Showing posts with label Kurt Cobain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kurt Cobain. Show all posts

2015-11-24

SEATTLE MUSIC HISTORY: Rock's Tragic '27 Club' - You Think You Know Classic Rock?



This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!

2015-09-12

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. September 13, 2015 Burien, Washington, U.S.A. Town Hall SUBJECT MATTER: Crosby, Hendrix, Cobain!

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!

2015-07-20

The Meaning Behind The NIRVANA Song "Scentless Apprentice" Written By Kurt Cobain!

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!                                                                     Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary historical cross-genre novel (originally published in German as Das Parfum) by German writer Patrick Süskind. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry. Above all it is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit. The novel was translated into English by John E. Woods and won the PEN Translation Prizein 1987.
The story focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume apprentice in 18th-century France who, born with no body scent himself, begins to stalk and murder virgins in search of the "perfect scent", which he finds in a young woman named Laure, whom his acute sense of smell finds in a secluded private garden in Grasse.
Some editions of Perfume, including the first, have as their cover image Antoine Watteau's painting Jupiter and Antiope, which depicts a sleeping woman.
THIS LINK WILL TAKE YOU TO YOUTUBE TO THE        ~~~~~>1993 Cobain Interview Inspiration Behind The Writing of "Scentless Apprentice"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Grenouille (French for "frog") was born in Paris, France on 17 July 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. She has given birth four times previously while working, which were all either stillbirths or near-dead, so she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and beheaded. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish church, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish priest a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest does not believe her, saying that there was no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he does not. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to an orphanage on the outskirts of the city.
Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odors. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they did try to suffocate him several times without knowing precisely why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. Paris is unhealthy and dirty, with people and their filth cramped in the city's narrow medieval streets. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he is surprised by a smell quite unlike the dirty, coarse ones he is familiar with. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young, virginal girl just passing puberty (14–15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille wraps his hands around the petrified girl's throat and easily strangles her to death, his eyes closed in ecstasy. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being "good". In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumer in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambrosial.
In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumer, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumer in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse, the home of the greatest perfumers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, where he dies.
On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eats whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock, and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world—Grenouille the Great—, "seeding" the world with seeds of scent. Later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents while reading a book of all the scents he had ever smelled. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum-slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendor before sleeping.
One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain, after seven years of living there.
Grenouille journeys to Montpellier with a fabricated story about being kidnapped, kept in a cave, fed by a basket on a rope, and released after 7 years without having any contact with anyone at all during that time. He catches the eye of the amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse, who uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". It was a basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. However, Grenouille understands after the treatment, when he looks into a mirror, that the fluidum letale has no merit to it, and that his appearance has power. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit", "cheese", and "vinegar", which imitates human odor. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new "disguise" tricks people into thinking that it is the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. This event tells Grenouille how foolish the other humans were, since they were fooled by a simple perfume that he had made, and turns his hate for them into contempt. He decides that he wants to become the God of the world by controlling the world with his perfume, as he had been God in the dreams he had while he was in the mountains. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, whereas the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear and clothes in a blizzard to prove his theory of fluidum letale.
Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum-slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will polish the scent into an even greater perfume make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers.
Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent.
Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed.
Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Grenouille agrees, but has no desire to uphold his agreement. He had lived life in solitude, and found it unbearable. Likewise, he could not live among people. His only desire by then is to go to Paris to die.
In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life people—thieves, murderers, whores, etc. He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles all of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. Fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him in 30 pieces, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love."

2014-11-29

This is the one we’ve all been waiting for; ‘Sonic Highways’ is about how place influences music, but it’s also about director and star Dave Grohl. “I wouldn’t be here without Seattle,” the head Foo Fighter says. “Seattle’s like my

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!

This is the one we’ve all been waiting for; ‘Sonic Highways’ is about how place influences music, but it’s also about director and star Dave Grohl. “I wouldn’t be here without Seattle,” the head Foo Fighter says. “Seattle’s like my phantom limb.”

And speaking of Soundgarden, the cover photo of Chris Cornell on that first release, ‘Screaming Life,’ was taken by Seattle local Charles Peterson. Even if you don’t know that album you recognize Peterson’s work. His blurry, black and white photos of Seattle bands during the period are the image most of us have of that time and place. That’s by design: When Sub Pop saw Peterson’s work, they knew how iconic it would be.
Neither would a lot of great music made over the last 25 years. Not since the British Invasion had a regional scene exerted as much global influence as the Seattle scene of the late ’80s/early ’90s. As is true of a lot of regional scenes, it grew out of one tiny seed: isolation.
Seattle was so far off of the cultural map that touring bands rarely, if ever, made it to the Pacific Northwest. This led to a do it yourself movement quite similar to what ‘Sonic Highways’ covered in the Washington D.C. episode. If the bands won’t come to you, then you must become the band, and that’s what kids did. You know the names: Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Nirvana. These were just local guys playing for each other.
Which isn’t to say that no music had ever broken out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix was a Seattle boy, after all, as was Ray Charles. Heart, too. The real find of the episode, though, is a mid-’60s Seattle band named the Sonics that can only be described as proto-grunge. Check these guys out:

The DIY ethos didn’t just permeate the bands playing the clubs, either. We’re treated to a brief history of Sub Pop, the little fanzine that became one of (if not the) most important labels in independent music. These were the guys who first released Green River, after all — the band that spawned both Mudhoney and Pearl Jam. If that’s all they ever did then Sub Pop would have earned its place in history, but they also released the first albums by Soundgarden and Nirvana.
Peterson shares a great story about the one that got away. He attended Nirvana’s first Seattle gig, shot the opening act, and split without ever taking a single photograph of Nirvana because he didn’t like them and couldn’t imagine them going anywhere.
Nirvana. That’s really what this episode is all about, It can’t be about anything else. Nirvana is the vehicle that turned Grohl into a superstar. Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear was sort of a silent fourth member of the band, too. Even more importantly, this is where the two men lost their friend, Kurt Cobain. Bassist Duff McKagan, another Seattle boy, apologizes to an off-camera Grohl for not calling after Cobain’s death. “Thanks man,” we hear a very sincere Grohl reply.
Every ‘Sonic Highways’ episode results in a song recorded in a local studio, this time at the wildly eccentric Robert Lang Studio. Lang is a Seattle native who grew up just three blocks from the location of his studio, which he has literally been digging out of a hillside for the last 30 years. The joint started as a single garage, but Lang would trade bands studio time for shovel time, removing 400 truckloads of dirt from the side of the hill to build a labyrinth of underground stone and marble rooms.
Digging deep emotionally, recording underground. What else could the Foos name this week’s song but ‘Subterranean?’

 

 

 

 


 

 

 


 

2014-06-29

Part Two: ----->>> The Known and The Very Unknown Shared Similarities and Personalities of Seattle's 2 Biggest Icons! Cobain Verses~Hendrix Curses

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!   This Goes Out To Everyone with a little extra thanks to #JamesWillis                                                                       



Rock legends Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain may have reigned during different eras, but there are more than just a few parallels between them.

Many are obvious, surface parallels: they both played guitar left-handed, they were both from northern Washington State, they both radicalized the music industry while fronting hard rock trios, and they both died tragically at the age of twenty-seven. But to an astrologer, their similarities are much more significant:



Jimi Hendrix:
November 27, 1942, 10:15 a.m. PWT; Seattle WA [1]


www.exotericastrology.com



Kurt Cobain:
February 20, 1967, 7:20 p.m. PST, Aberdeen WA [2]


www.exotericastrology.com


Days that changed everything

www.exotericastrology.com
On September 1, 1957, fourteen year-old Jimmy Hendrix attended an Elvis Presley concert at Sicks' Stadium in Seattle.[3]

Presley was at the peak of his fame, and his tour through the Northwest that week included a series of intense fan rioting.


www.exotericastrology.comJimmy couldn't help but absorb some of the more notable factors he observed in Presley’s success: his wild stage antics - the impact of which wouldn't be repeated until he (as "Jimi") took the stage a decade later - and the fact that he inspired awe by crossing racial boundaries with music.


The Little Rock Nine crisis in Arkansas - whereby nine black students were challenging segregation in schools - was just heating up that same month. It would only take the small miracle of an Elvis concert experience to awaken the imagination of a young mixed black and Cherokee teenager to the possibility that some forbidden lines were ready to be crossed...

www.exotericastrology.com
On September 25, 1985, seventeen
year-old Kurt Cobain attended a Black
Flag concert at the Mountaineer Club in Seattle, for which he sold his record
collection so that he could afford to go.
[4]


www.exotericastrology.comKurt, already an avid rock fan, found his ideal vision of what a rock band should be – musically and otherwise – when he saw them play that night. The hardcore punk band, which had been releasing its own records since forming in 1978, was a lightning rod of passionate anti-commercialism crammed in the face of the commercial music industry.

By the time Kurt saw Black Flag that night, the band had morphed its look and sound from a more basic punk rock style – Mohawk haircuts or shaved heads playing short, fast songs laced with acerbic humor – to a heavier, Black Sabbath-inspired sound, delivered by band members sporting long rocker hair and gritted teeth.


Kurt imagined starting a band that could sound, look and exist as Black Flag did, defiantly producing music exclusively on it own terms...

Initiation Rituals

What is curious about these two concert events, in astrological terms, is that they both happened at times when transiting outer planets were making ingresses (moving from one sign to another). The changing of signs for outer planets tends to coincide with major cultural shifts, representing a new context to correspond with a new era.

www.exotericastrology.com
At the time of Elvis Presley’s Seattle concert, transiting Pluto had just recently made an ingress (entered) into the sign of Virgo and transiting Neptune into the sign of Scorpio.


www.exotericastrology.com
During the time of the Black Flag concert, transiting Pluto had recently moved into Scorpio, and transiting Neptune was between its first and second ingresses into the sign of Capricorn.


By the time these transiting outer planets were at the end of these same signs, these two adolescent boys would both be dead - by which time they had grown into men who shook the world with their music.

Considering their influence on these impressionable teenagers, these two concerts were like tribal initiation rituals, aimed at transferring command of the zeitg


Rock legends Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain may have reigned during different eras, but there are more than just a few parallels between them.

Many are obvious, surface parallels: they both played guitar left-handed, they were both from northern Washington State, they both radicalized the music industry while fronting hard rock trios, and they both died tragically at the age of twenty-seven. But to an astrologer, their similarities are much more significant:



Jimi Hendrix:
November 27, 1942, 10:15 a.m. PWT; Seattle WA [1]


www.exotericastrology.com



Kurt Cobain:
February 20, 1967, 7:20 p.m. PST, Aberdeen WA [2]


www.exotericastrology.com


Days that changed everything

www.exotericastrology.com
On September 1, 1957, fourteen year-old Jimmy Hendrix attended an Elvis Presley concert at Sicks' Stadium in Seattle.[3]

Presley was at the peak of his fame, and his tour through the Northwest that week included a series of intense fan rioting.


www.exotericastrology.comJimmy couldn't help but absorb some of the more notable factors he observed in Presley’s success: his wild stage antics - the impact of which wouldn't be repeated until he (as "Jimi") took the stage a decade later - and the fact that he inspired awe by crossing racial boundaries with music.


The Little Rock Nine crisis in Arkansas - whereby nine black students were challenging segregation in schools - was just heating up that same month. It would only take the small miracle of an Elvis concert experience to awaken the imagination of a young mixed black and Cherokee teenager to the possibility that some forbidden lines were ready to be crossed...

www.exotericastrology.com
On September 25, 1985, seventeen
year-old Kurt Cobain attended a Black
Flag concert at the Mountaineer Club in Seattle, for which he sold his record
collection so that he could afford to go.
[4]


www.exotericastrology.comKurt, already an avid rock fan, found his ideal vision of what a rock band should be – musically and otherwise – when he saw them play that night. The hardcore punk band, which had been releasing its own records since forming in 1978, was a lightning rod of passionate anti-commercialism crammed in the face of the commercial music industry.

By the time Kurt saw Black Flag that night, the band had morphed its look and sound from a more basic punk rock style – Mohawk haircuts or shaved heads playing short, fast songs laced with acerbic humor – to a heavier, Black Sabbath-inspired sound, delivered by band members sporting long rocker hair and gritted teeth.


Kurt imagined starting a band that could sound, look and exist as Black Flag did, defiantly producing music exclusively on it own terms...

Initiation Rituals

What is curious about these two concert events, in astrological terms, is that they both happened at times when transiting outer planets were making ingresses (moving from one sign to another). The changing of signs for outer planets tends to coincide with major cultural shifts, representing a new context to correspond with a new era.

www.exotericastrology.com
At the time of Elvis Presley’s Seattle concert, transiting Pluto had just recently made an ingress (entered) into the sign of Virgo and transiting Neptune into the sign of Scorpio.


www.exotericastrology.com
During the time of the Black Flag concert, transiting Pluto had recently moved into Scorpio, and transiting Neptune was between its first and second ingresses into the sign of Capricorn.


By the time these transiting outer planets were at the end of these same signs, these two adolescent boys would both be dead - by which time they had grown into men who shook the world with their music.

Considering their influence on these impressionable teenagers, these two concerts were like tribal initiation rituals, aimed at transferring command of the zeitgeist from one open soul to another. Whether or not anybody knew it at the time, young prophets were being prepared for their future…

www.exotericastrology.com

Hendrix (natal Sun in Sagittarius) and Cobain (Sun in Pisces) both have their natal Suns in signs traditionally ruled by Jupiter.

The sign Cancer is ruled by the Moon and is the exaltation sign of Jupiter, giving both planets a special prominence in the planetary hierarchy when they occupy that sign in a given horoscope.


Procyon & Sirius: Sudden Flash of Success

The co-presence of the Moon and Jupiter in the sign of Cancer in both Hendrix and Cobain's natal charts reflects the profound sensitivity that both men possessed, their ability to create music that was a direct reflection of their emotional core.

www.exotericastrology.com
Curiously, both men had natal Jupiter conjunct the fixed star Procyon, the brightest star of the constellation Canis Minor. Author Bernadette Brady associates Procyon with "short, quick success",[5]which is certainly true of the way both men's careers were cut short by their untimely deaths.


Historically, Procyon has more than just a passing relationship with rock and roll.

www.exotericastrology.com
Transiting Jupiter and Uranus made a conjunction to Procyon in the summer of 1954, as Elvis Presley's first Sun Records single, That's All Right/Blue Moon of Kentucky went racing up local sales charts in Memphis,[6] marking the first hints of a phenomenon that would lead to Hendrix, Cobain and beyond.


Presley's rock 'n' roll career during the mid-50's, though not cut short by death, was brought to a sudden halt when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1958.

As the brightest star of the "little dog" constellation, Procyon appears to have an underdog quality. The appeal of a rock phenomenon, certainly in the cases of Presley, Hendrix and Cobain, is that the short, quick success is achieved by an underdog-rebel figure whose unlikely candidacy in the pop music world can only stir things up.

Cobain Gets Sirius: Beyond Expectations

www.exotericastrology.com
For Cobain, who was born with his natal Sun below the horizon (making his a nocturnal chart), the Moon is the dominant light in his chart, which along with the fact that the Moon rules Cancer, places it at the top of his planetary hierarchy.


www.exotericastrology.com
Cobain's Moon is conjunct the fixed star Sirius (Canis Major), one of the brightest in the sky, which Brady associates with "gain far more than what is expected" from one's efforts.[7]


Indeed, it was when transiting Uranus in Capricorn – the planet signifying radical principles and rapid-fire change - made an opposition to Cobain's natal Moon, that his career went through the stratosphere, far beyond his (or anyone's) expectations.


The first of three times Uranus made an exact opposition to Cobain's Moon (in the course of its direct-retrograde motion through an overall period of about sixteen months), coincided with the period when Nirvana's hit song Smells Like Teen Spirit was first performed live (April 27, 1991; evening; Seattle WA)[8] and the subsequent recording of their classic Nevermindalbum (May-June 1991), on which Smells Like Teen Spirit appeared.[9]


www.exotericastrology.com
Transiting Neptune was also in Capricorn at this time, and like Uranus, was also headed for opposition to Cobain's Moon – the last pass of this exact transit occurred in August-September 1991, when Nevermind was released.[10]


As Uranus and Neptune approached their conjunction in Capricorn (which would occur in 1993 – more on this ahead), popular culture rebelled against itself, adopting a look, sound and attitude that was defiantly rugged and anti-mainstream. Of course, it wasn’t long before that aesthetic itself was swallowed up by the mainstream, forever blurring the lines between the rebels and the establishment.

However, Nevermind was released just at the time when these lines were being drawn. Youth culture, after almost a decade of being co-opted by the sterile commerciality of MTV, was finally seized by the generation it supposedly represented. The growing popularity of a wide variety of bands that were emerging from the independent music scene forced a huge turnover in the industry.

Smell Like Teen Spirit's rousing chorus – which Cobain adeptly screamed in melody – made its success all the more poignant, as it represented a real break from the musical aesthetics of commercial rock's past. Radio stations and nightclubs that had never played anything remotely punk-sounding were now forced to play Nirvana, by simple virtue of the fact that they were the most popular band around at the time.

Out of Control: Riding the Crest of a Double Opposition

Cobain's reaction to the rapid changes in his life at this time reflects the intensity of this double opposition transit of Uranus and Neptune to his natal Moon.

Despite his success, Cobain was highly uncomfortable with the spotlight. Like many youths born during the 1960s, he was contemptuous of the clichés of rock stardom and did not accept record sales as an automatic gauge of musical merit. Ironically, he felt that having enormous popularity undermined his legitimacy among his peers, and even to himself.

www.exotericastrology.com
The second pass of Uranus' opposition to Cobain's Moon occurred in late 1991-early 1992, while Nevermind was at the top of the charts and the band made its notorious performance on NBC television's Saturday Night Live.[11]


www.exotericastrology.com
The third opposition occurred in August – October 1992, coinciding with the birth of his daughter Frances (with wife Courtney Love), the publishing of a scathing profile in Vanity Fair magazine, and Nirvana's colorful appearances at both the Reading Festival in England[12](where Cobain hammed it up Pisces-style, sporting a hospital gown and riding a wheelchair) and the MTV Video Awards (where he famously clashed with Guns 'n Roses singer Axl Rose backstage).[13]


www.exotericastrology.com
Cobain was so traumatized by his experiences at these times that he largely withdrew from public life, all the while falling deeper at the mercy of his personal demons. Although Nirvana more than managed to develop musically in the last year and a half of his life, from this point on he was so psychically damaged that he would, sadly, never recover.


Hendrix: Moon Turn the Tides

www.exotericastrology.comwww.exotericastrology.com
Even though Hendrix had a diurnal chart, transits to his natal Moon were apparently quite powerful as well. Hendrix had been playing and recording with his London-based band the Experience for a few months, when he met inventor and sound experimenter Roger Mayer at an Experience show in Chislehurst, England on January 27, 1967.[14]


Mayer was a pioneer in designing sound-altering gadgets for guitar players, and Hendrix – who had already begun using powerful Marshall Amplifiers to drive his feedback-driven sound – was a prime candidate to put Mayer's work to use.

www.exotericastrology.com
Mayer attended Hendrix's next recording session at London's Olympic Sound studio on February 3rd, where Hendrix employed Mayer's new octave-divider invention for his overdub solo on a song called Purple Haze.[15]


The far-out, psychedelic jolt of Hendrix's guitar work on Purple Hazewas to become his most identifiable sonic trademark. Transiting Jupiter was making a conjunction to his natal Cancer Moon at the time he met Mayer and recorded his Purple Haze solo.

Jupiter's transit was especially powerful at the time, not only because it was in its exaltation sign (Cancer), but also because it was moving into a grand trine with transiting Saturn in Pisces and Neptune in Scorpio , which were both also trine Hendrix's natal Jupiter at the time.

Hendrix's transits truly reflect the open channel he was sharing with the cosmos at this time. As any serious Hendrix fan has always suspected, Jimi's musical message was sent directly from the highest authority.

Merging in time: grand water trine

Of course, the grand water trine transit of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune in 1967 is of great relevance to Cobain as well, since he was born not long after Jimi put Purple Haze down on tape. In fact, Jimi was still hard at work in the recording studio on February 20th, the day Kurt Cobain was born.

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In what could only be considered an eerie cosmic foreshadowing, Hendrix recorded the gritty, noisy, angst-ridden I Don't Live Today,[16] a song so emotionally bleak ("No sun comin' through my windows, feel like I'm livin' at the bottom of a grave") it could have been written by Cobain himself.


The grand water trine of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune in early 1967 reflected the merging of the diverse principles these planets represent. While Jupiter was making its transit to Procyon, its "quick flash of success" was aligned equally to the visionary collectivism represented by Neptune and the isolation and despair signified by Saturn.

For Hendrix, this grand trine period coincided with his emergence as an innovator, a time when he took his craft to a level that no one had dreamed possible. For Cobain, however, this same grand trine in his natal chart suggested not only the complexities of his creative genius, but also the sense that life for him would involve making compromises he would find hard to live with.


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Jupiter’s co-presence with the Moon in the sign of Cancer increases the strength of the natal Sun in both Hendrix (Sagittarius) and Cobain's (Pisces) charts, since those are the two Jupiter-ruled signs.

Ingress: The Intensity of an Experience

www.exotericastrology.comBoth men wrote lyrics that reflect the spiritual/philosophical concerns of their respective Sun signs, from Hendrix's Sagittarian cosmic laissez-faire in If 6 Was 9 ("I've got my own world to live through and I ain't gonna copy you") to Cobain’s odd-but-thoughtful Piscean-style humanism inSomething in the Way ("It’s okay to eat fish 'cause they don’t have any feelings").


www.exotericastrology.comHendrix and Cobain not only have their natal Suns in Jupiter-ruled signs, but in both cases their Suns are in the early degrees of their sign. What is mainly significant about this is the fact that their natal Suns would receive transits from planets that have just made an ingress (changed sign), as we saw in the introduction to this article.

Hendrix would have had transiting Pluto in Virgo square his natal Sun (as well as his natal Mercury in Sagittarius and Uranus in Gemini) not too long after he saw the Elvis concert, by which time he had acquired an electric guitar and started playing in his first band.


Cobain had transiting Pluto trine his natal Sun (conjunct his natal Mars in Scorpio) not long after he saw Black Flag play live, during which time he also began playing in his first bands.

In both cases, the impact of Pluto's transit to their respective natal Suns coincided with a time when they were sparked into action, heading both of them on a course for infamy.

Uranus Ingress: Cosmic Genius

Earlier I demonstrated how the opposition transits of Uranus to Cobain's natal Moon coincided with Nirvana's tremendous success in 1991-92. As with the example of the Pluto and Neptune ingresses at the time of the Elvis and Black Flag concerts given in the introduction, the ingresses of Uranus also coincided with important stages in the lives of Hendrix and Cobain.

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For Hendrix, transiting Uranus made its first Virgo ingress (it always makes two for every sign, the second following a retrograde regression back into the previous sign) on November 1, 1961, just as he arrived for parachute training in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.[17]


Until his arrival in Kentucky, Hendrix had mainly been exposed to mainstream R & B or rock music, as variety was limited on local Seattle radio at the time. But in Kentucky, he came into much closer contact with Southern blues music, immersing himself in the more obscure but genuine style of music that he would later take to a whole new level.[18]

Although Hendrix had left for Kentucky without his guitar, he soon asked his father to send it by mail. Once reunited with his instrument, he reportedly slept with it by his side every night in the barracks, while practicing constantly during off-hours in the day, tuning in to the influences around him.

Cycles of Friendship

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It was also in Kentucky that Hendrix first met Billy Cox, a bass player with whom he played in several bands.[19]Years later, Hendrix would summon the trusted Cox to play in his band for what was to be the last fourteen months of his life.


Hendrix's time in Kentucky was short but critical in his growth as a musician. He was discharged from the army after breaking his ankle on July 2, 1962[20] a month before the second Uranus ingress into Virgo.

He soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee and began playing music professionally, gradually shaping his playing technique and flair for performance – all the elements that would make him famous a few years later.

Soon after he first moved to Memphis, Uranus moved up to 4 Virgo, making an exact square to Hendrix's Sagittarius Sun, coinciding with his blossoming talent as a blues guitar player.

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His rapid rise to fame began in the autumn of 1966.[21] He moved to London to form his band, The Experience, and at this time Uranus had moved far enough through Virgo that it was now square his Ascendant at 24 degrees Sagittarius.


Interestingly, the original line-up of the Experience played its last concert on June 29, 1969 in Denver[22] – just after Uranus made its second ingress into Libra , beginning a whole new cycle of influence. Cox would rejoin Hendrix’s fold not long after that, reflecting the earlier Uranus ingress that first brought them together, though sadly not for very long.


Cobain's First Chords

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In Kurt Cobain's case, the Uranus square transit in Sagittarius to his Pisces Sun happened at a much earlier stage in his development than Hendrix. For Cobain, Uranus made its first ingress into Sagittarius on February 16, 1981, just four days before he received his first guitar as a fourteenth birthday present.[23]


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Once Uranus moved its way up through Sagittarius square Cobain’s Virgo Ascendant in 1986, he began playing in a band with a local bass player named Krist Novoselic,[24]who would play alongside Cobain in Nirvana to the very end.


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The next transiting Uranus sign ingress, into Capricorn (now making a sextile aspect to Cobain's natal Sun), occurred on February 14, 1988 – right around the time Cobain and Novoselic first met Jonathan Poneman of Seattle's Sub Pop records.[25]


Poneman recognized the band's emerging talent and released its earliest records (several singles and one LP), until they graduated to David Geffen’s major label in 1991.

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The second Uranus ingress into Capricorn happened on December 2, 1988, shortly before Cobain and Novoselic's band – by now named "Nirvana" – recorded the tracks for their first album,Bleach,[26] with their new drummer, Chad Channing, on board.


Uranus Transits: Backward Transference

Just as a new Uranus ingress coincided with major shifts in Hendrix's life, as it was with Cobain. What is different between the two men's charts, in terms of how they responded to the transit of Uranus, is the timing in regard to major success in their respective lives.

www.exotericastrology.comFor Hendrix, transiting Uranus' exact square to his Ascendant coincided exactly with the periods in which he recorded the Experience’s three acclaimed studio albums:Are You Experienced(November 1966 – February 1967,[27] during which time he was also launched like an explosion on the London music scene), Axis: Bold as Love(October 1967) andElectric Ladyland (April – June 1968).[28]


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In Cobain's case, transiting Uranus' exact square to his Ascendant merely coincided with his partnership with Novoselic. Success was still five years away for Cobain at the time of this transit.

exotericastrology.comHendrix's period of highest professional success coincided with Uranus' transit (from his 10th house) to his natal Ascendant, while Cobain's period of highest professional success coincided with Uranus' transit (from his 5th house) to his natal Moon. However, natally, Cobain had natal Uranus conjunct his Ascendant in his birth chart, while Hendrix had it opposite his natal Sun and Mercury.


In other words, there appears to be a two-way transference in the nature of these transits, from light-to-angle and angle-to-light: Cobain's natal Uranus is on an angle and therefore its transit to his dominant light (the Moon) triggered his sudden rise to success; Hendrix has natal Uranus opposite his Sun (his dominant light) and Mercury, and its transit to his Ascendant (by square) triggered his sudden rise to success.

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Since the three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) move slowly through the zodiac, their transit conjunctions to each other are quite rare. Uranus and Pluto will make a conjunction at alternate intervals of approximately 110 and 140 years. Uranus and Neptune make a conjunction approximately every 170 years.

Outer Planet Conjunctions: the Quality of an Era

Hendrix and Cobain are remembered not only for their music, but also for their significance to the larger cultural context of the time. Hendrix is associated with the psychedelic 60’s, a brief period where an entire sub-culture fled the dark reality of social unrest and reached for an idealized worldview too beautiful to resist.

Cobain will always be linked with the post-punk/metal hybrid style that emerged as the so-called "grunge" period of the early 90's: an era when the indie rock scene that had sparked from the ashes of independent post-punk bands of the 1980's, including Black Flag, peaked with Nirvana’s enormous success just following their departure from Seattle’s Sub Pop label.

Astrologically, what is special about the mid-sixties and the early nineties is that they were the only two periods in the twentieth-century during which there were conjunctions being made by two of the three outer planets.

Uranus and Pluto were conjunct in Virgo during the time Hendrix was making his initial impact in Britain in 1966 (where he first became a star), and Uranus and Neptune were conjunct in Capricorn during the brief time Cobain and Nirvana was the most influential band in the world (note that Cobain had natal Pluto and Uranus straddling his Ascendant).

In Hendrix's case, we have seen how transiting Uranus square to his natal Ascendant in Sagittarius coincided with the recording of his first three albums. But immediately following that time (from about late 1968 to the summer of 1970), his career hit a series of bumps.

It was at this point that transiting Pluto followed Uranus with its transiting square to his natal Ascendant: the Experience broke up, the band he launched at Woodstock didn’t cut it,[29] and he had to release a record with another band, on a different record label, to settle an old contract dispute.[30]

Hendrix’s eminence as a black celebrity, who happened to have a predominantly white audience, was also caving in on him at this time.

Following the disbanding of the Experience, Hendrix was struggling with pressure both ends of the racial spectrum: his management wanted him to continue to perform with the original members of the Experience (both of whom were white), largely in order to maintain his interest among white audiences.

At the same time, he was personally drawn to playing with musicians (including his old army buddy Billy Cox) who happened to be black, and was becoming more vocal on social - particularly racial - issues, including playing various benefits and speaking out in support of the Black Panthers during interviews for teen magazines.

Just as Hendrix was a witness to Elvis Presley's popularizing of a largely black music style for a white audience during Pluto's Virgo ingress in 1957, he was now himself aiming to reconcile racial biases as transiting Pluto squared his Ascendant.

After a bit of shuffling, Hendrix eventually settled on a new Experience lineup featuring Cox and original Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, ultimately basing his choice not strictly along racial lines, but rather on overall musical compatibility.
Although he continued to make great music throughout this period, it did seem like all that had been promising during Uranus’ square transit to his Ascendant in 1967-68 was now going to pieces. Hendrix died - allegedly following a drug mishap - in London at approximately 11:25 a.m. on September 18, 1970,[31] as transiting Neptune was making its way to its Sagittarius ingress in three months time.

Uranus-Neptune Conjunction: Live Through This

Cobain, as is widely known, died at the same age Hendrix did (27), from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found on his property in the Seattle area about three days after he died, at 8:40 a.m. on April 8, 1994.[32]

Cobain died just as Uranus was moving away from its conjunction with Neptune. Although both planets, when they had been opposite his natal Moon, had been astrological players in his whirlwind experience as a rock star (see Part One), upon his demise it seemed to be those closest to him who were now receiving the fruits of their own transits.

Nirvana's drummer Dave Grohl (January 14, 1969; 7:33 a.m.; Warren OH, AA)[33] had the Uranus-Neptune transit conjunction of 1993 on his natal Ascendant, during a time that he was growing more and more disenchanted with being Nirvana’s drummer.

Grohl, a talented singer-guitarist-songwriter in his own right, had transiting Neptune conjunct his natal Sun when Cobain died (Uranus was still hovering around it too), marking an opportunity for him to come out from behind the drum set and have his own shot at the spotlight.

The following year he released his acclaimed album Foo Fighters,[34], while transiting Neptune was still conjunct his natal Sun, and transiting Pluto was conjunct his natal Neptune in Scorpio.

Another contender for the spotlight upon Cobain’s death was his wife Courtney Love (July 9, 1964 (not 1965, as is so widely reported); 2:08 p.m.; San Francisco CA, AA)[35], who had had the transiting Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1993 exactly opposite her natal Sun, during which time she, like Grohl, spent working on her own music, preparing for her own opportunities.

When Cobain died, transiting Neptune was now opposite her natal Moon (again, with Uranus still hovering around), which by bizarre design coincided with the release of her band Hole’s album, Live Through This, which, like Grohl’s Foo Fighters, went on to considerable success.

Closing Time: Return to Seattle

Both Hendrix and Cobain died with transiting outer planets in the very last degrees of their tropical sign, signifying the ending of eras that their very deaths helped bring down. When Hendrix died, Neptune was at the end of Scorpio, and in less than two months would make its ingress into Sagittarius, where it would soon make a conjunction to his natal Sun.

Cobain died when transiting Pluto was at the very end of Scorpio, tying into his natal grand water trine by virtue of transiting Pluto’s conjunction to the North Node . By January of the following year, it made its ingress into Sagittarius , where it would soon make a square transit to his natal Sun in Pisces .

The fact that both men died just as transiting outer planets were set to make powerful new ingresses directed at their natal Suns connects to their respective legacies, which show no sign of waning. In both cases, the circumstances of their deaths not only contributed to their respective cults of personality, but also wild conspiracy theories that refuse to go away.

As cultural figures, they represent very specific micro-eras in time when a unique sense of community emerged from popular culture. Their rise and fall over the course of specific outer planet transits through a given sign provides the astrologer with some idea of what those periods of time were “about”, what large numbers of people were experiencing at the time.

The music Hendrix and Cobain made during those brief spans of time continues to fascinate millions. That these two periods were the 20th Century’s only instances of outer planet conjunctions underlines their special place in the lexicon of popular culture.

Notes:

[1] Rodden Rating: AA
Source: B.C. in hand from Janice Mackay, 2/1996.
His birth certificate originally read Johnny Allen Hendrix, but was corrected by affidavit on 9/11/1946 to James Marshall Hendrix.

[2] Rodden Rating: A
Source: Muriel Foltz quotes his mom in WTPE Gemini/1994
(Thomas Germine obtained the B.C., same date, no time given.)

[3] http://www.elvisconcerts.com/liv1957.htm
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3440
Two conflicting sources give September 2, 1957:
Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop, Charles Shaar Murray, (Faber and Faber, 2001), p. 46
http://www.elvis.org/live/liv57.html

[4] http://www.livenirvana.com/history/84.php
Heavier Than Heaven, Charles R. Cross, (Hyperion, 2001), p. 63
Nirvana: The Day by Day Eyewitness Chronicle, Carrie Borzillo, (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000), p. 13
Conflicting source:
Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Doubleday, 1994), Michael Azerrad, p. 31 gives "August 1984", which has since been corrected to the given date of September 25th.

[5] The Fixed Stars, Bernadette Brady, (Samuel Weiser, 1998), p. 89

[6] http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvis_presley_sun_recordings.shtml
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick, (Abacus, 1994), p. 123

[7] Brady, p. 85

[8] Cross, p. 180
Borzillo, p. 68
http://www.livenirvana.com/tourhistory/banter/1991/t_04-17-91.php

http://www.livenirvana.com/tourhistory/index.html


[9] Cross, p. 181
Borzillo, p. 69-70
Azerrad, p. 173
http://www.livenirvana.com/sessions/studio/may-june-1991.php
http://www.livenirvana.com/documents/mojonevermind.html
http://www.livenirvana.com/history/index.html

[10] Cross, p. 204
Borzillo, p. 81
Azerrad, p. 228
http://www.livenirvana.com/official/index.html

[11] Cross, p. 226-228
Borzillo, p. 98
http://www.livenirvana.com/tourhistory/index.html
http://tvtome.com/SaturdayNightLive/season17.html

[12] Cross, p. 251-253
Borzillo, p. 119
Azerrad, p. 271-275
http://www.livenirvana.com/tourhistory/index.html

[13] Cross, p. 256-260
Borzillo, p. 120-121
Azerrad, p. 276-280
http://www.livenirvana.com/tourhistory/index.html

[14] Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced, Sean Egan, (Unanimous, 2002), quoted from an excerpt published in the May 2002 issue ofUncut magazine (UK), p. 59
http://www.nii.net/~obie/jimi_hendrix_live.htm

[15] Hendrix had started writing Purple Haze backstage at a show London’s Upper Cut club on December 26, 1966 and recorded the basic tracks with the Experience on January 11, 1967.

[16]
 Egan in Uncut, p. 60
http://hendrix.free.fr/chansons/i-dont-live-today.htm

[17] Murray, p. 47-48
http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/biography.html

[18] Murray, p. 47-48

[19] Murray, p. 47-48

[20] Murray, p. 47-48
http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/biography.html

[21] Egan in Uncut, p. 50, 53
http://www.nii.net/~obie/jimi_hendrix_live.htm

[22] http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/encyclopedia/document,19690629,1.html
Murray, p. 66
http://www.nii.net/~obie/jimi_hendrix_live.htm

[23] Cross, p. 37
Borzillo, p. 11
Azerrad, p. 22

[24] Cross, p. 74
Borzillo, p. 16

[25] Cross, p. 102-103
Borzillo, p. 21

[26] Cross, p. 125
Borzillo, p. 29
http://www.livenirvana.com/sessions/studio/december-1988.php
http://www.livenirvana.com/history/88.php

[27] Egan in Uncut, p. 53-61
http://www.chromeoxide.com/hendrix.htm#Areyou
http://hendrix.free.fr/chansons/foxy.htm

[28] http://www.inet.hr/~abubalo/albums/chronology.txt

[29] http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/encyclopedia/document,19690818,1.html

[30] http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/encyclopedia/document,19700325,1.html

[31] Murray, p. 72
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Balcony/5802/jimisdeath.htm

[32] Cross, p. 356
Borzillo, p. 183
http://www.livenirvana.com/history/index.html

[33] Rodden Rating: AA
Source: B.C. in hand from Frank C. Clifford

[34]

[35] Rodden Rating: AA
Source: B.C. in hand from Nancy Hastings, Love's astrologer for four years. The B.C. reads Courtney Michelle Rodriguez Menely. Every time her mother remarried, the new stepfather would adopt her, a string of them. The B.C. only shows the last two. Her biological father is Hank Harrison, a former groupie with the Grateful Dead. Love herself gives both 1964 and 1965, 2:08 PM on the Internet.)
(Dennis Sutton quoted biographer Poppy Z. Brite, 'Courtney Love, The Real Story', p.21, "born at St. Francis Memorial Hospital," giving July 9, 1965, 9:15 AM.
(Melissa Adams quotes her dad for the same date and place with 9:18 AM.)
(Sy Scholfield quotes her bio by Poppy Z. Brite in which her data is given as 7/09/1965, 9:15AM, San Francisco, birth name: Love Michelle Harrison. Ed gives the same but name of "Courtney Michelle Love Harrison/C.Menely" and 2.08 PM as time from mother, year uncertain (1964/65?). However, the on-line California Birth Index gives her data as: Courtney M. Harrison, 7/09/1964, San Francisco County, CA. Mother = RISI. She was therefore definitely born on this day with this name in 1964 in San Francisco, so the Brite bio has the wrong year, wrong name and quite possibly the wrong time."