early "Stay Away"
April 18, 2020 6:58 PM   Subscribe

Nirvana played ManRay in Cambridge 30 years ago tonight. Here’s video.
posted by jessamyn (25 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
jessamyn, did you see them that same year at Hampshire? They played SAGA [dining hall]. I remember Kurt wore a dress and introduced the band as Cheap Trick, I think.
posted by gwint at 7:06 PM on April 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


And here's their show at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor eight nights earlier. I was at that show and was being overcome by the flu as the show progressed. That was an odd night. I believe that Tad opened up for them that night.
posted by NoMich at 7:07 PM on April 18, 2020 [8 favorites]


I was just talking about this on Twitter. I did NOT see them because it was $3 and I had never heard of them. :D
posted by jessamyn at 7:14 PM on April 18, 2020 [11 favorites]


It's weird how 30 years ago feels like maybe 10 years ago, but 6 weeks ago feels like 30 years ago.
posted by Reyturner at 7:20 PM on April 18, 2020 [22 favorites]


I did NOT see them because it was $3 and I had never heard of them. :D

I really miss three dollar shows! One of my kids is jealous that I got to be around to see stuff like that in the 90s, but what I really miss is just the sheer volume of music for cheap that you could go see in a college town. It’s probably just where I live now, and it’s definitely a different time, but just having the opportunity to say no to so many cheap shows like that was an experience.
posted by klausman at 7:42 PM on April 18, 2020 [10 favorites]


At the Masquerade, in Atlanta, there was graffiti backstage, neatly block-lettered, documenting Nirvana's sound guy from the Bleach tour attempting to give them shit for having Crown power amps, as if that were some no-name cheapo product.
posted by thelonius at 7:59 PM on April 18, 2020 [4 favorites]


funny how you never know what the decade's going to have in store for ya when you enter it!

1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s ← you are here
2030s
2040s
2050s
2060s
2070s
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:01 PM on April 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is lightning in a bottle.
posted by sjswitzer at 8:43 PM on April 18, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm enjoying the fact that, back in the olden times when such things weren't called "hacks," Krist Novoselic had a "hack" for getting the bass as low-slung as he preferred it to be owing to his stature.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:50 PM on April 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


If you play the video and find it unlistenably low-fi, wait out the first minute and a few and it will get better. I wish I was old enough to have seen them at the Blind Pig.
posted by jjray at 9:15 PM on April 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


When I was in college, back in the 80's in Minnesota...

The bands I saw, for free, to me, I wasn't paying my tuition, often on Wednesday nights, with free beer!, was crazy. SAGA ran our food service as well...

Adding in Spring concert, saw The Suburbs all the time, NRBQ, Modern English, too many others I can't remember...

Those were the days. Good times
posted by Windopaene at 9:27 PM on April 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


I was at that show, NoMich! I remember it as being packed*, and me and my housemates found it hard to see from the back. According to google Kurt Cobain was five-nine, but he seemed really tiny from the back of the crowd at the Blind Pig.

*evidently like Woodstock, everyone claims to have been at that Blind Pig Nirvana show.
posted by 41swans at 9:48 PM on April 18, 2020 [2 favorites]


Assuming that the photographer was a friend of Krist's, unless that angle was the best they could do.

This is the high point of Nirvana before Chad split, and in some ways a high point for the band, although Chad is no Dale. I think I might finally have enough distance now to give Blew another shot.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:46 PM on April 18, 2020


*evidently like Woodstock, everyone claims to have been at that Blind Pig Nirvana show.

I saw them in Montreal in '91, right before Nevermind came out. We bought our tickets after the Melvins had already played, and my ticket was #260, but the strange thing is, at least 5000 people claimed to be at the show.

It was a great gig, by the way.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 10:50 PM on April 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


I first heard Nirvana on the radio when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out, but I had a friend who had already given me a copied tape of Bleach on cassette (along with Gwar's Hell-O and the Ugly Kid Joe EP).

I just hadn't actually listened to it yet, and didn't realize for literally months this was the same band he'd been raving about. We were still mostly listening to hair metal and I was starting to dip my toes into classic R&B. Nirvana almost certainly changed my life somehow, although I haven't ever really put a finger on how.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:59 PM on April 18, 2020


Thanks to this post, I decided to go buy “Bleach” on itunes (because I had it on tape, and who knows where that is?), and it turns out the “deluxe” version with like a dozen bonus tracks is $7.99.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:46 AM on April 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Be sure to check out that Puddle of Mudd cover mentioned in the article. I wouldn't call myself a fan of them, but that one "She Hates Me" song is kind of funny - I get what they were going for.

But that cover - my god. First they go all acoustic because everyone's favorite Nirvana album is the one where they play electric guitar songs on acoustic guitar = soulful. What I'm saying is the instrumentation and arrangement is sedate and boring but then the singer comes in over the top and sounds like he has never sang a song before or that it has to be some kind of prank. A better band would have quit in the middle. A kind sound guy would have turned down the vocals.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:31 AM on April 19, 2020


I’m generally not one to feel old, or to think that feeling old is a bad thing. But damn, it makes me feel really old to think that Nevermind is older to today’s kids than Meet the Beatles was to me at the time Nevermind came out.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:41 AM on April 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


On the following day, April 19, they played at a big party at MIT.

It was at the now gone and much lamented Senior House - a sprawling dorm which was a haven to all sorts of weirdos and freaks, including myself in the late 80s-early 90s. Does anyone here remember Senior House and/or that party? I read that Senior House was closed down in 2017 for being "dangerous" and for only 60% of students finishing their degree - see eg this Atlantic article on "The Fall of MIT's Counter-Culture Dorm"
posted by crazy_yeti at 4:58 AM on April 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


I was at that show, NoMich! I remember it as being packed*, and me and my housemates found it hard to see from the back. According to google Kurt Cobain was five-nine, but he seemed really tiny from the back of the crowd at the Blind Pig.

*evidently like Woodstock, everyone claims to have been at that Blind Pig Nirvana show.


I was also at the Nirvana/Steel Pole Bathtub*/Flaming Lips show at the same venue just about six months earlier. Eight months earlier? Sometime in '89, for sure. That is my all time favorite show and I wasn't sick as shit for that one.

Why was I at the second show even though I was really sick? Well, I was fine when we left for the show and since Mt Pleasant was at least a two hour drive to Ann Arbor, you can't really turn around and go back home, especially when there are other folks with you.


*I later moved to Raleigh and ended being coworkers with Dale Flattum (this was 10 years later). Such an amazing guy and a great artist. Too bad he lives in Minneapolis now.
posted by NoMich at 7:27 AM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


I was in highschool, not long before Nirvana would be constantly on the radio. A friend offered me a spare ticket to see them and I was like ‘who?’ and ‘well, it's a school night...’ . I was so bad at being a teenager. Never did see them live, alas. Nevertheless they one of the defining bands of my highschool experience.
posted by Craven Yeti Superstar at 9:01 AM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Steel Pole Bathtub*/Flaming Lips

Those fucking guys! They also came through Hampshire (we got some serious bands: Bad Brains, Negativland, Soul Asylum, no idea how. Phish played practically every other week) I saw the show but don't remember too much, but Steel Pole Bathtub wound up staying in our on-campus apartment. They were... about what you'd expect. Up too late, slept in, as much of an early 90s scenester band (at the time) as you'd expect. I nursed a dislike of the Flaming Lips for a really long time afterwards, for some reason.

After missing Nirvana at Hampshire, I wound up moving to Seattle where I managed not to see them for another four years even though they played nearly every month for a long time it felt like. My two pieces of trivia surrounding that were

- Krist would always come in to Left Bank Books (where I worked) and buy copies of the Anderson Valley Advertiser (man he was tall)
- Courtney Love bounced a check and was banned from the store.
posted by jessamyn at 9:02 AM on April 19, 2020 [11 favorites]


*I later moved to Raleigh and ended being coworkers with Dale Flattum (this was 10 years later). Such an amazing guy and a great artist. Too bad he lives in Minneapolis now.

I have a big cardboard Tooth of Dale Flattum's on the wall and I am looking at it RIGHT NOW.

I also moved to NC from MI and decades after that Blind Pig show, I took my then-tiny child to a playdate and while making idle conversation found out the father of my kid's little buddy was a bouncer at the Blind Pig back then and was likely working the door at BOTH Nirvana shows. Pondering that blows my mind, still.
posted by 41swans at 10:16 AM on April 19, 2020 [5 favorites]






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