By chris-chris92 on Skatehive
Almost as soon as I picked up this book, I felt like I was stepping into a room I had been in before, only this time the lights were brighter and there was nowhere to hide. Azerrad writes about Nirvana without ceremony, and that is what makes the pages feel heavier than expected. It is not a shrine, it is not a funeral, it is just a story told with enough rawness to make you wonder if you really knew them at all. I went into it thinking I had a grasp on the band, but the more I read, the more I realized how many layers of noise and silence had been smoothed over in my mind. This was not a perfect photograph of three people who changed music; it was the grainy version that shows the cracks and the uneven focus. Before reading it, Nirvana for me was mostly a collection of songs and moments that had been passed down, like secondhand clothes that still smell faintly of someone else’s perfume. I was not around when they were burning up stages, but I inherited their music from my brother alo