Kurt Cobain:about A Son (2007)

Product Summary Label: Barsuk Records/ada UPC: 00655173106822 Release Date: 9/11/2007 Buy.com Sku: 205121357 Item#: M3RJPY Format:  CD Song Listing Disc 1 Song Title Sample 1. Overture - Steve Fisk/Benjamin Gibbard ~ Various Artists 2. Never Intended - Arlo Guthrie ~ Various Artists 3. Motorcycle Song, The - Arlo Guthrie ~ Various Artists 4. Eye Flys - Melvins ~ Various Artists 5. Punk Rock - Melvins ~ Various Artists 6. Banned In D.C. - Bad Brains ~ Various Artists 7. Up Around The Bend - Creedence Clearwater Revival ~ Various Artists 8. Put Some Sugar On It - Half Japanese ~ Various Artists 9. Sun Of A Gun - The Vaselines ~ Various Artists 10. Graveyard - Butthole Surfers ~ Various Artists 11. Hardcore Was Dead - Butthole Surfers ~ Various Artists 12. Owner's Lament - Scratch Acid ~ Various Artists 13. Touch Me I'm Sick - Mudhoney ~ Various Artists 14. Car Radio - Mudhoney ~ Various Artists 15. Passenger, The - Iggy Pop ~ Various Artists 16. Bourgeois Blue, The - Leadbelly ~ Various Artists 17. New Orleans Intrumental No. 1 - R.E.M. ~ Various Artists 18. Limelight, The - R.E.M. ~ Various Artists 19. Man Who Sold The World, The - David Bowie ~ Various Artists 20. Museum - Mark Lanegan ~ Various Artists 21. Indian Summer - Benjamin Gibbard ~ Various Artists   Album Notes and Credits Notes & Personnel Info Liner Note Author: Michael Azerrad. Recording information: 12/1992-03/1993. Photographers: Wyatt Troll; Charles Peterson . Given that music was ostensibly the most important thing in Kurt Cobain's life, the soundtrack to the 2007 documentary ABOUT A SON offers as much insight into Cobain's heart and mind as the film itself. The collection works as both a blueprint for Cobain's musical vision, and, well, a soundtrack to his tragic life. Songs from Scratch Acid, the Melvins, and Bad Brains present the basic sonic template for Nirvana; the Vaselines and Half Japanese hint at Cobain's playful side and love of quirky pop; while CCR's "Up Around the Bend" reminds fans that Cobain was, at times, just a normal fellow from the woods. Interspersed throughout are vocal snippets of Cobain that offer a haunting counterpoint to the music while reinforcing everything it stood for in his life. More than simply a companion CD to a film, this compilation stands alone as a remarkable portrait of an amazing artist. AJ Schnack's documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son is constructed largely from interviews author/journalist Michael Azerrad conducted with the Nirvana singer/songwriter when he was writing their authorized biography, Come as You Are. About a Son is also a biography, but it relies on Cobain's own recollections, pairing it with still photos and newly shot footage of Olympia, Seattle, and Aberdeen, WA, all intended to create the perception of seeing the world through Cobain's eyes. There is no Nirvana footage in the movie and there are no Nirvana songs on the accompanying soundtrack, which instead relies heavily on songs important and influential to Kurt, along with five interview excerpts and a couple of dreamy, atmospheric instrumentals from Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service leader Ben Gibbard and Steve Fisk, who provided much more of this kind of background ambient music for the film. Thankfully, this soundtrack pushes the background music to the background and instead concentrates on Cobain's influences, roughly presented in chronological order according to when the music was important to Kurt, which means that R.E.M. and David Bowie show up toward the end instead of the beginning, with Mudhoney providing the mid-album pivot. Anybody who has followed Cobain with any interest will find the names on About a Son familiar even if they don't know the music -- the Melvins were the first band he idolized, he was photographed in Scratch Acid T-shirts, Nirvana covered the Vaselines' "Son of a Gun," here presented in its original version; really, Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song" is the only real surprise -- but the nice thing about this soundtrack is that it doesn't try to present a revisionist history of Kurt and his times; it merely documents them (or at least his version of it) accurately. For those who lived through the late '80s/early '90s, About a Son will evoke that era, and for those who came to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana later, this will give a bit of an idea of what those years felt like, which is pretty high praise for a documentary soundtrack indeed. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine   Associated Artists and Works California Dreams Original Soundtrack Original Soundtrack   Technical Info Release Date : 09/11/2007 Original Release Date : 2007 Catalog ID : 31068 Label : Barsuk Number of Discs : 1 Runtime : 54m : 56s Studio/Live : Studio Mono/Stereo : Stereo SPAR Code : n/a UPC : 00655173106822    Related Videos 500 Days of Summer: Sound...