Customer Reviews

Cobain Unseen

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Personally I thought Charles R. Cross has wrung Kurt Cobain's musical and personal legacy dry.

But apparently he hasn't, as evidenced by the image-heavy brick that is "Cobain Unseen." It has some basic biographical information about Cobain and attempts to address his inner life, but doesn't really reveal much that we don't already know. The real draw is the seemingly endless slew of pictures, letters and scraps from his all-too-brief lifetime.

After briefly covering the major events of Kurt Cobain's childhood, Cross explores his ramshackle youth and growing musical abilities -- culminating in Nirvana (whose name he says stemmed from Cobain's love of Eastern beliefs), one of the most groundbreaking bands of the 1990s.

But Cobain's life remained pretty tumultuous, as Cross explores quite a few aspects of Cobain's life -- his dark outlook and weird fascinations, his rebellion against his own fame and the widespread adulation of him, his marriage to the crazy rocker Courtney Love, and the birth of their daughter. And, of course, the days leading up to his early death.

Cross's prose portions are serviceable, but it feels more like a longish magazine article instead of a biography. Some of the anecdotes are moderately interesting -- such as Kurt seeing a dying suicide as a schoolboy -- but most of this stuff is a glossy, rapid look over his life. Most of the time, Cross's written stuff simply form a framework for the rest of the book.

The really good stuff is the pictures. There's a brilliant array of personal photos -- a laughing Cobain posing with his baby daughter, in concert, standing beside Japanese Jizo statues, hanging out with Courtney Love or his bandmates, playing with a steering wheel as a baby. They show him from all emotional angles -- happy, miserable, rebellious, mournful, angry, sullen, quirky, and even with a faint, dark fire in his eyes.

Some are unstaged and mildly blurry, while others look like magazine photoshoots -- like a beautiful picture of a blank-faced Cobain posing amongst doll heads, with a blanket of roses over his head. And there are many fragments of Cobain's interests -- odd dolls, masks, heart-shaped boxes, monkeys with batteries, tiger suits, carved-up drawing figures and audio cassettes covered in fruit stickers.

But the most unusual stuff is the assorted fold-outs and removable items -- ads for Nirvana, a copy of Kurt's high school diploma, a CD of old songs, blurry letters, X-rays, handmade cards, and even an old handwritten draft of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It makes the book seem like less of a biography, and more like a collage of various fragments from Cobain's lifetime.

The prose content comes second in "Cobain Unseen," where beautiful pictures and rock'n'roll relics reveal a vibrant personality that still shines from the pages. Definitely worth checking out.

Charles Cross did a very good job on this book. It is informative and creative. There is a CD included of Kurt reading his journals that is just mesmerizing. The book gives a good detailed picture of Kurt Cobain and his art in it's many forms and leaves the reader wanting more (as do all books about Kurt). I especially would like to see more CD's of Kurt's speaking coming our way.

I just picked this up today and I can't seem to put it down. If your a fan of Cobain and or Nirvana I recommend buying this. It is packed full of very nice pictures and tons of other things.

I got this book yesterday and I can't put it down. Great rare pictures of Kurt and his art. All interactive items have been very well constructed and put together. Great for anyone's collection on Cobain!!

I actually picked up this book for $5.99 at Borders and read it in one night. The tale is familar to any fan but it's the extras and the CD that make it worth while.

It's simply an amazing book to add to your collection.

It was a quick read but enjoyable as a Nirvana fan. If you are a fan there is probably not much in the book you didn't already know. It overwhelmingly has a scrapbook feeling to it but also provides some great backstories to accommodate those scraps.

Cobain Unseen is not another biography of Kurt, nor a time line of the band. This book is one hundred and sixty pages of Kurt's art and rare pictures of his childhood though the end of Nirvana. I've been a fan of Nirvana since 1989 and I had never seen 90% of the pictures in this book. Besides pictures, there's reprints of polaroid pictures, a lyric sheet, stickers, old Nirvana fliers, and even a mask that Kurt doodled on.

Charles Cross is a great writer, and if you've read "Heavier Than Heaven", which you should have if your looking into this book, than you already know that. While there are some great stories and insights into Kurt, this book is about his art. It also comes with a spoken word cd, read by Kurt.

This is a great book for ANY fan of Kurt's.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. It did have a lot of pictures I hadn't seen before. I also like how it included personal drawings, notes and even a spoken word CD with Kurt. I think it was well worth the money. I must say that I left this book feeling a little bit more sad than I had reading all the others. Sorry, I'm not very good at reviewing. All I can say is I loved it, great concept.

This book has some really wonderful pictures, but I don't like the text at all. The author is Courtney Love's friend, so I don't believe one word of the text, but if you want to have some really nice photo's of Kurt, this is a great book to have.

I was a little concerned about having spent a considerable amount of money on this book, particulary because I had already read Heavier Than Heaven. However, even though it's a biography about the same person, written by the same author, Cobain Unseen managed to keep me interested from beggining to end. Of course the featured drawings, handwritten documents, photographs and artifacts helped. To sum up, Cobain Unseen is totally worthy of the price if you're a real Nirvana fan and/or obsessed with Kurt's life. If this is not the case, then you shouldn't buy it.