Ouch! (Krist Novoselic on the MTV Music Video Awards)

Tony Pierce links to a blog post from a political theorist who formerly followed another line of employment.

Seeing as this is the one-year anniversary of my column for SeattleWeekly.com, I thought I’d do something different this week and tell the whole story behind the 1992 MTV Music Video Awards when my bass came crashing down on my head.

The columnist, if you haven't figured it out by now, is Krist Novoselic, who in his hairier days was in a band with Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl.

Novoselic details two things that were going on that night - some testiness between his band Nirvana and Axl Rose's band Guns n' Roses (which is still around, at least as far as Rose is concerned), and some testiness between his band Nirvana and the suits at MTV who somehow thought that "Rape Me" was not the appropriate song to play on network television.

Fast forward to the performance, not of "Rape Me," but of "Lithium."

I’m plugged into some awful bass rig that’s distorting terribly. I can barely hear what I’m playing, and the tone deteriorates into an inaudible mess. [Intercourse] it—time for the bass-toss schtick. Up it goes!!!!! I always try to get good air—I bet I hit over 25 feet, easy! But no matter how high it went, I was not on my game— the only time I’ve ever dropped it was then in front of 300 million people. Ouch! I was fine, but I faked like I was knocked out, perhaps expressing my inner torment over a taxing evening. (Maybe I was just embarrassed.)

I stumbled offstage toward the green room with my hands on my forehead. I walked straight into the bathroom and looked at a bloody forehead in the mirror. I washed my face off and put a paper towel to my head. Paramedics came in and put a little bandage on, then handed me a long medical release form to sign.

Then, as with all backstage events, things get a bit surreal.

Standing behind them was Brian May, the guitarist of Queen, with a glass of chilled champagne.

For the connection between May and the release form, read the rest of Novoselic's post.

Oh, and by the way, Novoselic gets along fine with Duff McKagan now. Which is good, since he also blogs for the Seattle Weekly. Small world.