Thank you Jacqueline for sending me this link: http://m.newser.com/story/159195/nirvana-reunites-with-mccartney-in-for-cobain.html
Nirvana reunites for 12-12-12 benefit concert.
Paul McCartney stands in for Kurt Cobain.
My heart is full. Bravo! I’ve got to find this concert online.
Kate Sitka 
The whole 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert is currently streaming live on TV and online, including at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5cxpRRmCg8&feature=player_embedded . If you didn’t get to watch it live, I’m sure it’ll be up somewhere (maybe even at this same link) to stream afterwards.
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I actually thought of your blog when I heard about this! Here’s the best NirBeatlevana clip I could find. Hope you (& Kurt, John & George) enjoy 🙂
(Funny thought that the other half of the members are most likely jamming together as well–I can hardly wait to hear the amazing music in Heaven ^_^)
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This is kind of surreal. In a good way, though.
It was funny because I was thinking about how these guys are always going to be Beatle Paul to me, and Those Guys from Nirvana. Even though it’s been years and years, and they’ve been doing their own thing *way* longer than they were ever in those bands.
I probably would have had a cynical response to this as recently as a year ago, but instead, I cried. Mostly because I could feel them all around me. And it is a good song.
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Oh Man! I haven’t heard it yet. I’m feeling really off today, just trying to figure out what’s going on.
Paul will always be Paul From the Beatles, regardless of what else he does in his life. (Ditto Ringo) He was with Wings just as long as he was with the Beatles, and he’s done so much in the decades since then… but yeah. The Beatles was something magical.
Funny, Nirvana too was this magical thing that took up residence in people’s hearts. Maybe that’s what these guys all have in common, is this experience of being part of this rock band hysteria that happens to only a handful of people. Comparatively, Metallica is great, but no one worships them in the way Nirvana and Kurt was idolized in the 90s. I think it’s funny how the Beatles were basically a boy band for the first few years, but I think it was the last few years of their songwriting that elevated them beyond that, into this permanent place in our culture.
And you know, maybe it took Paul to actually get those guys back together. Maybe the Krist and Pat wouldn’t have been keen on playing together with Dave if it hadn’t been, “Hey guys, want to come jam with Paul McCartney?”
Who would possibly say no to that?
I think it’s awesome, and on an energetic level a perfect fit – but it’s funny, it looks like such a mismatch on the surface.
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I have to admit though I find it hard to believe that Paul didn’t know what he was signing up for, though. Was it really just like, “Oh sure Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, I’ll jam with you and some of your random buddies, let’s write a song!”? (Oh no, there’s that cynicism again
)
Yeah, that the Beatles transcended their boy-band status is a pretty rare thing. Wil Smith and Mark Wahlberg did it. They managed to reinvent themselves successfully. Alanis did it. Not a lot of people pull it off. But it’s not like Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney are trying to distance themselves from their early success though.
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I have made a conscious effort in the past year or so to NOT follow the news…. I avoid news websites as much as possible, stopped reading the paper, and really just wanted to avoid all of the negativity and sensationlism that is published. So, living in the self-imposed cave that I do at times, I wasn’t aware of the 12-12-12 concert until a co-worker was talking about it to me today.
The co-worker mentioned the very performance talked about in this post. Of course, I perked up because I’ve been a long-time Nirvana fan, Foo Fighters fan (finally got to see them last September!), and a Beatles fan (not so much of Paul’s stuff with Wings though… didn’t do anything for me). Anyway, my first reaction was “WTF… really? That sounds…. odd. I’m intrigued.” So, of course, I had to look it up this evening, but first checked the blog here for whatever reason, and there it is being discussed!
It would have been easy to just judge beforehand, but that didn’t happen…. I was just intrigued at the potential dynamic. No idea what to expect. I watched the video – and thought it was pretty frickin’ cool! The intro was funny too. They looked like they were having a great time, and the song itself was enjoyable.
It’s just pretty cool all around to see that dymanic. I liked the fact that Paul was NOT trying to be Kurt, and that they were performing something new, something developed together.
Thanks for sharing and posting that on here. :0)
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I hear you Allen on the self-imposed isolation. I started doing that in Toronto when I realized I was feeling bad about myself. I decided to count the number of times I got the message from outside media that I was inadequate in some way… and before I even got to work it was like, 12 times. Morning TV ads, ads on the subway, ads in the free Metro paper. I cancelled the cable and stopped reading newspapers.
Since we moved to Tofino, we enjoy an amazing cultural isolation out here. The news is usually local news, usually things like “Local cat rescue seeks volunteers” and “Orcas spotted in harbour” or “Local deletes blog” – I’m not kidding. A local deleted his blog, and it made headlines.
Sad things happen out here too, and that gets on the radio and in the papers, but it’s something that you *want* to know about. In a small town, you know the family, your heart connection has a place to land. You can do something to help them.
This format of reporting everything sad and depressing that’s happening around the world can be so overwhelming it makes people feel disempowered, depressed. It’s a fine line, balancing education vs. ignorance.
I think it’s a neat experiment for people to just not look at news or mass media of any kind for one year, and observe the difference. That way you can put it into perspective.
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Is that even possible in this day and age unless you stay off the Internet? You can easily stop yourself from actively seeking out news providers, but we get exposed to negative news from so many varied sources that it seems it would be hard to avoid to any serious degree without avoiding all social media — no Twitter, no blogs, no Facebook, no YouTube, no visiting sites that include sidebar content from social media. We live in an era of ever-increasing information overload and, short of going offline completely, I’m not sure you can avoid negative information.
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There’s a whole lot of that going on now over the senseless tragedy in Connecticut with someone shooting up an elementary school. I was probably the last person at work unaware of that because of not checking news websites during the day, but still ended up hearing about it. Stuff like that makes no sense to me, and I struggle with understanding any of the schools of thought about ‘soul contracts’ or ‘greater purpose’ behind something like that.
If a person is that angry or distraught over life, they can affect enough people by taking themselves out. But to go out and murder kids and other people who just happened to be in the area…. if there’s a plan and method and desired result behind that, I sure can’t see it from my human mind. Believing we’re immortal souls and energy, and that we continue to live on… I guess there’s some comfort in that for the direct individuals (souls) that are a part of it, but all of the ripples outward into families… I can’t fathom there being a plan to sign up for that.
Plus that’s just one story. As you mentioned, Kate, we’re bombarded with stuff. All kinds of negativity. That’s why I try to avoid it. I’m okay with appearing “clueless” and out-of-touch to others….. I don’t want to get sucked into all of it. Yet, in this instance, I still am. I’m bothered by it, don’t understand it, and angered by it.
Trying to get back on track to this original posting… it was a joy to see those musicians having fun and contributing to what was a benefit show with good intentions.
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I’m generally not a big news consumer and I haven’t been for most of my life. I’ve had enough internal negativity to deal with since puberty without adding external sources to the mix. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to avoid — I heard about the Connecticut shootings from a coworker when the news broke; if he hadn’t told me, my roommate would have (it’s the second thing he said to me, after “Hi”, when I walked in the door) …or the cab driver or any of a dozen other people I met on my way home. You can’t live in a bubble, and it’s so easy to get drawn into it all once you *do* hear about it.
Still, thousands of people die worldwide every day, many in equally tragic circumstances. I find it hard to separate out the victims of one event from the whole. (My mind almost always goes back to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — almost a quarter of a million people gone in minutes. Any other high-profile loss-of-life event — even 9/11 — seems so small in comparison. And that’s not even considering the millions who die during more lengthy events, like disease pandemics or war.)
Events like the shootings can, if you stop to really consider them without getting bogged down in the tragedy or the questions, illuminate the interconnectedness of everything, how what you do, think, and say ripples outward, touching people you don’t even know. Instead of letting the ripples from this event make you sad or angry, why not let it drive you to feed positive, healing energy back into the planetary system?
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I think you’re exactly right 🙂 I agree completely.
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