FEELING STUPID & CONTAGIOUS The Kurt Cobain Demos Hoax
Apr 14, 2010
About our so-called Nirvana news. Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bum.
BY FRED MILLS
A wise man once proposed that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. In the case of Nirvana fans, however, it turns out you can fool nearly all of them all of the time. Even if the date on the calendar reads April 1.
Let's be honest: at this stage in the evolution of the internet it's pretty safe to assume that each year, when the calendar rolls over from March 31, bullshit will rise like the tides over the course of the next 24 hours. All across the pop culture landscape, jokes and pranks are rolled out with such unselfconscious glee you'd think the date was an international religious holiday. The fact that major web institutions like Google and YouTube have also been getting into the act of late (remember YouTube's upside-down "New Viewing Experience" last year?) means that for netizens, on April 1, incredulity - and a healthy sense of humor - is the order of the day. (PCWorld.com has a nice roundup of its "Top 10 April Fool's Day News Items" for both 2009 and 2010; this year's "TEXTp" prank was particularly sweet.)
Hell, it's not even that the internet is the root cause; it's merely an enabler and accelerator. April Fool's Day goofs and gags have been part of the social fabric since cavemen were doing pull-my-finger jokes on each other; my dear old granny, who was actually born on April 1 and therefore knew a thing or two about pranking and being pranked, used to regale me with choice anecdotes from her childhood. So woe is he or she who, in 2010, doesn't approach that golden date with at least a modicum of squint-eyed suspicion and a grain or two of salt, and those who feel chapped when they do fall prey to a well-laid prank probably get what they deserve. Never forget: humor will pull you through times of no money better than money will pull you through times of no humor. Or something like that.
Naturally, then, BLURT has indulged our inner bullshit artist in the two years we've been publishing (and before that, when we were known as Harp magazine), along with hundreds if not thousands of other music-related websites and blogs. Among the various bogus news items that have appeared at BLURT bearing the April 1 dateline was this year's "Early Kurt Cobain Demos Unearthed" in which we faithfully reported on (well, "faithfully" in the sense of being faithful to the spirit of April Fool's Day...) the unearthing of "a trove of dusty Phillips cassettes purchased by a self-styled ‘junker' at an Aberdeen, Wash., garage sale" that turned out to be childhood recordings made by Kurt Cobain.
Hey, it could happen! According to the news item, some 30 tapes with the initials "KDC" (for "Kurt Donald Cobain") were subsequently verified by experts like Butch Vig and Jack Endino as being the work of Cobain, and the individual who discovered them at the garage sale was now in negotiations with the Cobain estate and Nirvana's record label to sell them and, ultimately, have them officially released in some format. Like I said - it could happen.
Of course, once the reader stopped hyperventilating from this momentous slice of Nirvana-dom ("...earliest known Cobain material in existence... [valued in] the seven figure range...") and got into the meat of the article, a few big hints, to say the least, were dropped regarding the story's dubious authenticity. Nevermind (sorry) the 04/01/2010 date prominently displayed under the headline. What to make of passages like this:
Several of the song titles focus on people and events circa 1974-75: "Nixon Must Die (Or Resign)"; "I Wanna Be Just Like a Weatherman"; "Carlos the Jackal"; "Shazam!"; and the collection's lone cover, a ukulele version of the Steve Miller Band's "The Joker."
Or this:
"It is worth noting that even at that age you could hear the initial stirrings of his trademark rasp - kinda like any kid sounds after he's been punched in the throat a couple of times, actually. A few recurring lyrical motifs, somewhat precocious on one level and disturbing on another, do provide ad hoc foreshadowing... such as in ‘...Weatherman' where he sings in a kind of taunting tone of voice, ‘You'll wish you were dead/ When I point my gun at your head.' That's followed by the popping sound of a kid's cap gun."
Or this:
As Cobain's mother, Wendy, told a Seattle newspaper reporter, "Kurt really was a surly, unpleasant child to be around, and while he's been characterized as being the type of musician who didn't like to play with just anyone, it was actually the other way around - nobody wanted to play with him."
That crackling noise in the ears? It's the sound of a low-wattage lightbulb over your head dimly flickering and coming to life.
***
Well, not everywhere it seems. We got a number of emails and postings on our Facebook wall about the story, most of them from folks who'd spotted it on the BLURT site and had figured it out; each time we confirmed that it was in fact a joke. But after we put the link out via our Twitter feed, the Cobain story slowly started hitting the web - and getting reported as genuine news.
For example, the following morning, Friday, April 2, The Music Industry Report posted a capsule version (along with a link back to BLURT) that read thusly:
30-track collection reportedly dates back to the Nirvana frontman's childhood; estimated as being worth "seven figures" or more. A trove of dusty Phillips cassettes purchased by a self-styled "junker" at an Aberdeen, Wash., garage sale have turned out to be early demo recordings by the late Kurt Cobain. It marks the first time since the 2004 Nirvana box set With the Lights Out that heretofore unheard Cobain material has surfaced, and Nirvana experts are hailing the 30-plus tracks - some of them full songs, others just "sketches" - as likely representing the earliest known Cobain material in existence.....
Scattered other websites and blogs posted in similar fashion that day and into the weekend, sometimes linking back to the original story and sometimes not (or sometimes linking to another site that had linked to BLURT). Then on Monday, a perfect storm arrived: April 5 was the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide, which ensured that of any day out of the entire year, music fans deploying the internet search terms "Kurt Cobain" or "Nirvana" would be out in full force, combing the web for stories about their fallen hero. The uptick in web traffic at BLURT, and in particular the number of hits on the page for the Cobain article, was dramatic; we've rarely had a feature, review, blog or news item draw as many eyes in a small amount of time as "Early Kurt Cobain Demos Unearthed." We subsequently tweeted about the matter, hinting broadly that people should check the date of the original story, but the tweet apparently went ignored.
Over the next 24 hours scores of music- or entertainment-related outlets picked up the Cobain piece. KROQ-FM in Los Angeles broadcast a short newsclip during one of their music talk segments, while among the more prominent publications to cover it was Spin with a lengthy account containing a link back to BLURT. After a day or so, someone at the magazine apparently realized it was fake so they took it down off their site, but as of this writing the text is still cached on the web. Compare it to the original BLURT version and notice how diligently the Spin reporter rewrote it in order to not commit plagiarism:
Kurt Cobain's Childhood Demos Unearthed: A box of cassette tapes, unearthed by an anonymous collector at an Aberdeen, Wash., garage sale, might prove to be the earliest known home recordings by a pre-teen Kurt Cobain. According to Blurt, The KDC Tapes -- named after the magic marker scrawlings of the singer's initials on each cassette -- feature a grade school aged Cobain singing original songs with titles like "Nixon Must Die (Or Resign)," "I Wanna Be Just Like a Weatherman," and a cover of Steve Miller Band's "The Joker," with accompanying ukelele. [sic]
Through an attorney, the individual that discovered the tapes has contacted the Cobain estate, and the recordings' authenticity has been verified by producers Butch Vig and Jack Endino, both of whom worked with Nirvana. Now, the collector is reportedly in negotiations to sell the tapes to the late icon's estate and his record label.
So what do the bedroom jams of an eight- or nine-year-old Cobain sound like? "There's nothing there that would really give a blindfold test listener the sense that Cobain would go on to form one of the biggest bands on the planet, although it is worth nothing that even at that age you could hear the initial stirrings of his trademark rasp," a source who's heard the tapes told Blurt. "At least three songs contain the word 'vagina,' each part of some childlike rhyming scheme, one of them being 'your mama,'" the source continued. "[T]here's an unusual fixation on firearms too, such as in 'Weatherman' where he sings in a kind of taunting tone of voice, 'You'll wish you were dead / When I point my gun at your head.' That's followed by the popping sound of a kid's cap gun."
It's an eerie association, especially today, on the 16th anniversary of Cobain's 1994 suicide in Seattle.
Right after the story was posted, Spin put it out on their Twitter feed (Kurt Cobain's childhood demos unearthed + a look back at Nirvana's first SPIN cover story in '92. http://bit.ly/9F5Uen 12:18 PM Apr 5th via TweetDeck), and that, along with other sites' retweets and tweets about their own stories, prompted a kind of Kurt Cobain Demos mini-feeding frenzy, as this Twitter queue (abbreviated; it originally ran in excess of 100 tweets) amply demonstrates.
By April 10 there were so many versions of the story on the web, quite a few in foreign languages, that we gave up counting ‘em. At this point most accounts were linking back to one of the April 5/6 stories and not to BLURT - if they bothered to link back at all. (Apparently "modern journalism" for the web translates as "stealing is okay as long as you call it ‘aggregating'," or, "Attribution? How do you spell that?") You can readily imagine how the whole deal spiraled out of control once the story became untethered both temporally and proximately from its original source. Try Googling the search term "Kurt Cobain demos" or a variation thereof and see for yourself.
Ironically, in the middle of all this, a rumor hit the entertainment world that Twilight hunk Robert Pattinson had been tapped to play Cobain in an upcoming biopic, with many of the same websites who posted the Cobain demos story reporting on the rumor. It was quickly debunked, however, and those sites just as quickly posted the updated information. Meanwhile, however, our bogus story continued its wobbly trajectory across the web, unchallenged.
Actually, along the way a few (I stress "few") writers and editors plus the administrator of a Nirvana fan site, no doubt each experiencing a case of Raised Eyebrow Syndrome, contacted BLURT about the story, and each time we filled them in as to was going on. In some instances, websites added updates or disclaimers to indicate they now knew or suspected it was an April Fool's joke. Doh! A blogger for highly respected online magazine Crawdaddy!, for example, took it all in the spirit in which it was originally offered, writing, "Damned April Fools Day! We posted this bulletin when we originally spotted the news on Friday, 4/2, but at that point we couldn't shake the feeling that we'd been duped. I mean, the statement from the anonymous source is pretty ridiculous, and there were plenty of shenanigans going around. But now Spin and other blogs and sites have corroborated, so, here's what we said about it Friday...."
Others, sad to say, not only took our story at face value but refused to believe they might have been fooled even after their own readers expressed doubts. A blogger posting as the "Generation X Examiner" for Examiner.com, really went above and beyond in rewriting the original piece - pay close attention to the embellishments designed to liven up the text and provide additional gravitas:
Earliest known Kurt Cobain demo tapes found at garage sale: One lucky man in Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, Washington went to a garage sale and wound up buying some of Kurt Cobain's earliest demo tapes.
The 30-plus music tracks are thought to be some of the earliest known Kurt Cobain material in existence. The lucky guy bought a bunch of Phillips cassette tapes with the initials KDC marked on them in a black marker. The "KDC" is what got the garage sale buyer interested. KDC likely stands for Kurt Donald Cobain.
When the buyer got home and listened to the tapes, he was certain he was listening to a young Kurt Cobain's music, so he contacted a music industry lawyer. That lawyer got in contact with Cobain's record label and estate. Eventually the cassettes were verified as legitimate by music producers Butch Vig and Jack Endino. The lucky garage sale finder is now set to make a huge figure, potentially a million dollars or more, for the sale of those Cobain cassette tapes.
Here's the deal, according to blurt-online.com, the cassette tapes are actually from around 1975 when Kurt Cobain was just 8-9 years old. The songs feature Cobain playing acoustic guitar and the ukulele while singing. Someone is playing some sort of drums, though no one knows who that person is. Apparently there are a few songs that focus on guns and some of Cobain's childhood lyrics are, "You'll wish you were dead, when I point my gun at your head." Unfortunately Cobain died the same way he sang about as a child, by a gunshot to the head.
Due to the fact that Nirvana's music is still popular today, and the legend of Kurt Cobain has continued to live on, the cassette tapes will eventually be heard by fans. Cobain's label is trying to purchase the tapes from the garage sale buyer and it's likely at least parts of the songs will be used to create another way to make money off Kurt Cobain's memory. Cobain died 16 years ago as of Monday.
Apparently common sense died on Monday, April 5, 2010 too. As you can see in the comments section of the Examiner.com story, a couple of sharp-eyed readers realized it was an April Fool's gag but the blogger wasn't having nothin' of that, retorting huffily, "Just because something was written on April 1 does not make it an April Fools [sic] joke. There is nothing on the original site that says it is or was a joke and I am not the only writer to cover it... Responsible journalists don't put up prank articles, otherwise they have no journalistic integrity. Bringing a story to light for those interested in the story, is what goes on every day online and in print media and on the 10 o'clock news. You will note that I let my readers know where I got my info and provided a link to their site, that's what I do."
Yow. That's a pretty scary position to take, for a writer presumably charged with getting the facts straight before reporting on a story. The voice of sanity finally prevailed when an Examiner.com reader posted a comment that actually gets to the heart of the matter at hand:
Of course there would be nothing in the story saying it was an April Fools [sic] joke; that would defeat the purpose wouldn't it? The same site also had another news story that day about an equally unlikely Capt Beefheart tour... The story was really not "covered on other sites." All those sites did was regurgitate the Blurt story. You'll note that no one added any new information. If it had a [sic] been a real story, another outlet would've followed it up and tried to get more quotes. Other sites have now realized the story was a joke and taken it down (like Spin). There's been no new coverage. It was a great prank though.
Hmmm. Dunno if the prank was "great," as we just pulled it out of thin air in about ten minutes one ultra-caffeinated morning, but thanks for the kudos. More important, however, thanks for underscoring a point I'm trying to make. Away from the safe haven of April 1, I'm certain I've been guilty of slapping up onto our site my own share of half-assed, poorly-sourced music news, and as recently as last October I fell for that notorious Chuck Biscuits Death Hoax and posted it (then followed up when I realized I'd been duped along with plenty others). Other times I've copied and pasted text straight from p.r. news releases, a practice which for better or for worse appears to be common on the web.
But I'm still troubled by so-called journalists and bloggers who in their manic rush to generate content for their sites and blogs (not to mention their drive to "be on top of a story" while it's breaking across the web) are too lazy to question the content they are aggregating or regurgitating, regardless of how patently ridiculous it might be, like the Cobain yarn. No wonder the public's faith in journalism is at an all time low.
This all means that in the long run, the joke is actually on the readers, only they ain't laughing, and neither am I. It's enough to make you lose faith in the sanctity of April Fool's Day, because on the internet, it seems, it's April Fool's Day every day. As of this day, April 14, only a handful of the pundits who "reported" on the Cobain demos story have amended their reports to reflect the fact that it was erroneous, which suggests that someone who comes across it a month or a year or five years from now just might take it at face value.
As a wise man once proposed, a sucker is born every minute. Stupid and contagious, indeed.
[Photo Credit: from Nirvana MTV Unplugged]
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