Aberdeens Influence on Kurt Cobain Essay -- Music Essays

Aberdeens Influence on Kurt CobainThe towns of Hoquiam and Aberdeen are located on the easterly process of Grays Harbor in western Washington state. If you are a fan of the band Nirvana, you have probably heard of these names. If not, you are about to read how a town affected a person who in turn affected many peoples lives. Kurt Cobain was the singer and guitarist for Nirvana. He was born in Hoquiam (population 9,000) and after half dozen months of life moved to Aberdeen (pop. 16,500), an old lumber town at the eastern-most point of Grays Harbor. The town is about four miles wide and three miles long. On the northern and eastern sides of town are steep hills where the richer families live in Victorian-style houses. At the foot of the hills is the poorer part of Aberdeen where Kurt grew up. (Gilmore 44) Seattle is known to get a lot of rain. Aberdeen gets more they get up to seven feet a year. The rain casts a constant, dreary pall over the town (Azerrad 11). Route 12 into Aberdeen is bordered by an endless succession of lagger parks with forests of trees behind them that have vast stubbly scars where the loggers have been clear-cutting (12). To author Sallie Tisdale, Hoquiam and Aberdeen are sprawling and untidy and dull, mediocre, undecorative towns. Almost all the views of the water are marred by piles of logs and steaming mills. (213) Aberdeen and Hoquiam are two of the oldest logging, sawmilling, and paper-manufacturing towns in the Northwest. Paper-producing companies, like Weyerhaeuser, ITT Rayonier, and others, have their mills here. (Fodors 139) Logging used to dominate Aberdeen. But business has been declining recently and layoffs are turning Aberdeen into a ghost town. One of the biggest mills wh... ... Cobain is dead at the age of 27. He leaves behind a wife who loved him, a daughter who will never know him and millions of strangers whose lives have been enriched because he lived. (53) Works CitedAzerrad, Michael. Come As You Are the Story of Nirvana. advanced York Doubleday, 1994. Fodors peace-loving North Coast. New York Fodors Travel Publications, Inc., 1989. Gilmore, Mikal. The Road From Nowhere. Rolling Stone. 2 Jun. 1994 44-46, 53. Jeschke, Rebecca A., ed. Lets Go The Budget Guide to the Pacific Northwest, Western Canada, and Alaska. New York St. Martins Press, 1993. Mundy, Chris. The Lost Boy. Rolling Stone. 2 Jun. 1994 51-53. Oberrecht, Kenn. Driving the Pacific Coast, Oregon, and Washington. Chester, Connecticut The Globe Pequot Press, 1990. Tisdale, Sallie. Stepping Westward. New York Henry Holt and Company, 1991.