Nevermind - Twenty Years Later

Two decades ago I'd been listening to Nirvana's Nevermind for a couple of weeks while I was living in the town of Giessen in Germany at the age of 23 selling Harley Davidsons, Chryslers and GM vehicles to US military troops. Three of us headed to Amsterdam one weekend and I put the Nevermind cassette in the car stereo. It wasn't long before Russell, the former punk exclaimed 'what is this shit', Geoff agreed immediately and so it didn't get a full play. 

I can't remember if it was on the way there, or on the return journey back to Giessen but we'd run out of music so it got another play and by the time we arrived back home the other two had becoming raving lunatics about how good this incredible album was. Nevermind became our anthem for much more frequent runs down to Frankfurt in the Corvette or the Jeep show vehicles. It was here we scored cannabis resin and explored the downtown area of brothels, pimps, pushers, junkies and transsexuals around the Hauptbahnhoff till early in the morning before heading back to Giessen to the soundtrack of Nirvana's Nevermind.


I wont burden you with my album review as there are other top twenty emotions I'd much rather write about and I think Stuart Maconie of The New Statesman has done a good job. Here's the bits I liked.



To understand the seismic impact of Nevermind and of that incendiary first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", in particular, one has to hear it - metaphorically at least - through the cheap, fizzing foam headphones of late-1980s pop. Nirvana emerged, to paraphrase Auden, at "the fag end of a low, dishonest decade", at least as far as mass-market pop went. MTV had nullified and sedated white rock. Madonna and Michael Jackson were at creative lows. Hip-hop, after the firestorms of Public Enemy and NWA, had fizzled out in the vaudeville of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Alternative rock largely meant REM, who were huge but spoke now to the constituency that also bought Annie Lennox and Bruce Springsteen records, rather than to disaffected teens.


"I've been confronted by people wanting to beat me up, by people heckling me and being so drunk and obnoxious because they think I'm this pissy rock-star bastard who can't come to grips with his fame . . . I was in a rock club the other night . . . and one guy comes up, pats me on the back and says, 'You've got a really good thing going, you know? Your band members are cool, you write great songs, you affected a lot of people, but, man, you've really got to get your personal shit together!' Then another person comes up and says, 'I hope you overcome your drug problems.' All this happens within an hour while I'm trying to watch the Melvins, minding my own business."

Terence McKenna - What's So Great About Mushrooms?

Terence McKenna's shtick about the stoned ape theory which is pretty much disproven now (and actually he knew it was a good story designed to reframe the entheogen Psilocybin discussion) but it's still a good narrative that displays his linguistic talents and polymath ability.

Anatoly Fomenko - History: Fiction or Science

Listening to the previous interview with Clif High, I had my head blown when he moved onto the Anatoly T. Fomenko subject. I've found his first two books on Google Books so I'm posting them as an aid to others and a reminder to myself to read as soon as possible. There's heated criticism of them which is always a good sign that attention should be paid to them.

Here's the blurbs and reviews both negative and postive: 

History: Fiction or Science? is the most explosive tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by solid scientific data. The book is well-illustrated, contains over 446 graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays, which never cease to amaze the reader. Eminent mathematician proves that: Jesus Christ was born in 1153 and crucified in 1186 The Old Testament refers to mediaeval events. Apocalypse was written after 1486. Does this sound uncanny? This version of events is substantiated by hard facts and logic - validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources - to a greater extent than everything you may have read and heard about history before. The dominating historical discourse in its current state was essentially crafted in the XVI century from a rather contradictory jumble of sources such as innumerable copies of ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts whose originals had vanished in the Dark Ages and the allegedly irrefutable proof offered by late mediaeval astronomers, resting upon the power of ecclesial authorities. Nearly all of its components are blatantly untrue! For some of us, it shall possibly be quite disturbing to see the magnificent edifice of classical history to turn into an ominous simulacrum brooding over the snake pit of mediaeval politics. Twice so, in fact: the first seeing the legendary millenarian dust on the ancient marble turn into a mere layer of dirt - one that meticulous unprejudiced research can eventually remove. The second, and greater, attack of unease comes with the awareness of just how many areas of human knowledge still trust the three elephants of the consensual chronology to support them. Nothing can remedy that except for an individual chronological revolution happening in the minds of a large enough number of people.

Review

Earth was flat. Humans saw that it was flat, books were telling scholars that it was flat, teachers were teaching students it was flat; scientists knew it was flat. There was some disagreement about the way it was kept afloat, most common versions were elephants, whales and turtles, but that was subject for scientific discussion. Until Magellan sailed around the globe and proved all this science wrong. This book is precisely about same situation. Although it is written for casual reader, it still bears all the traits of scientific research. Anyway, history as a science is based on books written by previous generation of historians, who based their works on works of previous generation of historians, supplemented by archeological digs (great deal of assumptions was made there too, as people didn't usually mark their belongings with dates), so it definitely needs some mathematical treatment. It is very difficult to digest the new version of history from Fomenko without getting allergic shock. Official timeline is accepted in the same way as gravity, and movement of the sun; many nations have developed their identity based on official history. Literally speaking chronology is in our culture, in our roots, personal identity. Someone said here that this book was written by Russian nationalist to reassure Russian national identity. May be so, but I think for Russians will be very difficult to swallow that they were actually Mongols and Tatars too. This book will turn your world upside down. Literally. --New Book Review, 03-03-2007 (CA, USA)

History: Fiction Or Science? is a quite scholarly expose of the extreme limitations of our understanding of human history. So few physical records have survived hundreds, let alone thousands of years that it casts even the most conventional understanding of what really happened into doubt. Chapters address the problems of historical chronology in general, astronomical datings, astronomy in the Old Testament, methods of dating ancient events via mathematical statistics, the construction of a global chronological map, the Dark Ages, and much more. Black-and-white illustrations add a vivid touch to this scholarly work that may appear controversial yet deals with a very serious issue directly affecting humanity's comprehension of its own past. --Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)