To the Editor:
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Marsh’s attempt to blame Cobain’s death indirectly on the punk aesthetic (and, by extension, on the situationists for some arcane reason) strikes me as not only disingenuous but incredibly inept: after acting as a cheerleader for overrated artists like Bruce Springsteen for years, Marsh should know better than to blame punk for squelching rock’s liberating spirit. As manufactured as punk might’ve been, it certainly beat the hell out of the constipated arena-rock churned out by the likes of Styx and Journey. So much for questions of comparative “artificiality,” eh?
Cobain’s death was a tragedy, and reducing the weight of that tragedy to one rock critic’s need for pointless theorizing about an artistic root cause isn’t even insulting: it’s merely pathetic. Cobain’s death needed explanation; it’s just too bad that the Bob Greene in rock-and-roll drag piece that Marsh wrote does nothing to provide it.
