Monthly Archives: September 2012

Kurt Cobain and Nirvana

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Kurt Cobain and Nirvana

Nirvana, one of the most inspirational bands of all time, of course is going to be one of the bands to be featured on this list. This is a list of the most influential media figures right?

What is it that made this band so inspiring? In order to understand why they were so inspiring we must look at what inspired the band. Kurt Cobain, the front man, lead guitarist, and lead song writer was inspired by bands such as the Beatles and Black Sabbath. Kurt was also inspired by local bands to the Seattle area such as the Melvins. These influences helped Kurt to discover what kind of sound he wanted to have. He wanted to be catchy and poppy such as the Beatles, but at the same time he wanted to have the teenage angst and potency of Sabbath and the Melvins.

Nirvana was a new breed of music aimed at the lonely, the depressed, and the misfits of that generation. It was the sound of the misunderstood, and it was the voice of the voiceless. With Kurt Cobain as the spokesman of the genre, there were many who looked up to him. The music Kurt wrote spoke to millions of fans across the world giving a place to those who would otherwise feel unwanted and rejected from the world. The ironic thing about Nirvana’s music was that even though Kurt’s lyrics had a major impact on fans across the world it had little to no impact upon him. He considered his lyrics to be unimportant. He said music was the most important part and it came first then he would write the lyrics. He was more focused on the melodies that he laid out than he was about what he was writing about lyrically.

There was a very dark side to Kurt Cobain with a combination of bi-polar disorder, depression, as well as a couple problems with his stomach and lungs Kurt seemed to always have struggle within him. The divorce of his parents wasn’t a big help either. All of this with a combination of drug abuse would eventually be the demise of Kurt and the end of Nirvana. These influences did however have an impact on Kurt helping him to create the awe inspiring music that came to be Nirvana. Before his parent’s divorce Kurt was said to be a very happy outgoing child. After the divorce Kurt became more secluded and didn’t want anything to do with the rest of the world. He would isolate himself feeling ashamed of his parents and eventually of himself. At one point he befriended a homosexual and later would tell people he was gay just so that they would leave him alone. This is just one example of his tendencies to seclude and isolate himself. He did however find an escape through artistic means. He would draw and paint and then obviously write music. This was his escape from the world.

Looking at the things that Kurt wrote about gives us a clue into the mindset of the great artist. He wrote the song Polly about the kidnapping of a girl after a punk rock show who was brutally tortured with starvation and burns from a blow torch. He wrote smells like teen spirit from a piece of graffiti his girlfriend put on the wall that said “Kurt smells like teen spirit”. Teen spirit was a girl’s deodorant that his girlfriend wore and Kurt smelled like it. Kurt took it to mean that he was an inspiration to his peers. The song come as you are speaks for itself. It talks about being who you are.  He also liked to write songs about love and drug abuse things that were applicable to his own life.

Nirvana had a rough start. Kurt started the band and found fellow band member Krist Novoselic who would be the permanent bass player. Nirvana went through a series of drummers until they found Dave Grohl. With this lineup they were ready for the big leagues. Previous to finding Grohl Nirvana had been signed with a smaller label that hadn’t been great at getting their records out and promoting them. With this in mind the band found a new record label to work with that ended up skyrocketing Nirvana to new heights with their new album “Nevermind” which would become their best album.

Unfortunately three years after the successful album of “Nevermind” which was the bestselling album at one point in 1992 Kurt Cobain would commit suicide. After being placed in a rehabilitation center for his addiction to heroine Kurt jumped the wall and took a plane to Seattle. A few weeks later he would be found in his home with a shotgun wound to the head. April 8th 1994 will go down in history as one of the most tragic days in music history as the day Kurt died.

Nirvana was done just as it began. Quickly. The music will live on forever. Rolling stone has put Nevermind as one of the 100 most important albums ever written and we can see why. This one album influenced an entire generation and genre of music.

Steve Jobs

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Steve Jobs

Let me begin this by saying that I believe Steve Jobs to be one of the most influential human beings to walk the face of the earth. After reading his biography and learning about the things he was able to accomplish in his lifetime I am amazed at how many aspects of the world he helped change and reform to make them the way they are today. We could just look at his technology contributions; the IPod, the IPhone, the IPod, the Mac. We could look at the influence he had on Bill Gates and the role the two of them played in pushing each other to make the computer what it is today. We could look at so many aspects of his life. I would like to focus on his contributions as a whole. Steve Jobs in his lifetime, changed the computer, changed the music and film industry, he took a company and made it one of the most famous companies in the world. He changed the way technology was looked at. He changed the way that business and advertising are looked at now. He took a company and didn’t just make it a standard company but an artistic expression of how a business could be.

 

I would like to start with the contributions Steve made to the world of technology. Now we really can’t look at this without mentioning Bill Gates because without one the other one wouldn’t have been successful. Looking at the two of these men makes contributions and their styles more understandable. Steve wanted a computer that would have a closed system or that wouldn’t allow outside modifications or interference. Bill Gates wanted a system that would be sellable to the masses. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Steve’s way made it more difficult to sell to multiple companies whereas Bill’s was more prone to getting viruses. Steve Jobs took these ideas he had from the very first mac he produced to the modern day apple products in production now.

With his style in place he produced apples first computers which were more stylish and more modern looking than those of his competitors. Steve kept producing good computers while he was at apple the first time. While there he would push those he worked with to be better than he thought that they could be. A great example of this was apple sold some of their shares to Xerox for a chance to look at their equipment and other products that they were working on. While in the facility one of the engineers working with Steve thought he saw a program that allowed multitasking or the ability to have multiple windows open. In reality this wasn’t the case but Steve kept feeding the idea into this engineers head that he had seen this and that he could recreate it. In reality the engineer hadn’t seen this and was able to create this new program that no one had even thought of before. Steve had a reality distortion field that would help him to bend reality to his will in his own mind. This concept in his brain worked really well for his company but caused major suffering to his personal life. It was because of this reality distortion field that he could help other believe in things that otherwise would be thought impossible. He used this with this specific engineer and was then able to move technology much further.

We can also look at this story and see another major concept that was used in future concepts made by Jobs. While at Xerox Steve saw that they liked to use rounded edges for everything. He loved the look it gave Xerox’s products and wanted it for his own materials. He believed that if a product looked good that it would be twice as sellable and therefore began making all of Apple’s products more sellable by changing their looks. You can see with any apple products that they are very well made but that they also look really stylish. You will never find an Apple product that didn’t look appealing. Steve took this concept into his stores as well. If you go into an Apple store they look more like an art studio or a museum they are very stylish and very appealing to the eye. He did this as a huge selling point. You are ten times more likely to go into a store that looks nice than one that doesn’t.

We’ve talked thus far about some of the influences Steve had on technology and selling it. Let’s now look at the contributions he made to the music industry. Steve changed the way the music industry did everything. He changed this by introducing the idea to sell songs individually. This changed the whole way the music industry would sell their music. Most record companies would sell a cd with maybe one or two good songs and then the rest would suck. This new concept was one that would be a difficult transition for many record companies because it would change the way sold they would have to record and sell music. Most of these companies were hesitant but a few big players decided to try it out and the rest would soon follow. This new idea of selling individual songs worked very well for some artists and for others it was a harder transition. Because of this new way of selling music many artists began to work on smaller albums and release singles which became a new way of selling an album. The artists would now release a single beforehand and would make the album more anticipated. These influences Jobs made changed the way the music industry is ran today.

 

The last area of influence I would like to talk about that Steve had a part in is in movies and animation. After Steve was fired from Apple he went on to start a company that would end up flopping. Afterwards though he bought and began working with a company named Pixar. This company was working on a new form of animation and sent Jobs to work on a pitch to Disney for a new animated story about two toys. We now know this to be the Disney hit Toy Story which took Disney into a new world of animation and films. Steve had a major role in the interaction between these two companies. At first Disney’s president wanted major control on the projects that Pixar was working on. This ended up being a huge mistake because the guys working at Pixar knew exactly what to do to make a good film whereas the President of Disney was just fouling them up. In response the constant complaints at Pixar Steve went in and made some negotiations and worked it out to let Pixar have the control of their projects. Eventually Disney would get a new President and he bought Pixar and made them their own division of Disney and let them have complete creative control which as we can see was a huge success on Disney’s part. Thus Steve Jobs helped to change the way animation is done currently.

With all of these great points we can see why I believe Steve Jobs to be one of the most influential people in our time and possibly ever. He changed so many faces of media and changed the way we do things now and how we will do things in the future.

Randy Rhoads- A Man or a Legend

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Randy Rhoads-A Man or a Legend?

Randy Rhoads the guitar virtuoso behind Ozzy Osbourne’s first two solo albums, the genius who started Quiet Riot, the man who changed metal forever. Why is he on the list of influential figures that changed modern mass media and society itself? Let’s take a moment to review the greatest accomplishment that this man made in the short span of his musical career. He changed the way modern day solos would be approached, as well as made classical theory relevant to modern music. Before Randy nobody would have even thought of using classical scales to create a new sound a sound that would take Ozzy higher than he had ever gone before. With his hit “Crazy Train” Ozzy was able to show that his career was far from being over and Randy was able to show his skills as a trained classical musician thrown into a world of Metal fans. This new style of playing neo classical solos was something unheard of before his time. Everyone before Randy was stuck in playing blues solos. This gave both Randy and Ozzy an edge, as Randy was new to fame, this became a way of breaking the barriers into a world known for rejecting the weak and half-hearted. For Ozzy it was a way of getting back in the game after being fired from Black Sabbath.

Randy began playing guitar at the age of six at his mother’s Burbank music college. The same place where he would eventually teach during the day while gigging at nights with the local group Quiet Riot which he had helped form. He met Ozzy at the age of 22 and began working with him. Randy was a little hesitant about working with Ozzy, he being a God fearing Christian catholic who wasn’t head over heels for Black Sabbath or that which they stood for. He was willing to take a chance though on account of Ozzy’s success and his lack of success with Quiet Riot. Ozzy on the other hand was more than thrilled about the idea of Randy. When he began tryouts for the slot of guitarist all the competitors came rolling in their half stacks and working really hard to impress the singer/songwriter. Randy on the other hand brought a practice amp and began playing warm up scales and exercises. It was at that moment that Ozzy found the yin to his yang.

Ozzy and Randy began writing with bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslack. When they went into the studio it was like magic. They wrote phenomenal material that would stand the test of time. It wasn’t without hard work, blood, sweat, and some tears. Ozzy wasn’t an easy man to please and he had a lack of patience that was clearly evident in the way that he would interact with those he was working with. Randy on the other hand had the self-confidence and the ability to calm Ozzy down even when he didn’t want to be. Ozzy would get extremely impatient with Randy while Randy would work on solos because of Randy’s odd style of writing his solos. He would spend hours recording these solos where he would record them, play them back, and try something new, listen, and go back to the original tracks. As the studio payments were coming out of Ozzy’s pocket it was a frustrating concept for Ozzy to deal with. Randy on the other hand found ways around these frustrations. When he was ready to work on his solos he would send Ozzy to the local bar and would work on them while he was gone. He would spend hours working on the solos and many times Ozzy would return and Randy still wouldn’t be finished. As we can tell it was all worth it as those same solos will stand the test of time.

Randy’s flying high career was short lived within the space of a little over three years he was able to help Ozzy write two albums that would define his career, launch Ozzy into a new realm of stardom, and change the way music is now seen by all musicians. Randy not only played for keeps, but he played his heart out. The guitarist is still influencing millions of musicians to this day even after thirty years of the realease of the albums that would define him as a guitarist.

The tragic ending to his story was unfolded when a small plane he was riding in piloted by the touring bus driver came to a sudden finish into the side of a house. The sudden impact finished the amazing and short lived career of one of the greatest things to happen to music in history. What would have happened if Randy had lived? We will never know but we do know that the contributions he made are still being seen as he is still influencing thousands of musicians.