Kurt Cobain
Due to the success of Nirvana in the 1990s, the lead performer of the band, Kurt Cobain, brought several underground bands into the limelight.
There has been a film in the works about Kurt Cobain’s life, based on Charles Cross’ book Heavier Than Heaven (whose title came from a tour that Nirvana and Tad [see video below] had done in the UK) through Universal since October 2007 when script writer David Benioff was hired to write the screenplay. Executive producer, Courtney Love, had given permission for the use of Nirvana’s music in the film in November of the same year. It’s rumored that Marc Foster will direct.
Kurt Cobain often promoted bands like Tad, L7 and The Melvins, of which he was a fan of, during his interviews, etc. Sonic Youth, a New York Underground instillation, was another (who has released a list of their Top 20 Criterion movie picks here).
It was explained to me that the way bands/performers were discovered in the past was that record companies had agents assigned to seek out talent, often from rural, frequently impoverished communities, who were working on something new and exciting that they would then “pick up” and expose to the masses. These artists usually had something geographically unique, whether they were from New Orleans, Seattle, Compton LA, or the Mid West, etc. along with a grassroots, uncompromising perspective within their artistic vision. Now the record companies’ strategy has changed and they process a package from the get-go. It seems to me that the last burst of the underground rising to the mainstream has been in the 90s, with the likes of Public Enemy or Nirvana. Perhaps it is a cyclical phenomena, or best explained by “the pendulum theory”, where once producers find a specific formula that creates income, they stick with it, and replicate it until it’s original essence is depleted, and then await the new “next best thing”, but I was told that lately, the search for something new is not a corporate priority at all. Let me know what you think, and how the increasing power of the internet may shape things to come in this arena…
A great film about this fascinating arc is Elia Kazan’s A Face in The Crowd…
And here are some videos of the bands that Kurt Cobain was a fan of. These videos reveal low budgets (aside from The Melvins song Hooch, which is a bit more complex), but answer the question of effectiveness when it comes to passion vs. finance.
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