As you are, as you were

Happy 20th aniversary, Nevermind!

Nevermind the fact that it was actually yesterday.

On september 24th, 1991, Nirvana released the masterpiece that today is one of the most iconic records in the history of music. Smells like Teen Spirit, Come as You Are, Lithium, Polly, Something in the Way music played by angels. Only the angels wore bleached jeans and used shirts, forgot to shave for a few days and were a little bit stoned. But still.

Bitch

The original classy bastards.

Slash's Snakepit

One of Slash's projects back from when he was still a part of GnR. Original lineup also has GnR bandmates, drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Gilby Clarke + Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez + Jellyfish's Eric Dover as a lead vocalist.

Could you even dare to ask for more? Press play if you haven't done that already and be thankful that this kickass piece of music is now part of your life. Or be an audio junkie like me and go listen to the whole '95 album. You are most welcome.

And there's nothing wrong with me, this is how I'm supposed to be

Today, in celebration of the fact that I went and got a new hair-do that makes me look like a little anarchist, being the fearless BAMF I am (hahaha.), I should talk about one of the greatest albums the human kind has known up to till now, Green Day's American Idiot. I don't care what the general opinion on Green Day is, I've loved them ever since I was a 7th grader who's first heard the term "nonconformist" and thought she'd found the very meaning of life. Haha, good days. I'm not even that much of a punk listener, but for releasing American Idiot, I'm going to love Green Day forever.

Anyway, these guys put riot and youth into lyrics, then into guitar riffs, then into several proper LPs over the years. As much of a punk-rock group who's poster is up on every teenager's wall who dreams of running away from home and start their life over they might be, the social and political issues covered on American Idiot, they had quite some guts to record that. Green Day have this amazing ability to turn every track of theirs into an anthem. All of the 13 tracks on American Idiot put together follow the same storyline, the life of a character simply portrayed as the "Jesus of Suburbia", the anti-hero, as they called him, a punk who loathes the society he lives in, so he struggles between following his own path and terribilist self-destruction with "a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin". Jesus of Suburbia, (the 10 mins song and the video) tells the story pretty well. It will forever be one of my favourite songs, I know the lyrics by heart, I know every single musical note in there, knowing I've lost countless hours of my life listening to this again and again and again over the years.

Basically, long personal emotional view on this album short, I wish the life I'm gonna live will be worth for Green Day to write an album just as great as this one based on it.

Space may be the final frontier / But it's made in a Hollywood basement

Red Hot Chili Peppers have fascinated me ever since I was a kid and saw Californication on VH1 for the first time. Of course, back then i had a pretty general opinion on music and didn't really understand their message, but a few years after, I really started listening to these guys.

They're amazing. The exact kind of artists I love, creating a whole new musical genre of their own, inspired by real-life experience. I don't exactly know how to put it into words, the kid i was when i first heard Caliornication loved them just as much as I do now, even though now I also get the meaning behind the music.

Red Hot Chili Peppers are a mixture of alternative rock, funk and hard-rock, and the list of bands and people that influenced them varies from Bob Marley to Bad Brains and Led Zeppelin to Miles Davis and Elvis Presley. Each RHCP member had a different musical evolution and brought his own style and musical preference into the band, which resulted into what RHCP sounds like today.

The lyrics were written by the vocalist, Anthony Kiedis, which I find to be a very interesting man with a very interesting story. He spent his teenage years in LA and had one of the Hollywood's favourite drug dealers at the time for a father, who provided bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Who. He lost his virginity at age 12 with daddy's 18 years old girlfriend and consent, and at 14 he almost died from his first cocaine dose. Up till 2000, since he has been clean, he spent his life struggling with addictions, the 1st wake-up call being his band mate Hillel Slovak's death due to heroin overdose, still, that only turned him into an on and off user for a while. His life experience, as well as the other members' life experience as RHCP evolved, reflects into the lyrics, with themes such as love, romance, sex, drug abuse, politics, globalization, loneliness and dealing with death.

Kickass people making kickass music, putting the knowledge they gained since '83 in the songs as a sign of aging, but keeping the young energy alive. I can pretty much see them at 65 still rocking out on rooftops, making weird faces in photos, dressing tacky-punker clothes and releasing trippy music videos.

9 days left till the new album, I'm with you is out.

(Awesome artwork, by the way, 1st pic, the one with the fly on the pill.)

Till then, Stadium Arcadium:Jupiter and Blood Sugar Sex Magik are back in my playlist.

The Ultimate Experience

Adding another blog post on the biography of Jimi Hendrix to the internet would be somehow unnecessary, since the gentlemen working for Wikipedia and Rolling Stone have done an impecable job already.

Today i felt like doing nothing, which leaves plenty of place for enjoying history written in musical lyrics and guitar tabs by someone who started out as a man who really enjoyed experimenting with sounds.

'42-'70, the time when the earth was walked by one of, if not, the best guitarist of all times, as Rolling Stone claims. He was a true guitar god, completely changing the view upon playing the instrument for the artists that followed. Being left-handed, he played a regular guitar upside-down. Unicity was a keyword for all his shows, always a theatrical presence, playing the instrument with his teeth or behind his back, Hendrix sure knew how to set the guitar on fire (literally, sometimes, like he did at the Monterey Pop Festival).

I don't really know much about Hendrix as a person, and I honestly do not care, his music, a true masterpiece of blues and psychedelic rock, has won him my respect forever. I'm going to dedicate this week to listening to everything ever released, before and after his death.

Meanwhile, my favourite song remains The Wind Cries Mary, which, weirdly, is said to have been written after an argument between Hendrix and his then girlfriend over her cooking. The food must've been awful since she left afterwards and he had to write a song to bring her back :) here's the song, in case you don't know it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvXstzHzkXk. Beautiful.