Slinkp, for the record, I was being caustic and snappy/quippy:
- Cobain's death was tragic. Anybody that young (and as a father and husband) and - physically - healthy (discounting his heroin addiction) committing suicide is bad.
- He had his own approach to guitar playing and songwriting, I always credit originality. I like Neil Young's anarchy approach to lead guitar playing and if you like Young (Neil, not Angus or Malcolm), it's kind of difficult to not at least appreciate some of the stuff Cobain did. Of course it was good that his parents let him play guitar (it wasn't good that he had a gun at home nor that he knew how to use it, IMHO), any person should play guitar if he wants and Cobain's musical outlook certainly seemed to fill a void with many people waiting for something new to happen when the LA metal scene had run stale. You said that very nicely and aptly:
"... he was lucky enough to tap a raw cultural nerve at a time when popular music on the airwaves was really pretty dreadfullly devoid of anything resembling inspiration. I'll always be glad Nirvana came along."
And, admittedly, there would be no Kiss - Carnival of Souls or (probably even) Alice in Chains - Dirt without him and those are the (don't laugh, I know it's uncool not to name something from Soundgarden, Nirvana or Pearl Jam here) the Grunge-(influenced) albums I dig most. I won't mention how I like some of Nickelback and - gulp! - Creed too, stadium grunge so to say. Hey, I have even written one song whose chorus goes D major, F# minor - so far so good, but here it comes - C major (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and then - release air! - A major. I guess you can call me a disciple just for that! :mrgreen: It's a chord sequence I would have categorically refused prior to some of Nirvana creeping into how I hear music.