Originally posted on June 23, 2006.
Back about 12 years or so I was a counselor at a summer camp. It was a great couple of weeks spent playing games in the sunshine, hanging out with old friends, and mentoring young people. At the time I thought there would be nothing better than being a teacher, a molder of young minds.
The decade since either brought me to my senses or slipped right by me.
During one of the weeks at camp, I had to go to a concert that I had no interest in. While there I bumped into a girl with whom I had met a few months prior. We began chatting it up and digging each other.
I noticed some scratches on her arm and listened, fascinated, as she told me how she had etched “Kurt Forever” into her skin with a knife. This was not long after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and like a million other young people who are perpetually affected by such things; she took this selfish act to heart.
This was long before I understood terms like “scarring” or that thousands of young people do such things to themselves every day. I didn’t understand the pain, or the crying out such things often represent. I simply thought it was a pretty cool thing to do, if rather weird. While I was saddened, and angered by Cobain’s act, the thought of carving up my own skin because of it was something of incompressibility.
Around the same time I heard “Come As You Are” on the radio which was followed by some smart-alecked DJ making sarcastic comments about Cobain lying when he sang, “And I swear that I don’t have a gun.”
My friend who happened to be a girl who later became something of a girlfriend, became very upset at this comment. She couldn’t understand how someone could joke about the death of an artist, and certainly not the suicide of a genius.
These days when I think about Nirvana, I think about those two girls and their incredibly strong reactions towards the band, its singer, and the songs they produced. In my full-on grunge days I dug the crap out of Nirvana (though truth be told I was always a Pearl Jam man) but these days they barely garner a ‘meh.’
I dig the influential nature of the scene. Rock certainly needed a good swift kick from hair metal and Arena Rock. And when listening to the MTV Unplugged album, you can really get a feel for how great a songwriter Cobain, et al. was. But these days, my musical tastes swing the long shot away from the amped-up new punk that is the bulk of their releases.
Nirvana
10/31/91
Seattle, WA
A Halloween show just after Nirvana became the saviors of rock music. It is loud, full of angst and anger, and some pretty stinkin’ good melodies underneath it all.
From my 30-year-old head, which prefers Donna the Buffalo to Soundgarden, Norah Jones to L7, this guitar-heavy neo-punk music takes a while to warm up to. After the first listen I was bored. So I turned it up a few notches, this is rock ‘n freaking roll after all, and it needs to be cranked.
That helped, the rhythmic pounding blasting from my little Saturn’s speakers got me head banging, all the way down to my pancreas.
But it still wasn’t enough; I kept wishing I had a copy of Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions, or maybe a Bruce Hornsby bootleg, circa 1997.
By the third listen my nerves had calmed down, my mind accepted the distortion, the noise, the grunge of it all and I began to digest the music.
For the love of grunge, this is some great rockin’ shite.
For a band with only two albums under their belt they mix it up pretty well. They cover a good portion of Bleach and Nevermind, throw in a couple of new songs, and even manage to cover the Vaseline’s “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam.”
The band seems to be in good spirits. Besides a rockin’, they make some cracks about the audience not being dressed up for Halloween, white boy funk, and John Jacobs and the POWER team. But mostly they just rock out.
Listening to these guys throw down the heavy stuff for a fourth time didn’t make me join the cult of Nirvana once more, but it reminded me why I was once part of the faithful.
themidnightcafe.org 
He will be always in our soul
dude,im a die hard nivana fan. most people think i like them to much. but where did you get the album? i cant find it anywhere. and i have a lot of nirvana bootlegs.
see it to me? lol
Jay I’m afraid I’ve had it so long, I can’t even begin to remember where I got it. I’d be happy to trade for it except that I am leaving the country in about a week and all my stuff is packed away.
thats would be sweet if we could trade. i got the bootleg ROMA. mostpeople say that is the best sound quality nirvana bootleg. oh well….
I’ll keep an eye out for it on the torrent boards and post here if I find it. Otherwise check back with me in a year or so.
willll….always be…my fuckin’ hero…….wish that i could seeee you……
Hi Mat
Pretty sure I have this bootleg – although it will have been buried in a box since I returned to the UK from Canada in December 2000. It was called “Seventh Heaven” and had a blue cover, if I remember right…
It’s funny looking back to remember how I got hooked on Nirvana!
I think I related to you that by the late seventies I was disillusioned by corporate rock! So for much of the eighties I was busy exploring the oceanic scope of jazz. Things changed in 1987 when I saw Prince perform “Sign Of The Times” at the Grammy Awards live on TV. I was impressed by “Three Days” – a CD single by Janes Addiction – and the “Hallelujah” EP by the Happy Mondays – both of which I picked up cheap at “Second Time Around” in Ottawa. Then in 1988 I saw Pixies perform “This Monkey’s Gone To Heaven” live on TV. Frank Black – then Black Francis – bellowing in a muck sweat. It took me back to my childhood. 1964 when I saw the Kinks perform “You Really Got Me” live on TV at my Grandfather’s house in Kingsworthy near Winchester – Ray Davies in an open collar shirt. Seeing Ray sweat like a pig made a lasting impression. That muck sweat made the great impact of the killer riff and the music all the more real…
24 years later and I was ripe for grunge…. even though it was still several years away…
I wasn’t cool. I did my jazz show at CKCU – that was cool – but I was not! When some of the chicks who volunteered at the station asked me if I was into hardcore. I thought that they were talking about porn, not music! That’s how green I was….
When I returned to the UK – after nearly ten years away – I realized a cultural shift had happened since punk broke. The record stores were dominated by bins of twelve inch releases – the alt/indie rock scene in full bloom. It was staggering….
The Stone Roses became huge at that time. It was the “second summer of Love” and I felt envious of my seventeen year old cousins and their passion for a guitar band called Ride…
In Ottawa I worked in a University Library on the Circulation desk. This job was good for me because it forced me to deal with many different types of people and probably saved me from becoming an academic sociopath…
One of my colleagues – ten years or so younger than me – played guitar and was into the shoegaze scene… he was a big fan of Johnny Marr and the Smiths… I remember that for months he was telling me that I had to listen to a great album called “Nevermind” and he would just not shut up about it. “Have you listened to it yet, Dave?” He would ask me. I did not. There was no way it could be as cool as “Higher Than The Sun” by Primal Scream…
Eventually one weekend it was my shift to supervise the circulation desk at the Library. One of the student assistants there asked me if it was okay to play music during his shift. I said okay – as long as it cannot be heard over the counter. So we established an agreeable volume level that would not disturb our customers. And all day he played “Nevemind” in constant rotation. And that is how I got hooked on the album! Certainly side one has a perfect flow…
I went to the Reading Festival in 1992 with my girlfriend at the time and we saw Nirvana live. It was a brilliant set. The stars came out – as the rainy weather cleared. Three days in the mud – suffering the Rollins Band at 10 AM spoiled my coffee – but it was worth it. And Nirvana had invested in a great sound system, They were great!
At that Festival I bought a copy of Prince’s notorious “Black Album” on CD and a vinyl pressing of Nirvana’s legendary 1991 appearance at Reading that put them on the map. That recording is unlistenable! I have only listened through it once. My room mate at that time was a black girl called Denise. She knew the hardcore scene inside out – she had seen Nirvana live in Ottawa in 1988 – she turned me on to Jane’s Addiction. I think that “Nothing’s Shocking” is the only record I ever heard that genuinely terrified me on first listen! Denise was schizophrenic. She solved the problem in radical fashion so that we could listen to that unlistenable vinyl recording of Nirvana at Reading in 1991. We cranked up the volume, shut our eyes and shook our heads from side to side – headbanging like Beavis and Butthead in the front row – and it worked! (Just….) but that was an exhausting listen…
I lucked into my next Nirvana bootleg – the great 1994 Roma disc – second hand at Record Runner in Ottawa – for $12… The guy ahead of me had just traded it in and I snapped it up – the owner of Record Runner did not jack the price because it was a boot… the guy who owned RR had real integrity… lucky me…
I bought a bunch of Nirvana bootlegs during my years in Hamilton at a store called “Cheapies” – they were expensive. $30 or more a pop. Among them was “Dumb” – with selections from the band’s 1992 appearance at Readng (N’s final live appearance in the UK sadly). These were the years when the Italian label Kiss The Stone was thriving with a vast catalogue because of a loophole in Italian law that meant that “live recordings” were nor protected by copyright. I think that this loophole got closed around 2002/2003 – no doubt under corporate directives from the EEC. A great great pity in my opinion!
I think I saw Neil Young in Cheapies once. Tall dude with long black hair half way down his back. Dressed like a farmer in dirty jeans and knee high wellingtons. No sooner had he walked into the store then he and the owner disappeared into the back…
The Music industry’s corporate might NEVER got the kicking that David Bowie predicted. All the brilliant Blogs that were created in the Noughties vanished. Your Midnight Cafe is among the exceptions….
Any way when I read your heart felt note about Kurt Cobain I just had to tell you that you are wrong. Kurt did not kill himself because according to the spirits “the blond boy” is in Limbo. If he had killed himself he would be in the Dark. In other words Kurt was murdered. Like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Steve Marriott…
Hi Mat
Pretty sure I have this bootleg – although it will have been buried in a box since I returned to the UK from Canada in December 2000. It was called “Seventh Heaven” and had a blue cover, if I remember right…
It’s funny looking back to remember how I got hooked on Nirvana!
I think I related to you that by the late seventies I was disillusioned by corporate rock! So for much of the eighties I was busy exploring the oceanic scope of jazz. Things changed in 1987 when I saw Prince perform “Sign Of The Times” at the Grammy Awards live on TV. I was impressed by “Three Days” – a CD single by Janes Addiction – and the “Hallelujah” EP by the Happy Mondays – both of which I picked up cheap at “Second Time Around” in Ottawa. Then in 1988 I saw Pixies perform “This Monkey’s Gone To Heaven” live on TV. Frank Black – then Black Francis – bellowing in a muck sweat. It took me back to my childhood. 1964 when I saw the Kinks perform “You Really Got Me” live on TV at my Grandfather’s house in Kingsworthy near Winchester – Ray Davies in an open collar shirt. Seeing Ray sweat like a pig made a lasting impression. That muck sweat made the great impact of the killer riff and the music all the more real…
24 years later and I was ripe for grunge…. even though it was still several years away…
I wasn’t cool. I did my jazz show at CKCU – that was cool – but I was not! When some of the chicks who volunteered at the station asked me if I was into hardcore. I thought that they were talking about porn, not music! That’s how green I was….
When I returned to the UK – after nearly ten years away – I realized a cultural shift had happened since punk broke. The record stores were dominated by bins of twelve inch releases – the alt/indie rock scene in full bloom. It was staggering….
The Stone Roses became huge at that time. It was the “second summer of Love” and I felt envious of my seventeen year old cousins and their passion for a guitar band called Ride…
In Ottawa I worked in a University Library on the Circulation desk. This job was good for me because it forced me to deal with many different types of people and probably saved me from becoming an academic sociopath…
One of my colleagues – ten years or so younger than me – played guitar and was into the shoegaze scene… he was a big fan of Johnny Marr and the Smiths… I remember that for months he was telling me that I had to listen to a great album called “Nevermind” and he would just not shut up about it. “Have you listened to it yet, Dave?” He would ask me. I did not. There was no way it could be as cool as “Higher Than The Sun” by Primal Scream…
Eventually one weekend it was my shift to supervise the circulation desk at the Library. One of the student assistants there asked me if it was okay to play music during his shift. I said okay – as long as it cannot be heard over the counter. So we established an agreeable volume level that would not disturb our customers. And all day he played “Nevemind” in constant rotation. And that is how I got hooked on the album! Certainly side one has a perfect flow…
I went to the Reading Festival in 1992 with my girlfriend at the time and we saw Nirvana live. It was a brilliant set. The stars came out – as the rainy weather cleared. Three days in the mud – suffering the Rollins Band at 10 AM spoiled my coffee – but it was worth it. And Nirvana had invested in a great sound system, They were great!
At that Festival I bought a copy of Prince’s notorious “Black Album” on CD and a vinyl pressing of Nirvana’s legendary 1991 appearance at Reading that put them on the map. That recording is unlistenable! I have only listened through it once. My room mate at that time was a black girl called Denise. She knew the hardcore scene inside out – she had seen Nirvana live in Ottawa in 1988 – she turned me on to Jane’s Addiction. I think that “Nothing’s Shocking” is the only record I ever heard that genuinely terrified me on first listen! Denise was schizophrenic. She solved the problem in radical fashion so that we could listen to that unlistenable vinyl recording of Nirvana at Reading in 1991. We cranked up the volume, shut our eyes and shook our heads from side to side – headbanging like Beavis and Butthead in the front row – and it worked! (Just….) but that was an exhausting listen…
I lucked into my next Nirvana bootleg – the great 1994 Roma disc – second hand at Record Runner in Ottawa – for $12… The guy ahead of me had just traded it in and I snapped it up – the owner of Record Runner did not jack the price because it was a boot… the guy who owned RR had real integrity… lucky me…
I bought a bunch of Nirvana bootlegs during my years in Hamilton at a store called “Cheapies” – they were expensive. $30 or more a pop. Among them was “Dumb” – with selections from the band’s 1992 appearance at Readng (N’s final live appearance in the UK sadly). These were the years when the Italian label Kiss The Stone was thriving with a vast catalogue because of a loophole in Italian law that meant that “live recordings” were nor protected by copyright. I think that this loophole got closed around 2002/2003 – no doubt under corporate directives from the EEC. A great great pity in my opinion!
I think I saw Neil Young in Cheapies once. Tall dude with long black hair half way down his back. Dressed like a farmer in dirty jeans and knee high wellingtons. No sooner had he walked into the store then he and the owner disappeared into the back…
The Music industry’s corporate might NEVER got the kicking that David Bowie predicted. All the brilliant Blogs that were created in the Noughties vanished. Your Midnight Cafe is among the exceptions….
Any way when I read your heart felt note about Kurt Cobain I just had to tell you that you are wrong. Kurt did not kill himself because according to the spirits “the blond boy” is in Limbo. If he had killed himself he would be in the Dark. In other words Kurt was murdered. Like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Steve Marriott…