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ok my dad has nine brothers and sisters, which means I have about a million cousins. the problem is that I hardly ever see my dad, I bet I've seen my dad less than 20 times since I was 10 years old. so I hardly see that side of the family. but in 90 we had a reunion, he's from Cape Vincent NY, which is where lake Ontario meets the St Lawrence river. My gramma lived up there until she died in 2000. The reunion was at her house. This was the first time for me meeting many of my cousins. I try to keep contact now, not so much cuz they're family, more for their locations: NYC, Seattle, Portland, LA... I've got relatives in most of the places I'd like to go. So that summer I got to visit cousins in Poughkeepsie, which is north of New York City, north of White Plains and Yonkers by about 20 minutes. On one of the trips to the city we ended up getingt our hair done. my mom had talked me into a perm before moving to ohio cuz looking like a freak would help get me friends or something.... so anyway we're in this salon and the greatest music I'd ever heard was playing. at the time I was living upstate, in a town of about 1,000 people. my graduating class had 33 kids and I bet I could still name them all. they were all white, christian, middle-to-upper-middle class, and holy shit if you weren't all of the above.... they listened to new kids on the block, tiffany, mc hammer and vanilla ice. Guns n Roses and AC/DC were considered HARDCORE. I almost fit in with the three or four skateboarders but they were a few grades older, I preferred bmx biking and they didnt want any girls hanging around them (any girls who looked like me anyway). Me and the skaters liked the same music though, this is how I first got into goth & punk, but mainstream stuff like the Ramones, Cure, NIN. I dont know how the skaters got into this music but I first heard it through them. I never had any money to buy my own music so I never really looked for any. I listened to those three bands until my trip to NYC. I had some mixed tapes one of the skaters had made me. This was before the internet. Cd players were just coming to our town.... Finding any new, decent music was hard as hell so finding Nirvana was a total lucky coincidence. We're at the salon, and "Floyd the Barber" was playing and I thought how funny, what great lyrics, and the darker side appealed to me, like Cure songs at that time, they were really peppy and if you didnt listen to the lyrics it'd sound happy... songs off Bleach are like this. After "Floyd" came "School", and unlike so many others, I've never had trouble understanding Kurt's lyrics. "School" was it for me, I didn't have to hear anymore, I'd found my new favorite band. But it was more than that, it was like love at first sight, that pulse-quickening, wide-eyed amazement.... I asked who the band was and the person didnt know, the tape was some other guy's and he'd left for the day. I had her take the tape out and check and it turned out to be a dub, with no writing on it. well, it was an old blank tape like it had been copied over a few times, it had three labels on it and the top one was just black marker scratching out what was on the tape before Nirvana. so no one in the salon knew who was on the tape. I ended up stealing the tape. I regretted this later cuz I could have called the salon when that guy was working and found out who the band was but after I had stolen the tape I was afraid to.... so that was the end of the summer in 90. For about a year I listened the hell out of that tape. It got so wore out that you could sorta hear the music that Nirvana taped over. The tape sounded like the dub of a dub of a dub anyway, the "original" quality wasnt that great. I tried for a while to find out who the band was. I played it for the few friends I had. They laughed and said it sucked. I called the radio stations, even the college underground station and they didnt know. Eventually I gave up, but I never stopped listening to it. I cant remember when I first saw the Teen Spirit video. It must have been one of the first times it was on MTV. I was living with my aunt and uncle and cousin (mom's side of the family) at the time and they had cable, my cousin would have MTV on pretty much 24/7, MTV and 90210 and Seinfeld were the only things she'd watch. I remember I was in the kitchen, doing their dishes, and she came in and turned the channel. I cant remember what I was watching but I wasnt really watching it anyway so she changes it to MTV and I hear the voice THAT voice, MY voice, that's MY band... MY BAND... on MTV... and I stop what I'm doing and move to the window type thing above the sink that looks into the living room and I see Kurt for the first time and I'm just fucking blown away, that whatever I imagined him to look like was just shattered, And jesus christ those eyes... and I'm thinking this is something, this is going to be something cuz my cousin is loving it and I'm thinking oh god everyone's going to like them but it's MY band, he's MINE, you cant listen to him, that's mine, you can't have him, that's for ME.... and I was sad cuz I knew I was losing something special, I'm sure everyone has experienced the joy of being the first you know to like a band or author only to see them explode in popularity and get tainted by success. I knew this was going to happen to them, to who? I didn't even know their name, and then the guitar gets smashed and A denial A denial A denial..... and then the little video name tag comes on and I got the joke Kurt, Nirvana... ha! and the album title "Nevermind" how cute, they're gonna be fucking huge, if some idiot like cousin Mandy is saying this guy is cuter than ll cool j, then Nirvana is gonna be huge... and the album is called "nevermind" how smart, how ironic. I always got the irony. Kurt was a great comedian.

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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