When Nirvana hit it big I was in high school, a punk-rock purist with little time for their MTV revisionism or the fact that they inspired teen rebellion from people who’d never heard “Teenage Kicks.” But even though I was trapped in a late-70s time warp, I found myself at home alone when no one else was listening slipping in a tape (that’s right, cassette) of Nevermind and nodding my head. Cause, I had to admit, they were pretty damn good. When I got my hands on their debut, Bleach, I dug it even more, especially “About a Girl.” It’s still the tune that comes to mind unbidden when I drift back to memories of the band. And despite the cultish hype surrounding Kurt Cobain’s sad end and his bandmate Dave Grohl’s rise to pop stardom, I appreciate them for what they once were—a really excellent garage band—talented, unpretentious, melodic, devoid of flash and ego and able to deliver the rock in one of the most impressive of configurations: the power trio.
Few places are Nirvana’s garage chops more in evidence than in home video of their early days, shot in grimy practice rooms, stages, and the streets of Seattle. In the video above from 1988 (recorded at Krist Novoselic’s mother’s house, Aberdeen 1988), the band bangs out a version of “About a Girl” with muted ferocity. Strobe lights strobe, some dudes lounge around the doorway, and Cobain shouts the lyrics with his face pressed to the wall. It’s a perfect little document of the band, looking more or less like they always did, but without lighting banks, TV cameras, and screaming fans distracting from their lo-fi fuzz-rock appeal; all that machinery that seemed so ridiculous surrounding these guys. But we know that story.
The setlist of songs performed appears below:
0.07 Love Buzz
2:21 Scoff
3:18 About A Girl
6:17 Big Long Now
10:38 Immigrant Song
13:17 Spank Thru
16:19 Hairspray Queen
20:07 School
22:58 Mr. Moustache
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
The beginning–or just pulling out of the beginning, into something a little less grimy, with a little more light–seems the best.
And to think this was the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1987 . . . http://bit.ly/1nOdiMt