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about

1994 or '95
(originally produced & self-released by Guru Magpie on the tape 'Press The Pound Sign', winter 1995; reissued by Craig Jakubowski summer 1995; reissued in winter 1996 by Full Tilt Distribution)

A jug band-style bastardization of Nirvana's 'About A Girl' recorded on boom box soon after Kurt Cobain's death was quite an outrage to rock fans in the 90's, almost as blasphemous as walking into a sunday morning church service screaming "Hail Satan!" Nonetheless, it was all in a day's work for Guru Magpie. Sparing few sacred cows and dancing circles around the "Alternative Nation", while not an angry reaction to grunge, this Glen Arm area group's work was certainly a witty retort to the notion that 90's pop culture was more than just an entertaining novelty.

In the shuckin'n'jivin performance given here by Guru Magpie, Nirvana's mega-hit occupies the context of pure escapist fluff. With the musical iconography of good-timey Americana playfully mocking the loneliness and desperation of the song's original intent, 'Bout a Girl' boils grunge's mass marketed "angst" down to its bare essence: the maudlin hokum of road weary song-and-dance men, itinerant buskers hustling with the colorful caricature of a 'punk'/'hard rock' tradition as antiquated and innocuous as some dusty old jug band 78. - Mike Apichella

credits

from Various Artists - Towson​-​Glen Arm Freakouts: 1992​-​1999, released February 28, 2013

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