Shut Up & Play: "Blew" by Nirvana

So, you wanna play "Blew" by Nirvana? You've come to the right place. Why? Because you can go all over the internet finding tabs to play this song and almost every one of them is wrong.

Almost.

It's not my favorite song, but it's in the top ten. Also, having listened to this band for way too long (longer than they were even around), I have studied their music in my own special way, and I can say with 100 percent certainty that this tab you're about to learn is good shit.

But before we get to it, you need to drop that fuckin' D. That means lowering the top string, the low E, down one whole step to D. Now your guitar is in the Dropped D Tuning (D-A-D-G-B-E) instead of the Standard Tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E). Congratulations.

Also, you need to know the parts that the song is broken down into: Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Solo-Chorus-Closing.

Now you're ready. Here we go:

The Intro. (0:10 to 0:17) It gets you in the groove, and it's kind of the entire bass line.

Play this twice.

E------------------------------------------------------

B------------------------------------------------------

G------------------------------------------------------

D------------------------------------------------------

A----0-0-3-5-6-6-5---3-3-0-3-5-5-------------------------

D----0-0-3-5-6-6-5---3-3-0-3-5-5-------------------------

The Verse. (0:18 to 0:46)(1:01 to 1:30) It's the same each time, both music and lyrics, a Cobain staple. Keep in mind that, as the melody of the lyrics go back and forth with each line, so does the guitar part. Basically the guitar is supposed to sound the same as what's being sung.

1. "And if you wouldn't mind, I would like it, Blew ..."
3. "And if you wouldn't mind, I would like to leave ..."
E------------------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------------------------
G--------------)bend(------------)bend(-----------------
D--------3-5-6/--6--6--\---5-5-3-5/--5--5----3------------
A------5-----------------------------------------------
D------------------------------------------------------

Then:
E------------0-------------------0---------------------
B------------0-------------------0---------------------
G------------0-------------------0---------------------
D----5-3-5-5--------------5-3-5-5------------------------
A-----------------0-0-0--------------------------------
D-----------------0-0-0--------------------------------

2. "And if you wouldn't care, I would like to lose ..."
4. "And if you wouldn't care, I would like to breathe ..."
E------------------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------------------------
G--------------)bend(----------------------------------
D--------3-5-6/--6--6--\---5-5-3-5-5-5-3--0--------------
A------5-----------------------------------------------
D------------------------------------------------------

Then:
E------------0-------------------0---------------------
B------------0-------------------0---------------------
G------------0-------------------0---------------------
D----5-3-5-5--------------5-3-5-5------------------------
A-----------------0-0-0--------------------------------
D-----------------0-0-0--------------------------------

The Chorus. (0:47 to 1:00)(1:31 to 1:44)(2:14 to 2:28) Here's where most tabulators fuck things up, and you can't blame them because it takes a good ear to hear this correctly when it's played live. Play this along with the video. It should sound nothing less than a carbon copy.

"Is there ... 'nother ... reason ... for your stain? ...
Could you ... 'lieve who ... we knew? ... Stress and strain ..."
E------------------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------------------------
G------------------------------------------------------
D----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-6--------------------
A----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-6--------------------
D----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-6--------------------

Then:

"Here is ... 'nother ... word that ... rhymes with shame ... "
E------------------------------------------------------
B------------------------------------------------------
G------------------------------------------------------
D----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-0-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7
A----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-0-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7
D----3-5-0--5-5-3-0--3-3-5-0--5-5-3-0-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7

The Solo. (1:45 to 2:13) This is the part of any Nirvana song that requires some explanation. Usually, Kurt's approach to a "solo" wasn't the same as Eddie Van Halen's or Kirk Hammett's. It's better referred to as the "anti-solo." Do this: take all the notes you have been using in the song so far and do two things. First, raise those notes an octave so people know you're "soloing." Second, scramble them together, not unlike how you would eggs in a frying pan, to make it sound like you're punishing the instrument you're playing, or punishing the audience who is listening to you play that instrument. Either way works, but make it sound cool.

The Closing. (2:29 to 3:12) It ends the song. Kurt wasn't much for gradual fade-outs, preferring instead to end things with a strong statement, both literally and figuratively.

Play this eight times.

"You could do anything ..."
E-----------------------------------------------------
B-----------------------------------------------------
G-----------------------------------------------------
D----0-3-5-6-6-6-0-------------------------------------
A----0-3-5-6-6-6-0-------------------------------------
D----0-3-5-6-6-6-0-------------------------------------

You're welcome.

Dog Days. Of Summer.

Jesus! It's been longer than five weeks since my last post? I must've lost track of time after getting back from my camping trip in Colorado. It's easy to lose yourself in the mysticism of nature, just you, your friends and a fire. By the second week, we all realized we had to get home before we lost our jobs, so we got outta there. I'll be damned if I haven't been feeling like I forgot to do something, though.

Just kidding! I didn't go to Colorado and I don't have any friends. The real reason I haven't done shit is because it's Summer. In Florida. It's so fucking hot, I can't even think, and when I can't think, I can't write. It drains all my energy. When I get home from work, all I can do is spend six hours reading seriously insightful list articles on Cracked.com until I fall asleep. Yeah, Cracked. As in the baby brother offshoot of Mad magazine. I have no idea what happened either.

So, without further ado,

7 Women With The Hottest Bitch Faces

7.  Michelle Obama

[Disclaimer: Before continuing, I want my readers to know that I am fully aware of how a woman might feel when the word "bitch" is used to describe how her face looks. I want to make it clear that I employ this word not as a denigration of the character of these women, but as a way to describe their unconventional, sinister-looking sexiness. Like the she-villains in Disney movies. What I'm arguing is that these women are hotter than someone who looks like Kate Upton, or any other conventional candidate for Sexiest Woman Alive. I can think of no greater crime against nature, from man or God, than changing, in any way, the appearance with which these women were born.]

The hottest First Lady since Jackie. There, I said it. Oh! You're pissed at the President, America? (I hadn't heard.) Someone oughta whip that Muslim, Kenyan Freedom-hater into shape, you say? I know someone. Someone who scares the shit outta me, who really gets the blood flowing to the right places. Like the brain of the Leader of the Free World, so it can do all it's important, uh, Leader Freedom Thinking. Also, I wasn't turning a phrase back there. I think she literally knows how to use a whip on the President.

Here she is looking all Mad Men.

6. Juliette Lewis

Juliette Lewis is a seasoned pro. Cape Fear, From Dusk Till Dawn, Natural Born Killers, Whip It. Her characters sure had to learn how to grow up fast. Just an average, all-American girl that life has kicked around too many times, and now she's ready to do some kicking of her own. Whether her assault is directed toward vampires, roller derby girls, a convicted rapist, or the person who wants to film a documentary of her and her husband's serial slaughter of innocent people, there's still something about her that makes me feel all warm inside.

 

That feeling could just be internal bleeding. I don't know. I smell toast.

5. Vampire Pam

 

Remember when you were still scared of the dark? When movies used to tell you the most terrible, evil things happened when the clock struck midnight? The very thought of something coming out of the dark to eat you alive through your jugular filled you with terror, and didn't help you fall asleep either.

Then you grow up and realize that those fears never go away, their terror just pales in comparison to real fears, like not being able to pay your rent. Vampires sucking your blood? Less likely than the bank you put your paycheck into every week.

Sometimes the things that terrify us as children are the same things that we become attracted to as adults. When it comes to fireworks and vampires, I can attest to this. My favorite explosives are Black Cat firecrackers and I want Kristin Bauer van Straten to suck me dry.

"Oh, dream weaver. I believe you can get me through the nighhht."

4. Anjelica Huston

In the beginning, Morticia Addams was the macabre matriarch of the Addams Family, the best cartoon in the New Yorker. Then she was dollface Carolyn Jones in the 60s sitcom. Even Brooke Shields took a crack at her on Broadway. But nobody embodied Morticia's glacial creepiness better than John Huston's first-born daughter.

"The real head of the family ... low-voiced, incisive and subtle, smiles are rare…ruined beauty ... contemptuous and original and with fierce family loyalty ... even in disposition, muted, witty, sometimes deadly ... given to low-keyed rhapsodies about her garden of deadly nightshade, henbane and dwarf’s hair ..."

– Charles Addams, 1963
 

Why didn't I just put the cartoon Morticia on this list? Oh, yeah. 'Cuz cartoons aren't real. I'm always forgetting that.

3. Sandra Bernhard

Listen, I grew up watching stand-up comedy, and I know that a lot of stand-up comedians are not supermodels. But nobody wants that, because supermodels are stupid, and not very often are they intentionally funny. But I have to be honest, at a certain time in the 90s, Sandra Bernhard was pretty damn close to the best of both those worlds. Her face was as brash as her humor. I knew she was hot when I was only eight fucking years old!

 

Don't believe me? Ask Madonna.

2. Jane Curtin

There used to be a time when the news wasn't a joke. I don't remember it either, because the first people to inject comedy into current events did it eleven years before I was born. The Show? Saturday Night Live. The sketch? Weekend Update. The first WU anchor was Chevy Chase, and sure it was funny, but it lacked a necessary level of cold, sexy deadpan.

Enter the Queen. I mean, then the Queen came. I mean, that's when Jane Curtin showed up.

Whenever I think of a decade in American history in which I would have liked to come of age, it's almost never the 1970s. Almost never. The 60s had better style. The 80s had better music (seriously, just not on the radio). But the last four years of the 70s had Jane Curtin, for one night a week, looking hot, satirizing the news, and occasionally tearing open her blouse and goading Connie Chung.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler better rekkinize.

1. Maribeth Monroe

She's Alice Murphy on Workaholics. Currently, Workaholics is the voice of our generation. Also, it's comedy gold. These days, I guess you just need two things. Three morons with shitty jobs? Check. An irate hosebeast/the foxiest superior you can only dream of having for a boss? Check.

What I'm saying is, asleep, unconscious, eyes closed, with the firing of random synapses in your brain, is the only place where you can be on the business end of her bewitching, elegant wrath.

 

She is the reason for this entire post. A woman after my own heart.

They're pissed at me. I'm forgetting something.

Oh, yeah. In addition to your dreams, you can also watch her tear you a new asshole every Tuesday night at 10:30 on Comedy Central.

A Rant

When I read the title of this book today I had a thought, and because this month has been pretty lazy for blogging, I'm running with it.

The thought: the title implies a time that used to exist when grown adults needed to be told fairy tales in order to be dissuaded from doing things that could cause harm to themselves or society, like gambling, drinking or wearing a hat indoors.

That entire notion must've been all too much for the person who coined the phrase "the devil's tickets" when referring to playing cards. Too much to simply craft an argument about the perils of placing wagers with hard-earned money that one can't soon repay with tangible imagery from the world in which the gambler lived.

The conversation would, understandingly, lack a certain level of artistic license. "Hey, Wilfred, bro, come on, a pair of sevens, hold up. You put all that money in the pot, and you can't pay your rent for, like, a year. Your wife will leave you for another dude, and your kids will die of starvation. Fact!"

I mean, how's that gonna get the message across, right? It must have been a lot easier back in the roaring '20s to just say something like, "Dost not play this hand of poker, Wilfred. For when you do, thou art holding the Devil's Tickets! If you didn't already know, those are tickets that take you to Hell! And monsters eat you there!"

The Other Tongue

I'm not the type of person to talk about my lineage often. America is a nation of immigrants, and as such I think a discussion about any of our "homelands" is irrelevant by default. That being said, allow me to prattle on about my lineage and how it relates to my definition of American culture.

Quick rundown: I was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. My mother's family is Italian and she grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My father's family is English/Irish and he grew up in Tennessee, in a small town named Paris.

Being born to a Southern father and Northern mother was an interesting (and short-lived) experiment. It's shaped my entire perspective about the freakish North-meets-South setting where my story began.

Here, our lack of cultural cohesion is par for the course. When I got my first job bagging groceries, I didn't know that a shopping cart could have so many other names (carriage, buggy, trolley, wagon), but the customers did because they came from other parts of the country where these terms are used to refer to shopping carts.

Nothing is permanent or collective. There are only three cultural staples: Alligators, golf courses and the music of Jimmy Buffett. Are any of our residents fans of the Miami Dolphins? If so, I have no explanation as to why they would be.

Our "culture" is purely transitory, brought over by whoever moves here, and disappearing when they leave. To a region that only became habitable after central air-conditioning was invented not even a century ago, a word like "tradition" means almost nothing.

Almost.

In the last year I've decided to continue my study of Spanish, from the point where I left it in high school, where it was required of my study for all four years. Was I able to speak it fluently back then? No. Has my continued study required me to start all over again, relearning all of what little I retained? Absolutely.

But I'm diligent, and that's important because the number of people speaking it is only going to increase. It's influence will only become more saturating. I understand this and have no problem with it whatsoever.

Questions you might be asking: Why would you welcome the phasing-out of your native tongue? How would life possibly be made better because of this? Does it not make you feel like your country, the only one you've ever lived in, your entire world from the moment of your birth, is disappearing? Do you hate America?

To all ideas posited by the rhetoric of these questions, I say:

No, English will never be eradicated in my lifetime. It's too nuanced, potent, deft, and efficient. It steals from the languages around it. It takes new forms with each new generation of speakers. Ideas and emotions can be expressed beautifully or hideously. It's vocabulary encompasses the complete spectrum of sound.

No, learning Spanish, or any other language, will not make my life harder. It will be made better by expanding my perceivable world, not erasing it. Everything I said in that previous paragraph? How am I supposed to confirm it if I don't have another language to compare it to? (Fact!)

No, it doesn't feel like my entire world is disappearing. Why? Because my surroundings do nothing but disappear. What's stayed the same? Nobody can even claim that Palm Beach County, let alone the entire country, hasn't completely changed from what it was twenty-five years ago. When you live in a place that never stays the same for more than a year, your idea of community becomes more dynamic, not more static.

And finally, no, I don't hate America, because America is about moving forward, not recycling the same words, the same concepts, the same ideas for centuries so that we can "purify" all of our "traditions" and "values." Our "virtues" and "principles."

That equates to cultural incest, and progress doesn't come from fucking your idea siblings. That's some Dark Ages shit.

I wonder, too, why my maternal family doesn't speak Italian. Not a word, except when my grandfather watches The Godfather on TV. It all comes back to him, or something. I've always thought it was a cool language, even if it does have a penchant for the dramatic.

I was told when my grandfather was born that his father, typically, wanted the children to speak only English. I find this a disagreeable parental impulse, but I can understand it. I don't think America is a very forward thinking, culturally tolerant nation in 2012. I can't imagine what it was like in the 1930s.

I've already made my sociopolitical case for wanting to speak Spanish, but the motive that courses through my veins is that learning Spanish would bring me that much closer to learning Italian. Little by little, I want to reconnect with what was severed from me even before the woman I came from was born. (See, this thick sappiness could've really been driven home with just a little Italian.)

I think everyone should feel this way, even if they don't. My girlfriend constantly waxes lyrical about Tradition and has no interest in learning German, her paternal family's mother tongue and one her father still fluently speaks.

She might change her mind one day, but I don't know what it will take. Either the realization that life is precious and we only have a finite amount of time to learn and appreciate everything we are, were and can become, or a Gossip Girl plot twist that involves Blair Waldorf falling in love with a fictional German chancellor.

Either way is fine.

We all just end up where we came from in the first place.

The Part of the Itch

Commercials suck. Honestly. Who needs them? Who even likes them? The best ones are rare, and soon become so forcefully repetitive that a viewer can discover and be sickened from overuse by the same advertisement inside the window of an hour-long show.

Television would have never been created without this disgusting drivel, and if television had never been created we would never know the superb genius of Mad Men.

After an excruciating 17 months, the greatest show on television finally returned to fill that burning emptiness we've all been numbing with cheap booze and meaningless sex.

The fact that Matthew Weiner had the ability to write an enthralling series around characters who supply, by a wide margin, the most unwanted and annoying product in the history of mankind is nothing short of brilliance.

It's not just how cool Draper is, how pithy Roger's one-liners are, how bodacious everything about Joan always is, how big a tool Pete can be, how determined Peggy is to show them all, how Selectric typewriters are employed in a delicious '60s office setting or the drama created by all these factors. What fascinates me most about this show is the idea that a time used to exist when advertising was an art form.

Ask yourself if today's commercials are works of art. How much "creative" has gone into these things?

I had an epiphany yesterday. It makes me feel stupid because I should've had this epiphany years ago, but here it is: commercials on mute.

I know, I know. Duh. But if watching commercials without sound doesn't immediately make your viewing experience more pleasant (OK, tolerable), I formally and officially invite you to freely punch me in the face the next time you see me.

Miserable jingles? Gone. Stupid pitches? Gone. Moronic ad copy that pretty faces are paid to recite (... guaranteed! ... call now! ... or your money back! ... lost thirty pounds! ... no contracts! ... try it risk free! ... been injured in a ... just ninety-nine cents! ...)? Gone. Moving mouths are all that's left, and sometimes streaming text that provides concisely all pertinent consumer information. After this revelation, it feels as though my mind is finally at peace.

Now it's a moving magazine ad. This novel silence allows me to interact and play games with the pitch, like filling those moving mouths with my own ad copy. If you can appreciate Mad Libs, you can appreciate this. Usually my copy is pretty liberal towards blatant vulgarity.

Regardless of my penchant for potty-word hilarity, I'm of the opinion that television as a medium is better at killing thoughts than creating them (this can also apply to drinking Scotch). That being said, I'm genuinely ashamed of how much television I watch and how much of my life I've spent doing it. Because of this, I can't wait for the day when television can be viewed by paying for individual shows. When that day comes, these are the ten shows (and only ten!) that would be on my TV. My desert island list, in order of importance:

Mad Men

Workaholics

South Park

Ugly Americans

True Blood

Mythbusters

The Daily Show

The Colbert Report (package deal)

Chopped

& Jersey Shore

But who am I kidding? I've listed these (great) shows for no reason. As far as I know, advertisers love the ridiculous amount of bullshit on TV. As I write this they're probably screaming for more out the windows of their billionth-floor offices on Madison Avenue. More shows! More channels! More air time! More money!

I realize now that I'm wasting my time.

But wasting time is where ideas come from, according to the people who are paid to create things, and the fact is creative people wouldn't get paid if it wasn't for advertisers and their annoying, unwanted product. Both parties know that.

I think Matthew Weiner should really be rewarded for giving us a world where advertising is interesting, where the people who do it are cool, intelligent, and have shitloads of artistic vision spewing from their fingertips. A fictional world of advertisers making good advertisements might have the power to seep into reality, providing a more enriching experience for everyone involved, viewer and producer alike.

Would the real world not be a better place if commercials sucked significantly less? I think it would, because it would influence for the better the art of the pitch, not just for advertisers and car salesman, but for everyone. The pitch is everything to/for/about everyone. It's persuasion. It's how you sell yourself, your abilities, your beliefs, your ideas, your value to everyone with whom you ever come in contact. Everyone wants to do this better.

You can call it growing bullshit, but that would only be true if the product reeks.

Poem I

On the share, feel total exploding
what I'm shooting & what he will lead
rather than effective first years.

The good news,
which discusses time,
has an upgrading focus
that was once the most of the change.

Contending will receive
characterization, technologically,
until ownership of the good day.

Strong, that premier news
learned will not be
even considered enlisting.

Likes his career best,
talked about going,
would have been sitting.

Of trying to break in, than history in his of.

The Lorax

Dr. Seuss is the greatest author of children's picture books. I say this because Dr. Seuss was responsible for some of the earliest childhood memories I still have. The Lorax (I have to admit) I only read a year ago, and that's because I work at a bookstore and can't resist an unread Seuss. My upbringing consisted more of Green Eggs and Ham, There's a Wocket in My Pocket, and Oh, The Thinks You Can Think! Even Seuss protégé P.D. Eastman had a few in there.

Only the blandest five-year-old couldn't love & appreciate the silliness of Seuss's dialogue, the wackiness of his characters and the shagginess of the plantlife in his rhyming, technicolor world. I loved his books when I was a child because I wanted to visit that world. Now that I'm an adult, I'm certain I want to live there permanently.

That's why, after seeing the new 3D adaptation of the Lorax by Chris Renaud & Kyle Balda, I was bothered to read Peter Travers' review in Rolling Stone, giving it only one star but still feeling that the underage idiot-fest Project X merited two and a half.

"Why does Hollywood keep screwing up the iconic work of Dr. Seuss?," Travers laments in the first sentence of his review, before bemoaning all the preceding Seuss films: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (correct), The Cat in the Hat (correct), and Horton Hears a Who (incorrect).

Rebuttal: I don't understand why he hated the additional characters (Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Rob Riggle & Betty White) that, in my opinion, gave the movie some much-needed freshness, something more than a three-dimensional, frame-for-frame remake of the 1972 television special that I'm guessing Travers would have preferred.

Complaint: "This 3D, animated, idiotically musicalized version of The Lorax thoroughly debases the genius of the good doctor's book, adding characters, twisting plot points, and replacing Seuss subtlety with Hollywood frenzy."

Rebuttal: The movie had the same amount of heart as the book, if not more. For all it's (appropriate) silliness, it still accurately illustrated the insidious & well-intentioned nature of corporate thinking ("growing the economy") and the merciless & unforgiving consequences it can have not just on the environment but on social conscience. As for "Hollywood frenzy," I have no idea what he's talking about. And what is "Seuss subtlety," anyway? Is it the kind of nuance found only in his books, crafted so artfully at a five-year-old's level of comprehension?

Complaint: "Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda direct strictly for short-attention spans on a fruit-loopy palette that made me want to puke."

Rebuttal: It's a movie for children with the added bonus of placating their hipster parents. You know what made me want to puke? Seeing Babel after he gave it four stars in 2006. Much deserved congratulations to a film with armed middle eastern children, a border patrol snafu and a naked Asian that wasn't half as socially conscious as a cartoon with singing fish. How's that for subtlety?

Travers can't see the forest for the trees (zing!), and he should stop letting some inflated opinion of Dr. Seuss's "art" cloud his judgment about a movie that (for me) was enjoyable, emotional & gave me more than I expected. I think he's forgetting that, when you're a child, you only love Dr. Seuss for the pictures and the rhymes. It's only when you become an adult that you can appreciate the message.