His lists included artists from indie and alternative rock (the Vaselines, Pixies, the Breeders, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., PJ Harvey, Meat Puppets, Pavement); protopunk, punk rock and hardcore (the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Butthole Surfers, Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits, the Saints,[9] Black Flag, Bad Brains, Fear, Minor Threat, the Faith, Rites of Spring, Flipper, Fang); hip-hop (Public Enemy, N.W.A); blues (Lead Belly); and hard rock and metal (Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC,).

Contained in Journals is an assortment of directly Nirvana-related material, including embryonic lyric drafts,[12] early album tracklists, and even a set of unused liner notes Cobain had apparently written for In Utero in 1993.

Nirvana means freedom from pain and suffering in the external world and thats close to my definition of punk rock, exclaim guitarist Kurt Kobain.

Included in the latter are his drawings of a sniper shooting members of the swastika-toting Ku Klux Klan from a rooftop (with swastikas drawn backwards), his drawing of a soldier with a football helmet hanging from a noose, and a sketch of his own emaciated body, as well as a comic strip called "Mr. Moustache", in which an unborn child kicks through its mother's belly to kill its macho father, which arguably influenced the song of the same title off of Nirvana's first album, Bleach.

Throughout his life, Cobain was physically fragile and sickly; suffering from scoliosis, undiagnosed stomach ailments (which some argue led to his heroin addiction), and a touring schedule that required him to spend hours each night singing, screaming and stage diving.

[16] Though the root of his gastrointestinal issues was never determined, and close friends of Cobain argue that it was simply an excuse for his heroin habit, no one can deny the fact that he suffered tremendously.

[14] Seattle Weekly said this: "The journals are like an exploded diagram of a tormented soul, a maelstrom of self-pity, intolerant pride, morbid introspection, ingenious self-delusion, merciless self-knowledge, showbiz revulsion, starstruck effusion, Faustian ambition, otherworldly detachment, and an iron will helpless to help itself.

Packed into 280 pages are shocking confessions, sweetly eloquent letters to brilliant friends, hard-nosed band plans, fulminating political screeds, obscene cartoons, haunting video treatments, and lyrical poetry of tremulous Romantic sensitivity, Bukowskian crudity, dadaist flippancy, and modernist opacity."