Kurt, Krist and Dave are in the Hall of Fame. Can we please stop with the Nirvana revisionism now?

     Last night the remaining members of the legendary band Nirvana managed a neat trick. While being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they found a way to revisit the late Kurt Cobain songs in a manner that that avoided the big huge elephant in the room. Namely, that Kurt himself wasn't around to play them himself. Something that has left a huge whole in the music scene for two decades now.
     The way the remaining members, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and late addition Pat Smear, managed to dodge the usual comparisons was by having a quartet of female rockers fill in for their former leader. The choices were all terrific as well. Rock icons Joan Jett and Kim Gordon killed it early, performing Smells Like Teen Spirit and Aneurysm, respectively. Both were indie rock icons before Nirvana started bashing out songs in Aberdeen, WA. While newcomers Annie Clark of St. Vincent, who was nine and teenage pop sensation Lorde, who was not even a twinkle in her father eye when Kurt ended his life, finished the show with versions of Lithium and All Apologies. Good choice all around for the glorified TV spectacular. (The whole show will be broadcast on HBO in May.)
     Yet, they weren't Kurt. That's because Cobain was one of those mercurial performers that come along maybe once or twice a decade. And as good as all of those women are at their craft. They ain't Kurt. Which brings me to the first examples of revisionism that I need to debunk.
     You see many commentator last night were inferring that the performances were "incredible" with someone from Vice's on-line music mag Noisey, one Fred Pessaro, actually proclaimed that he "Saw Nirvana in 2014". (There was an after party at a local club where Dave, Krist, Pat and a selection of special guests performed an entire set of Nirvana songs.)
     Actually, kid, you saw a really neat show with the remaining members of Nirvana with some pretty cool special guests. But you didn't even come close to "seeing Nirvana". Just to show you how different the two events are in real life, I give you everyone's current critical darling Annie Clark doing a serviceable version of Heart Shaped Box.

     And now here is the real Nirvana, with Kurt, tearing apart a Seattle audience during their Live and Loud performance. The song is Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. It isn't one of Nirvana's big hits and yet it packs a wallop that no one on stage last night could come close to capturing. This is Nirvana, Fred. The real Nirvana.

     If you think that performance was a one off I suggest you check out Nirvana Live at Reading or their performance at Rock in Rio in 1993. Kurt wasn't on every night (heroin will do that to you) but when he was the band went to another level and it was truly something to see. Which is why the remaining members were so smart in using the revolving set of women rockers for the actual Hall of Fame appearance. The novelty of swapping genders took some of the pressure off each individual performer to try and outdo Kurt. Something that wasn't going to ever be possible. As good as Annie Clark is, and she is quite talented, she isn't Kurt. (She isn't even Florence Welch for that matter. IMHO.)
     Still, with the twentieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death and Nirvana's subsequent Hall of Fame appearance in the same week, a lot of people, especially the press, like to engage in the game of "what if..." I'm sure it got reads and clicks. The problem is that it often showed the press for what they are these days. Clueless people who didn't seem to get Nirvana in the first place. Some have doubted their influence. Others question if Kurt had nowhere to go musically.
     All of this is just revisionism by people who don't seem to understand how musicians work or even get what Kurt was all about. You don't spend hours trying to figure out a certain sound on a guitar as Kurt did and have nowhere to go with your music. You don't perform a Leadbelly song the way he did on unplugged and not have frontiers left to explore. He loved music. That wasn't going to change no matter what happened next.
     The problem for Cobain wasn't what direction he could he go musically. The problem was where could the man go to find peace and serenity. He was obviously in a lot of psychic pain. If one didn't get that from his music, you certainly could figured it out from the way he ended his life. He took the one way out that made sense to him at the time. He was in pain and decided he couldn't take it anymore. Some say that he undertook a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That wasn't how he looked at it, however. Anyone who has ever fought depression can tell you that.
     We can all write think pieces imagining a future with Kurt fronting Nirvana today. Had he lived he might have handed the the songwriting chores over to Dave Grohl. Kurt was famously quoted as saying the studio session when the band recorded a batch of batch of Dave's songs with one of Kurt's in January of 2014 was one of the best times he had during the beginning of that year. Nirvana fans could have one of those rock arguments about how much better they were when Kurt wrote most of the songs instead of the later "Dave" years. You could have a "Kurt" camp and a "Dave" camp. Or maybe he breaks up the band and goes solo. Perhaps he does a hip-hop record with Chuck D or Dr. Dre. If I had to guess, though, he probably would have done the type of albums his old pal Mark Lanegan makes these days. Thoughtful, melodic albums with a folk tinge. With or without Dave and Krist. But I really don't know.
     The only thing any of us know for sure is that Kurt is dead. So everyone should accept it and move on. I'm pretty sure Dave and Krist have. They may have revisited Kurt's (and their own) legacy one more time last night. To give everyone some closure. But I seriously doubt they'll be touring behind it. They have too much of their own work to do.
     

American NGO's are considered CIA ops by much of the world. Are they doing more harm than good?

   
   

Are these girls working for the US? Many Russians think so.

    This weekend I went to an event featuring the now famous members of the Russian art collective known as Pussy Riot. As anyone who know the saga of the two young women they were arrested for performing in a church in Moscow in 2012. Since then they were put on trial, sentenced to two years for hooliganism and inciting religious hatred. They ended serving less than two years, the religious hatred charges were dropped (after they were released) and they are now being sponsored by many groups in the West and are now globetrotting celebrities among the progressive left.  They are also starting an NGO to address prison reform in Russia and apparently bash Vladimir Putin at every speaking engagement they show up at. 
     Ironically, the very next day Vladimir Putin gave a stern warning to the West that he would not allow western NGO's to foment revolt in Russia in the way that Victoria Nuland bragged about helping overthrow the elected government in Ukraine by using 5 billion dollars in American taxpayer money and NGO's to achieve "democracy". Since it was the Russians who released Nuland phone call and probably had spies at the Ukrainian event in New York where she bragged about the 5 billion in American dough used in the Ukraine for NGO's. (One has to wonder why the US was giving pro-Democracy groups 5 billion dollars when the Ukrainian government owes 30 billion in debts to European banks and Russian gas companies. But what do I care. It's just my money Nuland was using.) All of which makes me think that the new Pussy Riot NGO will probably be working out of New York so the girls can live in Brooklyn, close to the NYC press elites that love them so dearly.
     Then again after watching the IDFA "award winning film" Pussy Versus Putin I'm not sure they have much to be afraid of in Putin's Russia. For any American who has lived through real police violence (check out the removal of Oakland occupy protesters in 2011 or better yet the treatment by the LAPD of immigration protesters at the May Day immigration march Los Angeles' MacArthur Park if you want to know what real police violence looks like - someone definitely left the cake out in the rain that day) the ability that the girls had to yell at and taunt the police - EVEN in the Moscow Police station showed a side of Putin's Russia that did not look very scary at all. 
     The most telling incident in the whole movie was actually a trip to the Moscow police station which included members of Pussy Riot and counter protesting Orthodox Christians in a paddy wagon. They are seen laughing together, discussing politics and seemingly getting along in a way that made Russia seem much more civilized than anything I see on Fox and MSNBC these days. I also found it interesting that one of the Orthodox protesters jokes to the husband of Nadya Tolokonnikova (the "hot one" as many of my friends refer to her) that "You do your play and we'll do ours."
     Of course, when the BBC got hold of this same footage and worked with HBO to produce Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer they didn't use that footage. They simply made the Orthodox protesters look like evil buffoons and the girls from Pussy Riot to be be dedicated activists. No joking between the groups. No joint arrests by exasperated Moscow Police who seemed more annoyed than threatened by the whole scene. I am a filmmaker and I know why they did this. Showing the that the two groups both understand the political game and the art of subversion destroys the narrative that the western activists and press want to present to the public. One of brave, young women being oppressed by evil Vlad Putin. If it is all just knowing political theater the narrative goes away.
     How does that pertain to American NGO's you might be asking. I'll tell you. You see, when I saw Pussy Riot speak, to a half full room made up primarily of middle aged progressive types who had obviously been invited to the event, the first questioner happened to be a local Russian woman. Her question? "Who is paying you and what would call someone who is a political prostitute?" 
     See this woman. The Russian woman who lives in the US thinks these girls are working for the West. And with the security they had, the handlers who were with them and some of their associates like known State Department lacky Masha Gessen, she's probably correct. Even the movie (which was rather poorly made I must say) had a scene which was telling about how connected to the State department the Pussy Riot collective has been from the start. The scene occurs in the immediate aftermath of arrest in the Moscow Cathedral. Nadya and Masha are rushed into an apartment to do an interview with USAID sponsored Voice of Russia radio that according to the film was set up six weeks prior. You don't set up an interview six weeks in advance if you aren't trying to provoke authorities and get arrested. It just doesn't happen that way. The fact that the interview was with a State Department funded station like Voice of Russia let's us know that the US was complicit at the very least in promoting the event. 
     And that is why ordinary Russians, even the ones living in the US, think these NGO's and the people working with them are up to no good. They agree with VLADIMIR PUTIN. That is why he has an 80% approval rating in Russia and the young women have fewer Twitter followers than Matt and Kim. Despite the nonsense you read in the Western press. 
     Of course, this follows revelations by USAID last week that spent, er wasted, hundreds of millions of American dollars trying to develop a Cuban Twitter in order to send anti-government message to the Cuban people to try and foment unrest in that country. USAID, which in case you don't know, is a State Department funded government entity with a mission statement to promote humanitarian aid around the world who funds many American NGO's around the globe. They are not supposed to engaging in regime change. At least that is not what they say publicly. 
     Most people around the world do not believe that. The young people in Egypt do not believe that. That's why they have burned down the buildings that housed many American NGO's. The Libyan people who country is now in tatters do not believe it. The Russian people obviously do not believe it. People around the globe believe American NGO's, especially the ones funded by USAID, are CIA spies. And every time they catch them working with the State Department like what happened in Cuba and in the Ukraine, their suspicions are affirmed. Making them look even more skeptically at Americans working with any NGO or think tank. 
     Yet, Americans of all stripes, most especially progressives, love NGO's. We love Kony 2012. We love The Cups of Tea and we love Pussy Riot. We like thinking we're making a difference. We love to have the people who work for them speak out as experts on NPR. We love to read their books, see documentaries about them at the local film fest and we love to go see them speak for twenty bucks a pop at the local library when they come through town. 
     I'm not saying that all NGO's are bad. Some of them are very good and are run by caring, thoughtful people. Even some of the NGO's that receive funds from USAID. The problem is that the people who they are supposedly helping do not like them. They do not want them in their countries. More importantly they are sowing a divide between those countries and ours. Even if we don't want to believe it. 
     Maybe it is time to rethink how America does business in the world. And the results we are trying to achieve. Your thoughts are welcomed. 
     

Lena Dunham is doing her best work this year. Does anyone care?

     Two years ago, Lena Dunham was everyone's "It" girl when her show, Girls, first hit the small screen on HBO. The New York "chattering classes" could not get enough of her quirky persona, her HBO show that many felt reflected their own NYC experiences and her seemingly ubiquitous presence on Awards shows like the Globes, Emmeys and Grammys as well as social media sites like Twitter and Instagram. Cultural media sites like Slate, Vulture and Salon wrote so many articles about Dunham, her show and the meaning of being young in New York City that Dunham practically became a cottage industry for many sites. Contrarian sites like Gawker also got in on the Lena Dunham frenzy by attacking her regularly. (Gawker's recaps the first season regularly referred to Dunham as "Laurie Simmons daughter" to provide context for what they believed was a case of nepotism and privilege rather than actual talent.) This despite the fact, or perhaps because, the show seemed to be a celebration of the very culture that birthed media sites like Gawker.

     I was always puzzled by the amount of coverage that Dunham and her show received that first year. I had to go to a lot film festivals during the oughts and often ended up seeing a lot of films from the New York mumblecore scene. Films where privileged young white people complained a lot about lives that 99% of the people on the face of the earth would consider to be very blessed and nothing much else happens other than the female leads taking their clothes off for no real reason that I could ever see. To me Dunham's TV show was the obvious descendant of those films and hardly revolutionary in any way. Perhaps the only real difference was that a young woman was the producer-writer and star and that she landed at HBO instead of playing a couple of weeks at the local art houses where America's seniors now go for a bit of titillation. (Seriously, I think the average age for "art house" viewership these days is about 82. No wonder they're all worried about the future. When I stopped into to see Greenberg a couple years back at my local Laemmle I tripped over three canes on the way to the bathroom!) As far as I was concerned Girls was a nice little show that showed some promise. Not unlike a lot of other HBO fare I had seen over the years. 

     Then came the second season of Girls. Suddenly there was a lot of hand wringing in the press about the direction of the show. Complaints came from all sides and even the ratings, never that good in the first place, started to decline. HBO talked a lot about how ratings didn't matter, and that the show had a lot of DVR and HBOGo viewership so the actual ratings did not tell the whole story. Still you could see that Girls was no longer the darling it was in it's first year. 

     This confused me to no end because in my opinion the show was just starting to get good. Oh, yeah. It still had problems. Lena's acting is hit and miss, Allison Williams will never be great or even very good and interesting moments often get rushed to keep the plot moving along in each episode. Still the issues Dunham and her show were investigating seemed fresher than the premiere season, the dialogue more real while in Adam, the character played by Adam Driver, Girls had not only the most compelling character on television, he's being played by the best young American actor working today. 

     Which brings us to Season Three of Girls, which has two episodes left to go. Not only are the ratings still soft, but sites like Slate and Salon, who couldn't get enough of Girls two years ago (Slate actually had eight, count 'em, eight, writers working on recaps for the show!), don't even recap the episodes anymore. They've moved on to talking non-stop about True Detective and the comeback of Matthew McConaughey or whether Hillary Clinton will/should run for the Presidency in 2016. In other words, the bloom is off the Lena Dunham rose.

     Which is too bad because Ms. Dunham is doing some of her best work ever. She's still a bit wobbly as an actress, some of the B story-lines are not that interesting (was Jessa ever a fully formed character?), but the Hannah/Adam relationship that drives the show is full of the real complexities that any young couple will have go through. Especially now when both characters are having some success in their careers and the two of them are finding that situation much more problematic than when they were both failures. That's the kind of writing that takes real skill. Just watch any big budget Hollywood movie or show and you'll see what I mean. The characters in most television shows and in feature films are almost always cast in black and white. That's because it creates easy drama, it's easy to write and the audience always understands what is going on. Lena Dunham never took the easy way out with her characters and that is  now beginning to pay off with episodes that are, rich complex and satisfying.  She's also proving that the people who believed in her early promise were correct in their assessment of her skills. (That doesn't completely let you off the hook for This Is Forty, Mr. Apatow. But good work anyway.)

     So where does that leave us? Can HBO get people back on board for a show they've seemingly already turned away from? Has Dunham been so overexposed that it will be hard to get people to take a fresh look? I don't know. But I hope so. She may not be "the voice of my generation", as her character Hannah so infamously stated in Girls first episode. I do, however, think she is "at least, a voice of a generation" which is the second half of the drunken spiel her character makes to her parents in that opening episode. That's the part everyone seems to forget. 

HBO Girls Preview