Kurt Cobain died!

I think it was a Saturday afternoon in April 1994 and I decided to head into the city and just check out the sights, maybe go to the mall and just wander. I liked to do that when I was young and still do very much to this day, just wander, get lost for a little while, discover, do some people watching, take in the city and its sounds, its smells, its people. And I don’t mind doing it alone either.  And that is what I was doing on this particular day, heading into Central, Hong Kong alone on the 6a bus from the bustling Stanley Village on the southside of Hong Kong Island to the metropolis of the city and its many skyscrapers, hotels, apartment buildings, vibrant neon street signs and people, LOTS of people…. 

 I put my money, some loose change into the bus driver’s cash slot to pay for my fare, it was definitely not the correct fare amount, I usually just threw a whole load of random pennies and change (making it seem like a lot more than it was) and hope that the bus driver wouldn’t realise I hadn’t paid the right amount. And usually they didn’t realise or at least they never said anything. The 6a was relatively quiet today and I headed up to the top of the double decker bus and to the back of the bus and sat down. I went to get out my yellow Sony Walkman and listen to music at full blast, I was listening to my cassette tape of Nirvana’s Never Mind, one of my very favourite music albums. I noticed there was a newspaper in the seat in front of me, that day’s South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s biggest newspaper. I picked it up and started to look at the front page and I saw the headline “Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain DEAD…” 

 I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading, this was the first time I had really felt this kind of emotion when hearing of someone famous dying, especially someone like Kurt Cobain who was so young, who apparently had the world at his feet and whose art and music had meant a lot to me so far in my young life, it was quite surreal, really. I started to look at the liner notes/booklet of my Never Mind album cassette tape and I just started to listen to the album start to finish, though I do remember starting on the song Drain You (track number 8 on the album) first and I just listened to the album full blast and was staring at Kurt Cobain’s face in the pictures and looking at the headline in the South China Morning Post and I just went a little numb for a while, staring into his eyes, daydreaming and just wondering, thinking what could’ve been going on in this man’s mind and life. Sad, just sad…. 

 Needless to say Kurt Cobain and Nirvana’s music will always be a huge part of my life and my life’s soundtrack...

ps; I just re-created that same moment just now upon the date of publishing this post (Tuesday 8th December 2020, the 40th anniversary of the day John Lennon was murdered), listening to "Drain You" (posted below) and looking at the very same image below, I was back there on the 6a bus in Hong Kong 26 years ago once more and I felt it again, deeply....