Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana

Gina Arnold is a music critic. She's published articles in the Bay Area press and larger venues for twenty years. A professional critic is paid to go from concert to concert, band to band, interview people, review bodies of work and publish opinion pieces. She's expected to spot patterns in culture and history and put that criticism in a larger context, but publishes essays, not research papers. Not agreeing with a critic's views or objecting to the volume at which they're expressed is valid, and their work is designed to provoke strong responses: publishers love it when the public has ANY loud comeback, pro or con. Dynamiting a professional's obligation to form and publish what are always represented as opinions betrays ignorance of what an art critic's job is, how it's done, and Arnold's credentials to do so. re: "... just another book" Arnold researched and wrote her book in 1991-92 - only two years after Nirvana's first album was released, and three before sensation over Cobain's suicide sent other social commentators scurrying to write their own books. A drive through BIP lists only one other title published before Arnold sent hers to press in '92. Sixteen years later, still in print and still provocative, "Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana" is not just another book on the band but one of the first out and most outspoken.

this book introduced me, as a teenager, to a whole new world of music. i bought it because i thought it would be about nirvana. wrong. it is about everything leading up to nirvana in the punk/indie music world. gina arnold is lucky to have lived this life and we are lucky she decided to write about it so we can experience it too.

if you're getting this just to read about nirvana-don't. it's mostly about old punk music like the sex pistols & the evolution of punk music upto the time of the first pressing.

an exceptional book telling how it was.... and how it still should be. But it's not..Gina Arnold captures the essence of many bands before they became large, though essentially NIRVANA! MAY THEIR MEMORY LIVE ON FOREVER IN ALL MUSIC LOVERS