its funny without knowing most other posters that age varies greatly between us and on every other forum I'm on. I'm just turning 24, but listened to alot of Nirvana as a teenager until Metal really caught me.
Stop listening to commercial radio and start going to small live shows. Obviously where you live is a factor, but I have some friends in bands, and the best part of that is going to their shows and hearing the other bands that you would never be exposed to otherwise. Some truly exceptional stuff that will *never* be on the radio.
There is plenty of good music, but commercial radio only plays a tiny portion of what is out there. Stations get paid by record companies to play singles, so they have zero motivation to play anything that isn't money-motivated. Nirvana was an example of a band that record companies paid radio stations to play, they just happened to be good as well as marketable.
I liked Nirvana when I was younger, but I can't stand any of Nirvana's songs anymore. I love me some Bush, STP, Sound Garden, and Foo Fighters though...