Terrible Noise -- Nirvana

If, as the poet John Donne put it, no man is an island, the apartment dweller is not even standing in sight of the shore. He or she is instead surrounded at all times, not unpleasantly per se, by activity.

And what seems to carry through the walls most easily is music. (Well, and slamming doors.) I was half-asleep in bed one morning when I heard a few bass notes. Normally this is not ideal, although I confess I do often need a little extra encouragement to get out of bed. (On top of that, I'm in no position to write a long complaint, because I think the person who plays his music loudly the most often around my building is me. Glass houses, etc.) But what caught my attention that morning was that, in place of the usual indecipherable thumping, I could make out the song, which was by Nirvana. So, instead of being hounded out of bed, I stayed and listened for a while, at least until two or three Nirvana songs were followed by an AC/DC number, at which point I figured I might as well take a shower. When I got out, it was back to what I was pretty sure was the album "In Utero."

I should have written this column back in April, when Nirvana was in the news for the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, but I have to confess that, while I like Nirvana, I'm not exactly a fan of Nirvana. Some bands get big enough that everyone likes them, more or less, or at least they might be said to be well-liked by the culture considered as a whole. Take The Who, for instance, about whom I think the same could be said, despite their being heard most often these days as the stinger for murder-related quips on "CSI: Miami." I think The Who are great. But I don't own any of their albums, and I don't think I know anyone who listens to them regularly. They are, of course, still in heavy rotation at any given oldies station.

Nirvana occupies slightly similar territory for me. So it took "the culture considered as a whole" -- manifest in this case as my neighbor -- to get me thinking about Nirvana.

I do own some Nirvana albums, and I do have a favorite, though it seems to me a slightly unorthodox one: their "MTV Unplugged" recording. Now, in theory, I can see an argument for a live album being the best summation of any given musician's work, especially if they put on a particularly unique show. But in practice I don't own many live albums and I don't often listen to the ones I own. They seem like a good idea, rarely well executed. This one is an exception. One might expect, upon revisiting it, some hint of grim presentiment, like looking at photographs of people boarding the Titanic. Instead, as far as I have ever been able to hear, you get a band confident in its abilities and perhaps ready to stretch them beyond what grunge has come to mean, all these years later.

* Simon Sizer is the legal notice and obituary clerk at the Yakima Herald-Republic. He is constantly prattling on about music, so we gave him this column. It runs every two weeks.