I stuck with Melissa Ferrick for a while until realizing that I was only enjoying a song or two from the albums after her second one, Willing to Wait and the second Eve's Plum album, Cherry Alive! wasn't as good as the first. Aside from the song "Jesus loves you (but not as much as I do)" which I loved. Liz and Hole were the only two that really stuck with me. I got Pretty on the Inside in the spring of 1993, when I was at Toys R Us. I remember getting it from Camelot Music. There was a musicseller there who helped me often, who had been there since I was in high school, buying lush's Gala album. (How do I remember this??) When I bought Pretty on the Inside, she said she'd heard about this, but wondered how it was. And in fact, it was unlike anything I'd ever heard. I was in awe. Just as Tori Amos a year before had moved me by baring her soul in hushed whispers, Courtney Love shook me by baring hers with kicks and screams. Weirdly enough, the first time I remember hearing Joni Mitchell's "Both sides now" was as part of the title track. I listened to it a lot and it ended up inspiring a lot of uncharacteristic writing. In the original article I read, Courtney was speculating about which record company would sign the band, since they were getting a lot of buzz, partly due to Courtney being Kurt's girlfriend. I remember she said she thought it would be Madonna's Maverick Records.
They ended up being signed to Geffen Records and just a week before Hole's second album, Live Through This, was going to be released, Kurt shot himself on April 5, 1994. I liked Nirvana. I had Nevermind and In Utero and liked them both. But I guess it makes sense, having always had a preference for women musicians, that I had connected more with the Hole album and was a much bigger fan of theirs. I was coming back from a trip to Georgia with my dad and Dave when I heard that Kurt was dead. It was such a shock and I remember thinking just as much about Courtney that day. I think I tend to think a lot about those who get left behind when someone dies. Particularly when it's a case of suicide. Having had an uncle who shot himself (and this past year, a grandfather), the pain and shock of finding out that someone you love has ended their life so violently is something I get. It's why whatever dark thoughts I have when everything seems hopeless, I know that suicide is something I could never do. Not to the people I love. That day, when we got home from our trip, I lighted some candles in my room and listened to Nevermind with MTV playing silently in the background showing the memorial in Seattle. Probably thousands of people were doing the same thing. Every time I hear "Come as you are" I can't help but hearing the lyric "i swear that i don't have a gun" and bitterly thinking, Fucking liar.
About a week later, Live Through This came out and it was powerful. Yeah, probably more powerful in this new context. Courtney Love shouting in "Violet" - "go on take everything take everything take everything" and in "Asking for it" - "if you live through this with me/i swear that i will die for you" meant something different now and it was like a punch in the stomach. The band's third and final album, Celebrity Skin, was a bit more mainstream and not as interesting as the first two discs and I never listened to Courtney's solo album. Hole still plays on my ipod and oddly enough, I discovered that when I moved I had brought with me all three of my Hole t-shirts. I don't have any Concrete Blonde t-shirts with me at all... but Hole? One day I wore one to work and Impossible Crush noticed it, saying that he had the same t-shirt in college. I haven't worn it since.
next time: look and you'll find that someone wants to love you
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