It was twenty years ago today as they say that I went to see Nirvana, one time only, in Birmingham. Why Birmingham? I was on a sponsored HNC course with Nixdorf, they sent us to East Warwickshire College in Rugby, and one of my friends Stu from the course was from Birmingham and suggested we went. I was fully metal at the time but indie and rock were starting to merge together, partly because of bands like Nirvana that had that crossover appeal.
We did not have tickets in advance, not sure if Stu tried to buy them (he was a regular at the Hummingbird) but we just paid on the door, six quid I think. We did not get real tickets in exchange, and I get the feeling the gig was over capacity. Grateful to this day that we got in.
I should have thought to look for this before, I knew there was a bootleg of the gig, of course it's on youtube, here is Smells Like Teen Spirit from that day. Look out for me, I bet I was wearing an Atom Seed long sleeved top:
Maybe it's time to write some kind of autobore thing again that automatically posts things I was up to ten or twenty years ago. Soon I'll be at the twentieth anniversary of the pile of mouldering NMEs that I have in the study, I might go through them one per week and then sell them or recycle them or something. Or more likely leave them in just the same spot until their 30th, 40th, 50th anniversaries...
According to nirvanaguide.com1 Nirvana played Drain You, Aneurysm, Floyd The Barber, Smells Like Teen Spirit, About A Girl, Polly, Lithium, Sliver, Been A Son, On A Plain, Negative Creep, Endless, Nameless. Of course I remember almost none of this. The clearest thing in my mind is being in the loo and someone rushing in and saying "did they play [some song name here] yet?" and me saying I don't know, didn't recognise the song name. It might even have been "Smells Like Teen Spirit" I suppose, though I suspect I would have been moshing to that down the Air Balloon or The Pit at around this time.
I remember the first band on Shonen Knife more clearly, and remember seeing all the t-shirts for second support Captain America, though not much about the tunes. I did by a Nirvana t-shirt from one of the dodgy traders outside after the gig, but gave it away to a friend. Wish I still had it to wear today, so people could ask me about it and I could regale them with this non story. Probably I will anyway. I will have a special t-shirt made in time for my 30th Nirvanaversary.
Also 20 years ago today was that top of the pops performance2.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed to Clare + father to 2, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.