The first time I heard "Verse Chorus Verse" was in October 1994. Kurt Cobain had died only five months before and I was mere miles from where his life ended. I had just completed a harrowing cross-country trip from Alabama to Seattle, where I intended to strike it on my own. I had graduated two years early and by this point had completed exactly two semesters of community college. Life was going nowhere. I wanted to return to Seattle and to my friends, so I packed my Brown 1978 Toyota Corolla with all my earthly possessions and drove west.
Along the way, my water pump blew. The first of my travelers' checks were depleted. In the process of getting my water pump fixed, the mechanic disconnected a wire connecting my alternator. I spent the night in a motel in Wamsutter, Wyoming, all alone and fast going broke. Somehow I babied my aging, ailing car just into Idaho where a mechanic took pity on me and reconnected the wire without charging me a dime.
It's been 15 years since that trip. I feel like I was practically a 19th Century pioneer traveling the Oregon Trail looking back on it now. Cell phones existed, but they had yet to become a mainstay of every day existence. I had to find pay phones to call my family collect. They did their best to help me from the distance, but I was isolated, scared, and alone.
What should have been a four-day trip took six. When I finally arrived in Seattle, I called the friend I'd be staying with. I followed her to her storage shed and scanned the radio dial for a new music station and found 107.7 KNDD and what I heard was the unmistakable voice of Kurt Cobain playing a song I'd never heard! Talk about the Seattle experience! I listened to the end when the DJ said, "That was Nirvana with 'Verse Chorus Verse.'