Finding beauty in the gnarly truly is a special kind of genius. While listening to the radio today the Meat Puppets song "oh, me" came on. If I hadn't heard the version that Nirvana had done of it on MTV's unplugged, I would never had guessed at how great the song is.
While the riff is there, it's overall performance is sloppy. The vocals are taken less than serious, and are more than a little off tune. The whole thing is disjointed and at times even seems to be a joke of some kind.
That Kurt Cobain was able to not only hear, but also translate the true inner beauty of that song is remarkable. It's a next level ability and he had a real knack for it. Their covers of The Vaselines songs on their "Hormoning" EP show similar transformations.
I suppose it's analogous to the artist chiseling the sculpture from the stone. It makes one wonder, what greatness do we overlook? How often do we dismiss beauty because we can't understand it?