Kurt Cobain would be 46 today / My first awful guitar.

On this day, February 20th 1967,  Kurt Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington.  As we all know, Kurt would go on to start the band Nirvana. And Nirvana, would spawn an entire movement and culture that would overtake the mainstream in 1991, creating a demand for underground music, that hadn't existed since the Sex Pistols reached stardom in the late 70's.  No longer would rock bands who sang about muscle cars, woman and partying, like Motley Crue, Poison etc.  dominate the airwaves, but now a new breed of unique, less polished rock, from tangible artists who looked more like their audience than they did rockstars.  I still remember the shift that Nirvana's Nevermind created in popular culture, which came shortly after the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit was aired.  The classic 80's movie jock, football star, muscle headed, alpha males were not cool anymore and the long haired scrawny, ripped jeans wearing, slackers were.  For one year in middle school,  I was "cool".  It was a huge shift, the world was turned on its head.  To be into sports was shunned, to be rich meant you were a douchebag, and I realized that my blue collar, guitar playing, flannel shirt, ripped jeans wearing father was cooler than I thought.

It was at this time that I became inspired to pick up an electric guitar.  I was hanging at my friends house when he began playing Nirvana songs (In Bloom and Smells Like Teen Spirit if my memory serves correctly) on this shitty black Yamaha guitar out of an old practice amp.  I was in disbelief! I thought to myself, "wow, that sounds exactly like it!?!"  He gave me a quick lesson showing me some of the chords to the songs and it didn't seem all that hard.  My mind was made, I was going to get an electric guitar and start a band!  I told my brother as soon as I got home and we began saving our allowances, shoveling money etc, until we had $60.  We headed down to Daddys Junky Music and picked out a black guitar that looked similar to a black Fender stratocaster that Kurt had.  Little did we know, this was maybe the worst electric guitar ever made.  The name brand was "Cruise" and it sounded like shit, and played even worse.  It also didn't help that because we couldn't afford an amplifier, we played it out of the speakers of our parents old stereo.  I was never able to find any information on this brand of guitars until sometime last year when I found this AMAZING review of it from an angry consumer that bought one years after in 2004:

I bought it of a friend for $135

The humbucker pickup had an okay sound for nu-metal. thats really all.

Everything, The neck warped easy, the sound quality is so poor that I would be ashamed to play it for any of my friends or family members. If you tryied to solo on it, good notes will sound like sour note, even if you have re-tuned it 500 times in one day. The fretboard is made of cheap wood and gets nicks scratches and dents very easy. The tuning pegs are stiff and hard to use. I am afraid to tune it every time because this guitar breaks a lot of strings. The bridge is made poorly and fell apart, and the guitar goes out of tune every time I use the whammy bar.

The quality is horribley poor. I took good care of this guitar and you wouldn't een know. There huge cracks all over, the strap locks are so small that my strap falls off every time. As I said befor, the tuning peggs are the worst ever, they are stiff, creekey and sometimes the srings slipp while I'm trying to tune it and I have to re-tune all over again. One huge problem, is that the tone nob came Loose. It was only glued in with cheap glue, and that was before my friend who sold it to me, had also fixxed it. The trussrod system is even crappy, I tried to turn the truss rod to de warp the fretboard. The fret board is now wavey.

This guitars is one of the biggest wastes of money ever, If you want to learn how to play guitar, by a quality guitar, I have been playing for five years now and just bought a B.C. Rich NJ. Beast, two years ago. I was shocked at how awesome it was, after having such a crappy guitar. Never by a cruise, even if thats all the money you have, wait and get a good guitar. One other thing, another friend of mine, also got a cruise and it totally quit working on him. Don't make that same mistake.

Mike Driedger rated this unit 1 star on 2004-03-31.

In conclusion.  Happy 46th Kurt, you're missed!