It’s over 20 years ago now that Nirvana’s video for “Smells like Teen Spir­it” debuted on MTV’s 120 Min­utes and, for bet­ter or worse, inau­gu­rat­ed the grunge era. The video arrived as a shock and a thrill to a gen­er­a­tion too young to remem­ber punk and sick of the steady stream of cheesy cor­po­rate dance music and hair met­al that char­ac­ter­ized the late-80s. For every­one out­side the small Seat­tle scene that nur­tured them and the tape-trad­ing kids in the know, the band seemed to arrive out of nowhere as a total angst-rid­den pack­age, and the MTV video, by first-time direc­tor Samuel Bay­er, seemed brac­ing­ly anar­chic and raw at the time.

But a look at the first live per­for­mance of “Teen Spir­it” (above) makes it seem pret­ty tame by com­par­i­son. The video’s a lit­tle grainy and low-res, which suits the song just fine. Live, “Teen Spir­it’s” dis­turb­ing under­tones are more pro­nounced, its qui­et-loud dynam­ics more force­ful, and the ener­gy of the crowd is real, not the thrash­ing around of a bunch of teenage extras. Not a cheer­leader in sight, but I think this would have grabbed me more than the pep ral­ly-riot-themed MTV video did when it debuted a few months lat­er. Despite their anti-cor­po­rate stance, Nir­vana was a casu­al­ty of their own suc­cess, eat­en up by the machin­ery they despised. Their best moments are still the unscript­ed and unpre­dictable. For con­trast, zip back to 1991 and watch the MTV video below. Also don’t miss Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988).

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor. This video makes him feel old.

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made an instant lit­tle chest­nut. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clas­sic clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

As a life­long John­ny Cash fan, raised on coun­try, gospel, blues and folk and all their out­law cousins, I spent my ado­les­cence lis­ten­ing to 1969’s Live from San Quentin and imag­in­ing the scene: Cash, who nev­er served hard time, singing about prison life to hard­ened men who greet­ed him as kin­dred. Lit­tle did I know, won­ders of the Inter­net to behold, that there is actu­al footage of the con­cert online. And so there it is above, and it’s great. John­ny mocks the guards, gets the­atri­cal­ly bel­liger­ent, and rocks out out­law coun­try style with “San Quentin,” voic­ing every prisoner’s griev­ances with his grav­el­ly deliv­ery. His glare is hyp­not­ic, and the song plays over footage of armed guards on the fences and inmates marched in herds.

Of course, there’s no San Quentin with­out Cash’s first prison con­cert, 1968’s At Fol­som Prison. The doc­u­men­tary below (with Swedish sub­ti­tles) opens with inter­views from coun­try stal­warts Mar­ty Stu­art and Cash’s daugh­ter Roseanne; it’s an hour-long explo­ration of the Fol­som prison con­cert and its import.

Cash loved giv­ing these con­certs, and he loved the men inside, not because he was one of them but because he knew he could have been if music hadn’t saved him. He gave anoth­er con­cert in 1977 at the Ten­nessee State Prison, but this record­ing nev­er had the impact that those first two did. Cash’s appear­ances at Fol­som and San Quentin in some ways defined his career as a writer and singer of out­law songs who cared about the men who paid the price for law and order.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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