<\/p>\n
It’s a crisp <\/span>Seattle<\/span> morning outside, but I am warm inside The Clover, a KC-Ike smells just like you’d expect him to: flannel, canvas, Head & “It’s weird, but cool, y’know?” he says, still chomping on sugar KC-Ike draws a lot of attention here once people notice him. People who were “I don’t really care.”<\/p>\n People are grabbing his shirt sleeves and trying to untie his shoes, but he “I don’t really have to worry about keeping up with anyone’s expectations The reference to Hendrix is a sly one, and I push him on it. Long before there “Oh, yeah. Having Hendrix the Icon over there, going before me…that made This Hendrix hearsay may have been said in jest, but it rings with truth. KC-Ike seems oblivious to this, though. In fact, through our conversation it “Who?” he asks.<\/p>\n What about his former wife, Courtney Love, flashing her tits on the Letterman “I don’t really like Letterman that much,” he replies. “That Are the Vines really the next Nirvana?<\/p>\n “I hope not.” He pauses. “Actually, no. I don’t think that’s We are heading towards City Hall for KC-Ike’s first appearance of the day when “Who are all these fucks?” he asks. He looks over at his shoulder at “No way,” he says. “These people must be looking for a quick I try to convince him that, yes, these are the same people who used to buy “Let’s get a cab,” he suggests.<\/p>\n We arrive at City Hall and I can’t open my door because of the throng of people KC-Ike stands behind the podium and looks down at his shoes, and it begins. “On behalf of the Seattle Bureau of Tourism, I thank you, Mr. She quickly returns to her seat, and with a rehearsed motion, the person next “On behalf of Viacom and its subsidiaries, I thank you, Mr. Cobain!”<\/p>\n And it goes on and on.<\/p>\n “On behalf of the Class of 1991…”<\/p>\n “On behalf of Riverhead Trade…”<\/p>\n “On behalf of Clear Channel Media Group…”<\/p>\n “On behalf of Fender Guitars…”<\/p>\n “On behalf of…”<\/p>\n “On behalf…”<\/p>\n “On…”<\/p>\n They speak their piece, and they hand him certificates printed on high stock Back in the cab, KC-Ike smiles. The man in the suit hands him the stack of From his back pocket, KC-Ike pulls out a small, black kit. He taps, he flicks, “It’s not like that every day,” he says. “It’s just because of “It’s just…the songs, y’know? My songs. They’re…I’m not sure if…I’m He pauses a long time, then begins to giggle, a dry, chopped laugh. “I He slides down in his seat, looking at nothing through hungover eyes. I tell the “You know where this guy is going?” I ask.<\/p>\n “Naw,” he says. He’s an old black man, looks like a refugee from the Chicago<\/span> blues scene. “Where to?” He turns around and “He won’t rob you,” I say. “Don’t you know who this is?”<\/p>\n “Don’t know and don’t care to, son.”<\/p>\n “Just drive around till this runs out.” I hold out some cash. He considers the money for a moment then puts the car back into gear and sighs.<\/p>\n “Oh well, whatever…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,403,353],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2760,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nvelvet-draped coffeehouse on <\/span>Grand Street<\/span>. John Mayer’s cumbersome voice trickles out of the
\nceiling speakers, battling with the milk steamer for auditory dominance of all
\nthe citizens around me. The place is littered with twenty-somethings writing in
\nnotebooks or reading slim Vonnegut paperbacks. While I wait for my special
\nguest I flip through the paper. On page four of the Metro section someone had
\nkilled himself with barbed wire. Even though people are still drinking coffee
\nand killing themselves, <\/span>Seattle<\/span> of 2004 is not the same place it used to be. No one
\nknows this better than Kurt Cobain the Icon (or KC-Ike as he likes to be
\ncalled), and as he shuffles through the double doors and scans the room for me,
\nhis whitewashed eyes reflect the changes of a decade. He ignores the long line
\nat the counter and sits down across from me with his hands empty. Without
\nsaying hello, he withdraws three packets of raw sugar from the dispenser, tears
\nthe corners off diagonally, and then tips them so that the contents of all
\nthree pour into his mouth evenly. For him, this is breakfast, part of his daily
\nroutine. He gets up late and usually doesn’t get really started after lunch,
\nwhich is all right by me. I’m tagging along with him today in order to get a
\nglimpse of what being a Generational Icon is like.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nShoulders. And he carries himself like Cobain did, with a disheveled air and unconscious
\nmovements. The hand slipping the long blonde hair behind his ear, the thrusting
\nforward of his entire head when he nods in agreement with something you’ve
\nsaid: these were mannerisms long before they became trademarks. And so the
\nsimilarities end between KC-Ike and Cobain. What’s it like being the modern
\nmemory of a famous corpse?<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncrystals. “I’ve come a long way since I was just a meaty mess found by an
\nunsuspecting electrician. It’s like the final scene of Willy Wonka and the
\nChocolate Factory<\/em>. Everything looks bleak, y’know? Charlie’s not going to
\nget his lifetime supply of chocolate. He’s been accused of stealing Fizzy
\nLifting Drink. He’s been told ‘Good day.’ But then, he makes that redeeming
\ndecision. He gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper. And that’s what it was like
\nwith me. I gave back what I’d stolen, this sentimental, tortured life
\nexperience, and for that I was rewarded. I got into the elevator and it blasted
\nright through the glass ceiling of celebrity. The credits rolled, but I kept
\nclimbing in the sky. That’s where I am today.”<\/p>\n
\nmerely passing by the storefront window on their way to the Starbucks down the
\nstreet have now stopped and are clawing at the glass. I expected that the
\npatrons around us might point and whisper but still keep to themselves out of
\nrespect, but it’s not like that at all. The people start tripping over each
\nother to approach KC-Ike; several are trampled. Many cry out: words of praise,
\nwords of encouragement, many thanks. KC-Ike takes it all in stride, and when I
\nconvey my apprehension, he looks at me like I’m crazy.<\/p>\n
\nsits still, almost unaware of them.<\/p>\n
\nanymore. I don’t ever have to pick up a guitar again, I don’t ever have to do
\nan interview again or a show or a meet and greet or yell my throat hoarse
\nanymore. I just exist and people come to me. I don’t have the pressures I used
\nto have anymore. I don’t have to come up with a ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit
\n(Slight Return).'”<\/p>\n
\nwas KC-Ike or even just Cobain there was Hendrix the Icon, and KC-Ike seems
\nvery familiar with him.<\/p>\n
\nit a lot easier. I’m not saying I followed in his footsteps all the time, but
\nthe ground had been broken, y’know? In the first few years of my existence I
\ndidn’t flounder around as much as I might have. People–especially people my
\nage–were so starved for someone like Hendrix, someone they could put on
\nposters and mean it, really mean<\/em> it, y’know, that I didn’t have much of
\na problem. I talk to him sometimes, and he does this grumpy old man voice,
\ny’know? ‘Back in my day we didn’t have no VH-1 or MTV to help us Icons out! We
\ndidn’t have none of this here easy-going public!’ It’s really funny.”<\/p>\n
\nNirvana was the rebellion three times removed; anyone who knows history knows
\nthat a civilization living through constant usurpations of control destabilizes
\nrapidly, and at the end of the eighties the grunge bands took over just as
\neasily as the Taliban in Afghanistan<\/span>. There simply was no resistance. Hendrix and his
\ncontemporaries, however, were fighting more than trends and demographics. They
\nwere rattling sabers with socio-political structures; they fought in the
\ntrenches for psychadelia.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbecomes more and more clear that he has a severe lack of historical and
\ncultural awareness. We have time to kill before KC-Ike’s afternoon appointments
\nstart, so we leave the Starbucks and just go walking down the street. At a
\nnewsstand he picks up a copy of Rolling Stone<\/em>. “Check it out,”
\nhe says, grinning like a five-year-old poking a frog with a stick. “They
\nput me at #2! So did Spin<\/em>, it looks like. Did you know that I’ve been #2
\nin more categories than anyone else? I take a certain satisfaction in that. I
\nmean, being consistently #2 is a lot better than being #1 only once or twice,
\nright?” He nods in agreement with himself then drops the magazine on the
\nsidewalk with a careless gesture. Without much anger he says, “When are
\nthose bastards at Guitar Magazine<\/em> going to come around?” I ask him
\nwhat he thinks of the fact that his former drummer and friend Dave Grohl is now
\nwriting music reviews for the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nshow?<\/p>\n
\nguy’s off the deep end, but not really in a good way.”<\/p>\n
\npossible.”<\/p>\n
\na new parade forms behind us, Gen Xers in marching band formation, hoisting
\ntheir instruments: PDAs, wireless phones, pagers, tie clips, Prada purse
\nbuckles, and iPods.<\/p>\n
\nthem with a queer kind of scorn. I mention that they look like his original
\nfans.<\/p>\n
\nbuck or something.”<\/p>\n
\ntickets to his shows, who wore Sub Pop t-shirts and had dub copies of Unplugged<\/em>
\nin their VCRs. But there’s no convincing him. It dawns on me that he identifies
\nthe kind of people we saw fawning over him in the coffeehouse with his typical
\nfan: cords and dingy t-shirts, Chuck Taylors and dog-tags. For some reason, his
\nmind cannot grasp the fact that people move on, that they must get jobs, move
\nout of their parents’ homes and, often, undergo identity changes.<\/p>\n
\non the sidewalk. KC-Ike’s cool air of separation has not prepared me for the
\nmaelstrom we actually enter. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses clears people
\naway from the cab and opens the door for us. He has an earpiece and in his
\nlapel is a pin, a small gold replica of the Visible Woman. He shoulders his way
\nthrough the crowd trying to clear a path for KC-Ike; he fires a small pistol
\nseveral times into the air. The people at the edges of the fleshy fray shudder
\nfor a second with each blast, but are almost immediately back to screaming like
\nmad and clawing at KC-Ike. His flannel shirt is torn to shreds before he gets
\nto the podium at the top of the steps. I barely manage to stay in the wake, and
\nwhen I arrive at my assigned spot a few steps away from the podium I feel like
\nI’ve just stepped back onto shore after a long trip on a sailboat.<\/p>\n
\nThere are about five hundred people sitting in padded oak chairs to his left,
\nfacing the crowd. Without any introduction, the person closest to the podium
\n(rightmost seat, front row) stands up, walks with a brilliant smile to the
\npodium, and leans into the bouquet of microphones. She is an older woman, about
\nforty, with colorless hair; her dress looks like something Barbara Bush gave to
\nGoodwill. The PA system carries her voice out over the writhing crowd.<\/p>\n
\nCobain!”<\/p>\n
\nto her rises and approaches with a stiff gait, this time, an older gentleman
\ncarrying seventy extra pounds.<\/p>\n
\npaper, affixed with gold seals and all manner of ribbons and signed with
\nballpoint pens in broad, politician-style strokes. KC-Ike takes each
\ncertificate with a small smile and places them carefully on the podium. By the
\nend of the afternoon the stack almost comes up to the top of his head. When all
\nthe representatives are finished, the man in the suit comes back and pushes us
\nthrough the crowd again, causing the mass of people to wail with even more
\nfrenzy. KC-Ike is showered with joints, folded notes, guitar picks, bras, even
\ninfants and little Ziploc baggies of china white. But KC-Ike has his hands in
\nhis pockets. He catches nothing; he accepts nothing, though this is no
\ndeterrent to the maniacs. The more debris that ricochets off of him, the more
\nintense the crowd becomes in their efforts. The mob believes in odds, and the
\nchances are if enough personal effects are thrown, something will have to catch
\nhis eye, something will at least catch an edge of his garments and stick.
\nSomething, anything…<\/p>\n
\ncertificates, slams the door, and pats the trunk of the cab twice. We take off.<\/p>\n
\nhe melts. He pours, he cinches, he slaps. He pokes, he plunges. The syringe
\ncomes out clean, bloodless.<\/p>\n
\nthe anniversary thing. Then you’ve got the decade thing on top of that. But I
\nusually get something like this at least once a week. It’s nice and all, the
\ncrowd gets bigger each time, but I’m getting a little bored with it. Just a
\nlittle. It’s not really boredom, though, it’s more like…I don’t see what the
\nfuss is all about. I literally don’t.” I push him for an explanation, but
\nhe’s getting lost.<\/p>\n
\nnot sure how they…er…how the strum of them used to go. They change ’em
\naround. I sold them. Krist…the words…oh well…y’know, I’m not even
\nsure…if grunge even existed.”<\/p>\n
\nthink I would know if I could just remember how the songs went.”<\/p>\n
\ncabbie to pull over.<\/p>\n
\nnotices KC-Ike’s situation for the first time. “Shit, I don’t need this.
\nThis guy might rob me when he wakes up. You take him.”<\/span><\/p>\n
\n“Someone will find him.”<\/p>\n