I passed up the chance to see Nirvana more times than I actually saw them. But I did get to see them 3 times, once at each stage of their careers.
The first time was at the Casbah. The old Casbah, not the “new” one. They moved in 1993 to the location where it is now. The old Casbah was half the size of the “new” one. Sold out show. Capacity was 75, though there had to be 150 packed in there. Although I always drank a lot at shows, I didn’t before this one. Why? Because there were so many people there, I couldn’t even get to the bar. I only had 2 drinks the whole night. So I remember everything from this show. I had a perfect seat: standing on the couch which was in front of the soundboard. Perfect view. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to, as there were just so many people there.
Note the setlist on the chalkboard:
Photo: April Star Davis
Photo: Mike Metropolis
Nirvana was in between drummers at this time, so Dale Crover from the Melvins was helping them out once again. And what a show. First of all, at the time (remember, this was 1990), all the Sub Pop bands were known for having long hair, but playing really heavy punk rockish garagy type of music. Back in the day, if you had long hair, you played metal. If you had short hair, you played punk. Or “alternative”. There wasn’t really any mixing of the styles back then. Of course there were exceptions, so don’t get on my case about that. But all the Sub Pop bands broke this rule. They mostly had long hair and played really heavy music. That’s just the way it was. So when Kurt and Krist (then Chris) came onstage and had short hair and played this really heavy music, it was like “WOW! That can happen?!?” Another thing that Kurt did that was TOTALLY out of the norm for any band in the club scene back then, was that Kurt did a guitar solo! Who does a guitar solo?! In a club?!?! Kurt. That’s who. He did it standing on the ledge on the side of the stage (when the old Casbah closed and had their last show, I got a piece of that ledge; I think I threw it out decades later. Too many splinters.) It was like he was in a trance. And after the solo, he just fell into the audience near the front row, where he then crowd surfed back to the stage (3 rows of people, nothing amazing, but still, pretty spectacular as it’s just something you don’t see in a club).
Kurt on the ledge doing his guitar solo:
Photo: April Star Davis
Kurt being dumped back onto the stage by the crowd:
Photo: Mike Metropolis
Here’s the audio of the actual guitar solo:
Other things of note: there was a little disco ball above the stage. Krist spent some time trying to get it to work, but to no avail. The Casbah microphone was having trouble at the time shocking people, so co-owner Bob Bennet was up there onstage trying to fix it so that Kurt didn’t get shocked. The new songs were spectacular and I couldn’t wait to hear what their next album was going to sound like. All in all, it was an incredible show and had they broken up the next day, it would still be on the list as one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.
As “Drunk Ted”, I got interviewed for a book called “A Day In The Life Of Nirvana” by Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna and I talked about this show. It was amazing how much traction that interview got, as not only did Carrie put it in a few other books she released, other books picked up on it and quoted me. Here’s the page from Everett True’s 600+ page book “Nirvana: The Biography”. It was a shock to see this when I read this (but very cool!):
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