Nirvana

Nirvana, like lead singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain, was short-lived, intense, miserable, wonderful, absurd, distraught, haunting and haunted. From their first recorded effort, 'Bleach' in 1989, to Cobain's rock music suicide note, 'In Utero,' in 1993, Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl took a long hard look at the dark side and twisted it into a heavy metal mode that fought the melodic line even as it caressed it. Starting his career as a member of Fecal Matter and forming the Stiff Woodies with his buddy Novoselic, Cobain's band became Skid Row and then the unlikely Nirvana by the late 1980s in a succession of names that only the most optimistic could call a linear progression. Cobain's demons and affections, including wife Courtney Love and daughter Frances Bean, are well known and his death still pondered by the faithful. But it is Nirvana's ultimate impact on modern rock music, tapping the pool of alienation with a ferocity that resulted in triple platinum sell-outs, that today make Nirvana vintage t-shirts more valued than trophies.