Apr 11 2009
I Don’t Care If Its Old
It’s September 21st 1991, Nevermind will be released in three days, Nirvana is playing Foufounes Electrique to a less than half full house most of whom are there to see the opening act The Melvins. That is according to Rob Campbell, lighting technician at the venue. No one could have known that in a few short weeks Nirvana would be the biggest band in the world. (even though many people would later claim they knew exactly that). This is the last time they would ever play in Montreal. Since we were not at the show nor will we ever have the opportunity to cover a Nirvana show ourselves this is as good as it gets. Rob remembers many people coming up to him the following year (after Teen Spirit broke out) saying how they could not believe they missed it. Here we are 18 years later and the energetic underground band that somehow became so huge is no more. What we have now are journals, action figures, and a new Kurt Cobain pre distressed signature series Converse shoe. Which are giving a whole new meaning to the song “Rape Me”. Complete with pages from his journals as the design on one of the shoes. The extremely private Cobain will now have his journals on the sneakers of teens across the land. Not to mention the whole pre packaged grunge look that the band despised… it’s also not very hard to distress a pair of Converse. It seems a lot of Nirvana fans think this is great, I personally don’t because Cobain was very intent on staying true to his punk rock ideals by not endorsing any products while alive. We have pre-packaged grunge get your $100 pre ripped jeans and your designer plaid shirt from GAP to go with your new Kurt Cobain Cons and you’ll be a proper grunge rocker. But you can’t really blame a kid for wanting to buy or wearing these shoes you can only blame really the one person who has control over the Cobain estate. Anyway, Back to the show!
What we have here for you today is a high energy from a great band in their prime. Not the greatest Nirvana show by any means but pretty solid overall. Some memorable moments from this show are the performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. This was before it was the bands “hit”. In later years the band hated playing the song because it got so huge. Even going as far as omitting it from several set lists altogether to the dismay of many casual fans I’m sure. But, here we have a great version it was not yet the anthem for Gen X’ers everywhere and you could tell the band was really into playing it live. Krist saying at the beginning of the show how they love playing here in Toronto is a funny moment as is when they introduce Negative Creep three times while going on to play songs that are not Negative Creep.
Anyway there you have it the full show in mp3 format. To quote Rob Campbell “who would have thought three guys that were so wasted would ever sell millions of albums a few months later”.
Nirvana Live @ Les Foufounes Électriques September 21st, 1991
Merci!
[…] “Smells Like Teen Spirit” here, and then head over to TrendWhore for the rest of the MP3’s from the […]