As my semi-autistic friend Steve once observed, Time Is Numbers — and that's true enough, but it's also true that people don't really like to think about the latter that much, because, well, math is boring and generally only enjoyed by nerds. That's why it's convenient, if you are ever confronted with numbers, to think of them in multiples of ten — ten hours in a day, ten eggs in a carton, ten days in a week. Apply as desired.
Hence, I assume, the growing hullaballoo over the impending two-decade anniversary of Nirvana's seminal Nevermind, released back in those halcyon days of September 1991 — the same year, incidentally, that the New Kids on the Block's Donnie Wahlberg was arrested for allegedly setting his hotel room on fire. Which event was more important? Only several more decades will tell, probably, but there's no denying that Nevermind has been getting a fair amount of hype lately, with Spin gearing up to devote next month's cover story to some "never before seen photos" of the band in a pool (you know, because the cover of...never mind) and former label Universal Music announcing plans to angrily fling yet another overpriced deluxe boxed-set edition of the album into the world like a chimp flings feces: Don't want to buy new shit, world? Fine, fuck you, buy this old shit.
Nevertheless, it's clearly an important moment that warrants reflection, so it seems like a good time to take a look at the band's remaining members and find out, as VH1 so often does, where they are now. Apparently, they are in the studio playing "Smells like Teen Spirit" — or at least they were a couple of weeks ago, when former drummer Dave Grohl let slip that he and bassist Krist Novoselic and sometimes-guitar player Pat Smear had gotten together and jammed it out. "I haven't played that drumbeat in seventeen years," he remarked.
Still, even if Grohl's getting nostalgic in his old age, he's not getting soft: Just last week, he went apeshit on some guy who was fighting at a Foo Fighters concert, stopping the song and kicking the guy out: "You don't come to my show and fight — you come to my show and fucking dance, you asshole," he bellowed. "Get the fuck out of here right now!"
Nice one, Dave Grohl.
Bassist Krist Novoselic, meanwhile, has done nothing since 1988. He may or may not actually have been in Nirvana.
Even Kurt Cobain has accomplished more in the ensuing years than Novoselic, and he's been dead for most of them. Currently, he's being considered for the honor of having a pedestrian bridge in his home town of Aberdeen, Washington, named after him — the question over there being whether it's appropriate to name a bridge after a drug addict who blew his brains out. The question everywhere else, though, is: Why a pedestrian bridge? I mean, that shit just seems kind of arbitrary, Aberdeen.
Then again, it beats the hell out of some crappy boxed set.
