Eyewear is jumping ahead a bit. On the 24th, Saturday, it'll be the 20 year anniversary, as we all know, of Nevermind, universally regarded (now) as the single most important popular music album of the 1990s, a true generational watershed moment. I still remember the first time I heard it, in 1991, at an October house party, in Montreal. It was on in the background. I was drinking a beer, talking to a guy in an untucked flannel lumberjack-style shirt, and we both stopped and said - hey, this is f***ing good. Soon, I had bought the CD, and was playing it all day. I was lifting weights then, at my Verdun apartment, and used to keep it on in the background; and it became the soundtrack to my personal life, for a while. Sure, the rest of the story gets a little boring, soon enough - the loser club death, the wasted genius. But Cobain and Co. created a few tracks the aural equivalent of The Beatles. Truly great stuff, that belonged only to us - people then in their 20s. Of course, that makes me 45, which sort of sucks, but it was good to have our own sound, not the 60s. I should add, I still think Pixies and Smashing Pumpkins come close to Nirvana at times. But name another album where each of the 12 songs is a classic. Don't bother.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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