Send "Nirvana " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 One month after Nirvana released Nevermind, they performed a gig at Seattle's Paramount Theatre on Halloween. A week after the show, Nevermind would crack the Top 40. A month later, it would be certified Gold. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was climbing to alarming heights on the Billboard chart. There was an imposing phalanx of video cameras present at the venue, to capture the gig in its entirety. The band was, understandably, a little freaked.There is plenty of live Nirvana already available to us: the half-hearted-feeling rush job that was From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah in 1996; the commercial release, last year, of the beloved bootleg Live at Reading; the Unplugged record. But the joy of Live at the Paramount is hearing the charge of this moment: a great band newly famous, still reeling and flooded with nervy adrenaline. Every single song on this setlist has already been featured once, or more, on some other Nirvana live record. But it's still invaluable. Kurt's voice sounds remarkably powerful here: He sang in a way that was obviously unsustainable, even with the aid of heavy cough syrup, and there's a thrill, although a slightly selfish one, of hearing his voice rip the air before he had begun to scream it down to the threads. His peculiar, yowling phrasing may have been a deliberate choice, or it might have been the only way he managed to wrangle those notes from a constricted voice box, but there is a terrible, riveting intensity to it: Words feel torn from him, bearing fishhooks on their way out. "Aneurysm"'s "Love you so much/ It makes me sick" becomes "Laahve yeww sowl much et makes me SECK." It physically hurts to hear, as it always has, but it gives you some of the most committed, clear performances of Nirvana's canonical songs as you're likely to get. There is some time-capsule fun to have listening to Paramount-- one of the biggest cheers is for "School"! Krist Novoselic makes a wince-inducing "Smile, you're on 'Candid Camera'" joke! But the album's queerest, and most fascinating, punk-rock sociological moment comes from the protracted lead-up to "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which was already the elephant in the room. You can practically see the feet-dragging and hand-twisting that leads up to it, like antsy kids being herded into Sunday service....full text |
| Hollywoodreporter |
| In Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha says, "The paramount reality, brothers, is Nirvana." That's certainly true this month, when music fans are reliving their grunge lives on the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind album. Coming up Sept. 27 are several deluxe CD reissues, plus a super-deluxe limited edition CD/DVD going for $225 on eBay. But the paramount reality for nostalgic fans is the legendary, long-lost Nirvana concert filmed at Seattle's Paramount Theater on Halloween 1991, set for release Sept. 27 on DVD and Dec. 27 on Blu-ray. "This is probably the best filmed Nirvana performance, and finally it is out on DVD," Kurt Cobain biographer Charles Cross tells The Hollywood Reporter. The show features galvanic renditions of 19 songs from Nevermind and other Nirvana albums, from the haunting Vaselines cover "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" to the hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to a slow, definitive version of the bitterly defiant "Rape Me." Watching the band happily smashing guitars and amazed to see their revolutionary dreams come true, you can see that Cobain does not yet feel raped by fame. The film captures a turning point. Days before, Nevermind had gone gold, selling 500,000 copies. The band's frontman was out of socks and, shocked by his bank balance, bought a new pair for the show. Bassist Krist Novoselic performs barefoot. It's fascinating to see Nirvana in mid-metamorphosis from unknown utopians in Olympia, Wash.'s music subculture to global superstars. Novoselic mocks the film crew, there to accelerate the success that made purists call them sellouts: "There's more cameras in here than in a 7-Eleven." But he and Cobain play brilliantly to the cameras in dueling duets, courting and craving artistic fame, expressing the creative intimacy that heroin and Courtney Love were soon to shatter. At Cobain's invitation, showbiz-despising Olympia musicians Ian Dickson and Nikki McClure parody cheesy go-go dancers onstage, appalling Nirvana's managers. "We infiltrated. I was fiercely trying to keep showbiz sexism, commercialism, exploitation and evil life from draining energy away," McClure tells THR....full text |
| Highdefdigest |
| Damn. I've started this review a good five different ways, only to hit delete on my trite, clichéd summations of Nirvana's pop-cultural impact on early 90s youth (now aging millennials). Here's the truth. Ask someone who was between the ages of 7 and 27 in 1991 where they were when they first heard 'Nevermind,' and they'll probably have an instant, specific answer. It was a record that united kids from all different places and all different backgrounds because the songs expressed how they felt everyday. They were anthems for anyone who ever felt left out, weird, or different... which is just about everyone. And it was fucking huge. Nirvana was my favorite band. Vocalist-guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl (though technically, he arrived in the middle of recording 'Nevermind') fused punk rock and Sabbath metal with poetic, Beatles-inspired pop-rock hooks. They took over the word, destroyed thousands of musical instruments, and tragically, it all ended too soon for my liking....full text |
Nirvana lyrics
