Man, Nirvana… it’s still hard to talk about them without getting a little choked up. Even after all these years.
I first heard them in the spring of ’91. I was still living in Queens and working at a record store when this guy I worked with handed me a copy of Bleach and said, “You gotta hear this, man.” I took it home, put it on, and it just knocked me sideways. Then “About a Girl” came on and that was it. I was hooked.
By the time I moved out to Seattle in ’92, I was already a huge fan. I still couldn’t quite believe I was living in the same city as all these bands I’d been buying records by back in New York.
A couple months after I got here, I saw Nirvana at the Crocodile on October 4. They were the surprise opener for Mudhoney and were billed as Pen Cap Chew. I remember people trying to figure out if the rumor was actually true, and then there they were.
That show was incredible. Hot, packed, loud as hell. No “Teen Spirit,” no “Come As You Are,” none of that. They played stuff like “Mexican Seafood,” “Beeswax,” “D-7,” “Curmudgeon,” and “Pen Cap Chew,” plus a couple of songs I didn’t know at the time. Kurt asked for requests at one point and Dave started yelling for “Teen Spirit” in this stupid voice. Everybody cracked up.
Kurt even thanked us for letting them pretend they were still an underground band. I remember thinking that was pretty funny considering they were probably the biggest band in the world by then.
That night is still one of my favorite memories of moving to Seattle.
Kurt and Krist had started the band out in Aberdeen back in ’87 and went through a bunch of drummers before Dave came along in 1990. By the time I found them they already had Bleach behind them and were about to become something nobody could have predicted. Nevermind came out that September and then everything just went completely nuts.
I remember watching it happen from New York. Suddenly this weird little band from Washington was everywhere. Radio, MTV, record stores, kids at work talking about them. By the time I got to Seattle the following year, the whole city already felt different because of it.
I still probably play Bleach more than anything else. Maybe it’s because that was the record somebody handed me before all the craziness started. Nevermind always takes me straight back to ’91, and In Utero is probably the record of theirs I appreciate more every time I hear it.
Then came April 8, 1994.
I don’t really know what to say about that day that hasn’t already been said. I remember where I was when I heard they’d found Kurt. Everybody does.
For a while I couldn’t listen to Nirvana at all.
Eventually I started playing the records again.
They weren’t saints and they weren’t some perfect little punk-rock story. They were three guys in a band who made some incredible records, and for a few years they meant more to me than I could probably explain.
They still do.
