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Today is the 30th anniversay of the release of Nevermind.

I was never convinced by Nirvana, if I'm honest.

Seems it was the right band, with the right font man, the right album at the right time.

Listening to Peel occasionally at the end of the 1980s, I was aware of what was to become "grunge", maybe I even heard Nirvana's first recordings there. I do remember Tad and Soundgarden being played, and a grungy version of songs from the Wizard of Oz, Oz on 45 by the Squirrels on POp Llama records, I was going to order it and found the notebook with the address in Seattle of the record company.

By the time 1991 came round I was no longer working at the chicken factory, I had joined the RAF the year before, done basic and trade training and was posted to RAF Marham, and my future first wfe had came over from what was then Yugoslavia to stay with my parents in order to "learn better English".

She had come to find a husband, or a way of staying.

Anyway.

For me, 1991 was about going clubbing on Friday and Saturday nights, taking Andrea with me, meeting up with James, who had also joined the RAF, as well as long time friend, Douggie, we would go to Hanks and then to The Zone, or Tuttles or whatever the Harbour Hotel called itself at the time, dancing to Kim Simms, Salt n Pepa or whatever was the hot tune that week.

I wasn't listening to Peel any more, I wasn't listening to anything "alternative", it was dance music, music to dance to.

And along came Nirvana.

I remember seeing the video fo "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and thought it OK. But it wasn't until two years later, and I was posted to RAF Laarbruch and the whole of the European music scene in all its Eurodisco madness was revealled, but there was also this great love for Kurt and Nirvana. I think their second record had come out, and they were so big, they could do no wrong.

VJ Ray Coates was a huge star for a couple of years, he hosted the prime time evening show on MTV Europe and everyone knew watched it. Andrea's cousins from Hungary watched it, and they fell hook line and sinker for Nirvana.

MTV Europe would have days "dedicated to certain stars or bands: I mean, I am trying to think what a "Bon Jovi Day" meant for people working on a farm on the Hungarian Plain that had no running water and a dodgy electical supply. Heck, Bon Jovi meant nothing to me, other than being the son of a millionaire set hom up well in life. Madonna was huge, Bon Jovi was huge, Michel Jackson was huge. Nirvana was huge.

Everything about Kurt became a sideshow; his relationship with Courtney, their child, his health, and it really should have surprised few that it eneded the way it did.

Kurt got the thing he had always dreamed of in Aberdeen WA, and hated it.

There's a lesson for us all there.

One pre-fame album, Bleach, followed by Nevermind and then In Utero, followed by the awful Unplugged record is what they left us.

I can take it or leave it, some tracks are good, some leave me cold. As ever, the story itself is the thing, but then it had a tragic ending. Erata to original:

One thing that occured to me is that through the 80s, even when not listening to John Peel, I always bought and read the NME.

In 1988, Pixies and Throwing Muses did a joint tour and got rave reviews, at least in the NME, everywhere they played and every time they played. Pixies perfected the quiet-loud-quiet style of sone, a style that its no secret to say, Kurt copied for Nirvana and found global success with. And Kurt, from what I remember, was honest about the debt he owed Pixies, even if that debt made him famous and wanted to die.

Life is never easy, I guess. But for some it is harder on that for others. I have been to Aberdeen, and its a hard working logging town, not a place, I would imagine, a good place to grow up in, during the 80s, if you were different. A place you would want to escape from.

I have no answers, or no idea where this is going. Maybe I should stop.