Walking into the Village Jam Factory on a Friday night was strange, but arriving up the escalator to see the bar buzzing and full of excited music fans drinking beer and getting pumped to see Nirvana live on the big screen took that strange feeling away, it was quickly replaced by feeling like a teenager again.
Having lived through the whole Nirvana movement as a teen, growing up in the country and being too young at the time to attend their all ages gig at the Palace in Melbourne, this was going to be my first Nirvana gig.
This is the band’s only show shot on film and was recorded only a month after Nevermind was released, so the full chaos that Nirvana eventually caused was not necessarily apparent at this show.
This is the reality which sets it apart from later footage, as the band have now sold over 30million copies worldwide, which is hell of a lot more than the 46,251 copies that Geffen originally pressed, expecting to slowly move.
The cameras had roamed through the crowd outside The Paramount; at The Jam Factory in South Yarra, we felt we were genuinely walking into the concert.
Once arriving the camera operator zoomed straight onto the dimly lit stage; no props, just the band’s gear and a plain white wall, simply lit with red lights from behind, as a back drop. That was all they needed. It was about the music and nothing else.
Nirvana didn’t waste any time, opening with The Vaseline’s cover ‘Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam’ then heading straight into ‘Aneurysm’ – this live footage on the big screen is in our faces. Kurt is dressed in what would become the most copied style of any teenage boy in the early 90s: an oversized holey woollen jumper and blue jeans.
Dave sits low behind his massive-sounding drum kit pounding crazily but still managing some sweet backing vocals for the slower songs including ‘Polly‘.
Krist jumps around on stage with his low hung bass tied on by a piece of rope; the bass strap is clearly not long enough for his lowly slung vibe. He occasionally bounces over to Kurt’s mic to make goofy random comments in between songs to make up for the fact that Kurt speaks only when the band return to a completely dark stage for their encore: “This song is about long haired sweaty macho redneck men,” the frontman says as he starts strumming the beginning to ‘Rape Me’.
They finish with ‘Territorial Pissings’, and ‘Endless, Nameless’, trash the stage and walk off.
The set list is killer. They play most of Nevermind’s hits, tracks from Bleach and even a couple off Incesticide. This is a must see for any music fan and from beginning to end I actually felt like I was at The Paramount in 1991.
Other highlights: The go go dancers, the awesome camera shots of Dave Grohl playing drums, Kurt’s one and only guitar pedal, Krist’s banter between songs and playing tennis with Kurt’s broken guitar body.
Lowlights: the dude sitting behind me singing and the kids moshing at the front of the cinema, which turned into more like dudes wrestling each other….
The set list ran something like this:
Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam, Aneurysm, Drain You, School, Floyd The Barber, Smells Like Teen Spirit, About A Girl, Polly, Breed, Sliver, Love, Buzz, Lithium, Been A Son, Negative Creep, On A Plain, Blew, Rape Me, Territorial Pissings, Endless, Nameless
Stream the full documentary Live At The Paramount, here on Tone Deaf
