Kristin Hersh Meets Nirvana. Or, When to Just Say F*ck It.

Yesterday on the way home I was listening to music on shuffle, and Kristin Hersh’s cover of Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea” came on.

I love Kristin Hersh and LOVE her work with Throwing Muses! But, whenever I hear her name, my mind drifts to songs like “Your Ghost” a duet with Michael Stipe from her amazing 1994 debut solo album, Hips and Makers:



And almost under the clunk-whomp-thwack of the train via my headphones came this almost guttural primal scream making me want to recheck the track listing to see if this really was Kristin Hersh. Not angry necessarily, just deep and true and honest and freeing. A sound full of creative power holding back zero reservations. Now if you weren’t familiar with her work with Throwing Muses and just knew of her solo work, this cover may just take you as a surprise. It seems a complete 180 turn in the vocals.

And it got me thinking, about how empowering it is to just shake it up, do something different, make people check that track listing/schedule/blog feed/show listing and just go for it. Learn a new skill, try a new route home, test a new recipe, whatever. Just need to step out of what you think you are, or what other people think you are and just say fuck* it.

Because you know what? You may just fucking** nail it like Kirstin Hersh does on this covers album. And when that happens? It feels pretty freakin’ good.


Where can you hear this amazing Nirvana covers album? Over here at the brilliant music blog that is Music is Art.

*Sorry, Mom.
**Even sorrier.

here comes the rain again.

This summer marks the 14 year anniversary of my first independent music purchase, Yoyo Recordings comp, Throw:

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The fact that I am actually reminiscing about the passage of time makes me break out into a cold sweat. Suddenly, my mind conjures images of my dad’s friends cornering me during holiday parties telling me about how they weren’t quite sure how they ended up an accountant or stockbroker instead of a ship captain or national Scrabble champion.

Then I turn on the television and am bombarded with diet ads and Bob Greene telling me it’s “never too late!” What if you wanted to circumvent the party from the beginning? Not because you wanted to be unruly or angsty, but because you had a better party to attend? Everytime I hear that it is “never too late,” my brain reassembles it to scream, “why did you give up in the first place?”

I feel like we have come full-circle from 15 years ago when I was loving my green Chuck Taylors and swathed in flannel and rabbiting on about new releases on this great new label called Kill Rock Stars. I hadn’t start to care about politics yet (outside of every 7th graders devotion to Greenpeace), but was loving the repercussions of a Republican-era, the rebellion of art and music.

When Dubya was ‘elected’ in 2000, there was talk of taking solace in the fact that whenever our country is under a conservative regime, creativity flourishes. There were some spits and starts, but nothing really like what I saw taking place in the early 90s. In a fit of summertime remembrance and nostalgia brought on by boredom, I have pulled out my old Nirvana and Bikini Kill and Hole albums and have begun to remember that sense of hope that I had when I was 15.

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I have tacked old skate photos on my home office wall and shutout all the bad memories of jaded people wearing ill-suited clothes babbling about ill-suited careers. (The above photo of Sam Cunningham (who is still skating!) is from the August 1988 issue of Transworld. Even though I was horrible at skating myself, skating has never ceased to inspire me.) Because as I scream out lyrics from my teenage years in the solitude of my home, I’m not trying to relive high school. I’m trying to revive some semblance of faith that there is a creative bounty on the horizon.