.e. they got paid to perform, but IMO none of the early Grunge records, such as Nirvana's Bleach, sound professionally engineered... they're amateur only in the sense that a national quality producer and engineer and studio probably wasn't involved, but probably recorded in the proverbial garage, except actually at a "pro" studio, in the sense that was a studio, and it cost them something, maybe $15-$30/hour, as opposed to $800/hour, or whatever places like Abbey Road Studios charge. Motley Crue's infamous failure and this idea that SubPop came up with of releasing demo quality records as national product, changed everything. Bands signed to major label no longer were given any money for signing. A lucky artist that made it to the majors would be loaned enough money by the label to record a professional demo (kind of a oxymoron). It was pro quality, but only a few tracks. If the label thought it was any good, they might release it as an EP, or loan the band money to go on tour and promote themselves. But the bands now had to pay the labels back. SubPop also cleverly shopped their members' product to the big labels. They sold Mudhunny to Reprise, and they sold Nirvana to Geffen. But I believe Nirvana was the first to seriously rain mountains of money, so to speak, and I think it was incidental that it was Nirvana. What is important about Nevermind is the production. It is not amateur, like all the other Grunge records of the era, and it was like nothing ever heard before at the national level, either. Butch Vig, who had already produced a few successful Sonic Youth records, and later of Garbage, had pioneered a novel production style that I have never heard duplicated by anyone but Butch Vig, specifically, Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream. If you compare the production of these two records, they are identical in class. That's what Butch Vig and what was once Smart Studios (closed) sounds like, that slick, liquidy sort of sound. Nirvana doesn't sound like that, and Nevermind stands out as an atypical record among their discography, and Cobain was very critical of it because it was too polished and too Popy. It is also the only record of Nirvana's that Vig produced. And I believe it was a certified "gold record" within two months of its release, which is, of course, very very good and not at all easy to do. All anyone thinks about is the artist, but national releases have little to do with the artist. It's about money, it's about having product that can be widely sold, and that depends a lot on marketing, but it especially depends on having a national quality product. Case in point is Weezer's Blue Album, which has similarly fast gold and platinum status (which is based on sales btw, 500K for gold, 1M for platinum in the US). Their second record, Pinkerton, after a decade still had only sold like 200K copies. Why the poor performance? It is theorized that it is because Pinkerton was produced by an amateur, namely, Rivers Cuomo, who is a professional musician. If he ever did, by the time he personally mixed Pinkerton, he didn't have national quality engineering skills, and the record was of poor production quality. The tracked sounds are still of sufficiently high enough fidelity, it just wasn't produced and mixed by a professional, national quality engineer. Why would it matter? Mudhunny's amateur demos were sold and distributed nationally. Maybe it's because Weezer isn't grunge, or from Seattle? Who knows. Thankfully, Weezer's subsequent records were professionally produced and financially performed very well compared to Pinkerton. And Nirvana did the same thing with Nevermind and subsequent records. Bleach wasn't as popular. Similarly, if you look at any early 90's lofi act, such as Flaming Lips or Superchunk, you'll notice that as they became more successful, and had the money to afford to properly record their records, each subsequent record became higher and higher fidelity until it doesn't really make sense to refer to them as lofi acts anymore. Though the music didn't really change, the genre changed from "LoFi" to "Indy." And Grunge is not really Punk, but it depends how you define Punk. If punk is a fashion statement and political, then maybe. But Punk has a musical form, and it is really the same as that of Polka. If you can't square dance to it, if the signature is not 4/4, then it probably isn't legitimately Punk. Grunge didn't necessarily have that form, and what Nirvana released was a reaction to and departure from Punk with unique chord structures never heard in Punk, and not always 4/4 signature (such as "If You Must," and "Beeswax"). Anyway, SubPop (not Apple with iTunes Store and iPod, which fed off the trend to great success) is the reason every new artist for the last 30 years tries to self-release or own their own label. Last band I am aware of that went from unsigned straight to major label record deal was Dave Matthews Band, but only because they had their own distribution list of something like 100K names and addresses and were already touring nationally on their own independent label. They already had a proven national product with their self-funded tours, so RCA was probably throwing money at them to get them to sign, almost like the old days of big acts in the 1950s through the 1980s.
daydream 4y ago
A great story and really happy to see Hua Hsu’s name and writing again. I always enjoyed his music writing in the 2000’s, mainly about rap and hip-hop. Cool to see this pop up here.
Eleison23 4y ago
One time in the mid-90s I was driving the family's Nissan Stanza wagon and my father was in the passenger seat. The radio was tuned to my favorite alternative rock station. We were stopped at a red light and my father stabbed the POWER button on the radio to shut it off. I was surprised and mystified and I asked him why he'd done that. He said that the singer was going "rape me... rape me..." which was probably Cobain's Nirvana at the time. I was still surprised because I hadn't been paying a bit of attention to the lyrics. My father has always been a good boundary enforcer, and I'm thankful that he notices that kind of thing, even when I haven't.
jon_adler 4y ago
An enjoyable read that reminded me of another recent article about an Asian American: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049672 https://longreads.com/2022/06/16/love-song-to-costco/ https://longreads.com/2022/06/16/love-song-to-costco/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

105 points by wallflower 4y ago

There’s something very poignant about a father facing messages to his child, trying to communicate and stay in touch, trying to bridge the cultural and generational gap.

pstuart 4y ago
Indeed. And distance itself is but a small part -- the gulf of age and hierarchy overshadows that. I envy the author's relationship with his father, and I empathize with the father's relationship with his son.

forgotmypw17 4y ago

https://archive.ph/MXdPg https://archive.ph/MXdPg

BigHatLogan 4y ago

Nice read. Quite touching that his father genuinely tried making a connection to his son, despite the distance, both culturally and physically. I subscribed to the New Yorker recently, and I have to say that it's been nice reading more long-form content that has an ending. There are just a few stories everyday, and every week there's a new issue to read through. And of course the decades-long backlog of stories, profiles, and journalism to go through.

fassssst 4y ago
Yea I love getting the actual paper magazine too, nice not having to stare at a screen.
- philshem 4y ago
  When my paper issue comes, I go straight to the table of contents to see what’s in store for the week. Like a kid in a candy store.
michaelwww 4y ago
My favorites are the New Yorker and Harper's. I read both at the local library to save money (I like reading paper copies) https://harpers.org/ https://harpers.org/
sologoub 4y ago
This was an entertaining read, until it struck so many cords on immigrant life and kind of became surreally relatable. On the publications, I recently re-subscribed to WSJ after a long time (grad school was the last time I read it regularly). Don’t know if it’s the awful app hiding good content, but I can’t seem to find anything even remotely worth keeping the subscription at full price next year…

trevcanhuman 4y ago

I don't know what to say - yet. I felt this human's story. Touching indeed. But I feel like this was something that HN wouldn't have liked. This was a nice essay but I'm still unsure how it got to the front page. (( Please comment, why did you upvote ? )) I honestly expected some kind of connection with the title and the story. But there really wasn't. Okay, yeah they talked about Cobain's death, life but did it actually have anything to do with his dad ? On another note, I feel the writer. Not having a purpose, that's how I feel right now. One could say that I became slightly HN-popular. Even got several internship offers and I worked for two and a half months. But I barely felt like any of the work I was doing actually served a purpose. I feel lost, this was a good perspective on life stories. But is this just entertainment or do I get any value from it ? Is this just like Netflix and Prime movies and shows that are so far from my own reality that I'm absorbed into it and I feel like I become a part of it and I aspire to some of their values. I also like writing, I feel like software engineering programming as a job isn't for me. edit: spelling.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
If you are asking “what is the meaning of life?”, you’re asking the wrong question (not my quote)
- trevcanhuman 4y ago
  I somewhat am. I originally wrote this something to look for something that probably isn't on HN. Yes, it is partly the meaning of life. But as I've struggled thru my mid-teens life crisis I never really consider to be 'out' of it. I still constantly struggle to get meaning out of anything. Even school work, assignments, etc. I think to some degree, thinking is driving me nuts. But I didn't mean to say that I did not derive any value from it (as another comment said near here) but that I really did not understand if this was intellectually interesting. It was a nice story, it did get a good development which I enjoyed but I feel like this is just as entertainment, right? I know I digressed, I apologize.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Funny you mention the title, I was also expecting something more along the lines of "My Dad and Charles Barkley" (https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-barkley https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-b...). But it was still a really good read.

bcx 4y ago

I agree. This is poignant indeed. In general over time communication has become far lower cost and more ephemeral. The richness of the faxes back and forth, or handwritten letters from even earlier eras - in contrast with your average SMS message is interesting to think about. Faxes and paper letter existed on paper. How many of us expect to be able to find emails or SMSes from 40-50 years ago? If we could only write one SMS/txt to a person a day, and they responded in 24 hours -- how would that shape our conversations? Does any one expect to be able to get anything out of FB 30 years from now :) ? So much to think about.

chasil 4y ago
I had my own domain for many years, hosted on an OpenBSD server in my basement. I've kept all of that on a ZFS volume, and one day when I'm retired, I will open them and read the thoughts of my younger self, and try to remember names I've long forgotten, many of whom are likely long gone. From time to time, I've needed that archive for specific knowledge, but with a clear schedule I will reminisce its breadth.
eggnet 4y ago
Liked your comment. The bit about Facebook, I don’t expect anything out of it today let alone in 30 years.

michaelwww 4y ago

The hook for me in "Smells Like Team Spirit" beside the musical goodness were the lines Here we are now Entertain us! It's a primal scream asking "Why was I born? For this crappy life?" Kobain studied philosophy casually as a working class boy like me, so I'm sure he came across Schopenhauer's idea that since life is suffering, it's better not to be born at all. Someone had the same idea before me: There's a naked baby boy swimming in a pool like the cover of the most famous Nirvana album in the upper right of this article: Is living really better than never being born at all? https://bigthink.com/thinking/anit-natalism-david-benatar-sam-harris-waking-up/ https://bigthink.com/thinking/anit-natalism-david-benatar-sa...

lostlogin 4y ago
Two anecdotes that you likely already know: Teen Spirit was a deodorant and his friend Kathleen had written “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on the wall. Kurt misunderstood the reference. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit The swimming baby recently sued for the use of his image (and lost). https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/arts/music/nirvana-nevermind-baby-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/arts/music/nirvana-neverm...
- michaelwww 4y ago
  Yea, I've heard that. I've been to Kurt Cobain park by the river twice and sat under the bridge where Kurt composed Something In The Way. Aberdeen Washington is one of the most depressing towns in the North West because it's was a lumber town with an air of desperation about it. I passed through a couple times and they didn't even a memorial for Kurt for a long time. Now they begrudgingly have a shitty park by the river, which seems fitting. Underneath the bridge Tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets And I'm living off of grass And the drippings from my ceiling It's okay to eat fish Cause they don't have any feelings Nirvana - Something In The Way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gMfdfRRnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gMfdfRRnA Here's a few pictures: https://imgur.com/a/xL0xlB0 https://imgur.com/a/xL0xlB0 https://imgur.com/a/X5OFp5e https://imgur.com/a/X5OFp5e https://imgur.com/a/SRdBtXC https://imgur.com/a/SRdBtXC Cobain made a lot more sense after spending time at the park in Aberdeen

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Maursault 4y ago

With Nevermind, Nirvana hit sort of a nexus in the annals of Rock n' Roll history. What I know is all based on rumor, speculation and conjecture, but I will tell you. The story really begins with Motley Crue wasting a million dollars of their record label's money and not really having a viable product to show for it. Major labels were fed up with rock star behavior, and things were about to change. SubPop was really central to the Seattle grunge scene. I don't honestly know for certain, but I suspect SubPop was a small operation that helped their members promote their own recordings. It is absolutely normal today and how most labels operate, but back in the 1980's, only the major record labels released national records, and unless a band was signed to a major label, they probably could not afford to record in a professional studio, have their tracks professionally mixed and mastered, and certainly not afford to market the product nationally or get shelf space in record stores. So SubPop would (my conjecture btw) take the recordings made by the bands, which traditionally were only considered demos, and just release them as is as the national product. It saved bundles of money, and SubPop, being small, didn't have the resources to front their members studio time anyway. I am nearly certain Mudhoney's first record was probably self-made, and SubPop helped them market their amateur recording --they were already professional musicians by 1985, i.e. they got paid to perform, but IMO none of the early Grunge records, such as Nirvana's Bleach, sound professionally engineered... they're amateur only in the sense that a national quality producer and engineer and studio probably wasn't involved, but probably recorded in the proverbial garage, except actually at a "pro" studio, in the sense that was a studio, and it cost them something, maybe $15-$30/hour, as opposed to $800/hour, or whatever places like Abbey Road Studios charge. Motley Crue's infamous failure and this idea that SubPop came up with of releasing demo quality records as national product, changed everything. Bands signed to major label no longer were given any money for signing. A lucky artist that made it to the majors would be loaned enough money by the label to record a professional demo (kind of a oxymoron). It was pro quality, but only a few tracks. If the label thought it was any good, they might release it as an EP, or loan the band money to go on tour and promote themselves. But the bands now had to pay the labels back. SubPop also cleverly shopped their members' product to the big labels. They sold Mudhunny to Reprise, and they sold Nirvana to Geffen. But I believe Nirvana was the first to seriously rain mountains of money, so to speak, and I think it was incidental that it was Nirvana. What is important about Nevermind is the production. It is not amateur, like all the other Grunge records of the era, and it was like nothing ever heard before at the national level, either. Butch Vig, who had already produced a few successful Sonic Youth records, and later of Garbage, had pioneered a novel production style that I have never heard duplicated by anyone but Butch Vig, specifically, Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream. If you compare the production of these two records, they are identical in class. That's what Butch Vig and what was once Smart Studios (closed) sounds like, that slick, liquidy sort of sound. Nirvana doesn't sound like that, and Nevermind stands out as an atypical record among their discography, and Cobain was very critical of it because it was too polished and too Popy. It is also the only record of Nirvana's that Vig produced. And I believe it was a certified "gold record" within two months of its release, which is, of course, very very good and not at all easy to do. All anyone thinks about is the artist, but national releases have little to do with the artist. It's about money, it's about having product that can be widely sold, and that depends a lot on marketing, but it especially depends on having a national quality product. Case in point is Weezer's Blue Album, which has similarly fast gold and platinum status (which is based on sales btw, 500K for gold, 1M for platinum in the US). Their second record, Pinkerton, after a decade still had only sold like 200K copies. Why the poor performance? It is theorized that it is because Pinkerton was produced by an amateur, namely, Rivers Cuomo, who is a professional musician. If he ever did, by the time he personally mixed Pinkerton, he didn't have national quality engineering skills, and the record was of poor production quality. The tracked sounds are still of sufficiently high enough fidelity, it just wasn't produced and mixed by a professional, national quality engineer. Why would it matter? Mudhunny's amateur demos were sold and distributed nationally. Maybe it's because Weezer isn't grunge, or from Seattle? Who knows. Thankfully, Weezer's subsequent records were professionally produced and financially performed very well compared to Pinkerton. And Nirvana did the same thing with Nevermind and subsequent records. Bleach wasn't as popular. Similarly, if you look at any early 90's lofi act, such as Flaming Lips or Superchunk, you'll notice that as they became more successful, and had the money to afford to properly record their records, each subsequent record became higher and higher fidelity until it doesn't really make sense to refer to them as lofi acts anymore. Though the music didn't really change, the genre changed from "LoFi" to "Indy." And Grunge is not really Punk, but it depends how you define Punk. If punk is a fashion statement and political, then maybe. But Punk has a musical form, and it is really the same as that of Polka. If you can't square dance to it, if the signature is not 4/4, then it probably isn't legitimately Punk. Grunge didn't necessarily have that form, and what Nirvana released was a reaction to and departure from Punk with unique chord structures never heard in Punk, and not always 4/4 signature (such as "If You Must," and "Beeswax"). Anyway, SubPop (not Apple with iTunes Store and iPod, which fed off the trend to great success) is the reason every new artist for the last 30 years tries to self-release or own their own label. Last band I am aware of that went from unsigned straight to major label record deal was Dave Matthews Band, but only because they had their own distribution list of something like 100K names and addresses and were already touring nationally on their own independent label. They already had a proven national product with their self-funded tours, so RCA was probably throwing money at them to get them to sign, almost like the old days of big acts in the 1950s through the 1980s.

daydream 4y ago

A great story and really happy to see Hua Hsu’s name and writing again. I always enjoyed his music writing in the 2000’s, mainly about rap and hip-hop. Cool to see this pop up here.

Eleison23 4y ago

One time in the mid-90s I was driving the family's Nissan Stanza wagon and my father was in the passenger seat. The radio was tuned to my favorite alternative rock station. We were stopped at a red light and my father stabbed the POWER button on the radio to shut it off. I was surprised and mystified and I asked him why he'd done that. He said that the singer was going "rape me... rape me..." which was probably Cobain's Nirvana at the time. I was still surprised because I hadn't been paying a bit of attention to the lyrics. My father has always been a good boundary enforcer, and I'm thankful that he notices that kind of thing, even when I haven't.

jon_adler 4y ago

An enjoyable read that reminded me of another recent article about an Asian American: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049672 https://longreads.com/2022/06/16/love-song-to-costco/ https://longreads.com/2022/06/16/love-song-to-costco/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]