Sadly, coming to a Foot Locker near you with the cold, calculated illusion of teen spirit…
Fans of the late Kurt Cobain, the angst-ridden, heroin-addicted grunge king and leader of Nirvana, now have a chance to see what it was like to walk in his scuffed Converse tennis shoes.
Of course, said shoes did not actually belong to Cobain. They are part of Converse's new "Kurt Cobain Signature Line" of shoes -- coming in stylish white or morbid black, with four decorative (yes, decorative) varieties to choose from. They range in price from $50 to $65.
Each will bear an embroidered copy of Cobain's signature. Others will also be adorned with images, lyrics and once-private writings from his diaries that his grievous widow, Courtney Love, plucked from his personal effects and sold in book form to the public in 2002.
Suddenly this phrase from Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- "hello, hello, hello, how low?" -- takes on deeper meaning.
It is unlikely that the walking thrift-store that was the disheveled Cobain -- in his conflicted heart a punk's punk to the end -- ever paid $50 to $65 for any shoes. His well-worn sneakers -- filthy, ragged and often untied -- looked at best salvaged from a thrift-store bin and at worst rescued from a dumpster.
And Cobain would never, ever, have bought shoes celebrating a dead celebrity -- the most visible aspect of voyeuristic, celebrity-obsessed America's continuing effort to support Madison Avenue's continuing marketing scheme: Your Dead Heroes Are Not Prophets, But Profits.
Such an act would be the antithesis of who he was and for what he stood -- a man who, through his expressions of personal anguish, became an unintentional voice for a nation of disenfranchised, angst-ridden kids.
Remember, this is the same Kurt Cobain, a fanzine kind of guy, who, for a cover shoot for Rolling Stone, wore a homemade T-shirt bearing the slogan "Corporate Magazines Suck."
Still, he loved his Converse skids, wearing them in virtually every photo of the band in which his feet are visible.
When he shot himself to death on or about April 5, 1994, he was wearing a black pair of high-top Converse skids.
Hey kids! Now you can buy your own replica of these very same shoes, adorned with doodles, musings and the lyrics to, among other songs, "Come As You Are," the Nirvana song that bears the elephant-in-the-suicide-room lyric, "And I swear I don't have a gun."
Missing from the factory-frayed shoes are simulated blood splatters, or excerpts from Cobain's suicide note. Taste rears its ugly head. Chalk it up to a momentary lapse in poor judgment from Love, unexpected though it may be.
Cobain wrestled with the trappings and materialism of his success, something that contributed to his suicide. He in no way wished to be a generational icon. He died for his pain, nobody else's.
And he would be appalled at the gross merchandising of his life, his private thoughts, his scraps of musical ideas. He has been sold for a sack of gold, betrayed by a woman whom he at one time loved, and who has returned his devotion by selling anything Cobain-related that she can use to pay off drug dealers, plastic surgeons, rehab centers.
The widow Love may not have used Cobain during his life -- al2though that is highly debatable -- but she has outdone herself since his demise.
Buy the shoes, if you wish, if it fits some personal, misguided definition of cool. But if you want shoes like the ones Cobain would have worn, grab some old stinky sneakers, repair any rips with duct tape, then grab a marker and scrawl whatever you feel like writing…
On your shoes. That's making a statement.
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