Was I a negative creep for having found Nirvana a wee bit underwhelming live? Perhaps not…
1989 was my first year of going to gigs. The last gig I went to that year was also my first ever grunge gig – namely the Sub Pop Lame Fest at the London Astoria on Sunday 3 December 1989. The first grunge band I ever saw was that night’s opening band, Nirvana (the show being headlined by the then-biggest grunge band Mudhoney, with Tad in the middle slot).
A few months ago, I wrote about that show in Nirvana live in London 1989 (#GigTicketMemories), recalling how excited I was at the prospect of catching Nirvana live:
“In the run-up to this gig, of the three bands playing I was most excited to get to see Nirvana. I sought out tickets for me and some of my more grunge-loving schoolfriends (although the word ‘grunge’ was not yet used to describe this music) as soon as I saw an ad in the Melody Maker live listings pages. I’d tracked down and loved their debut album Bleach a few months before, after hearing the lacerating song Negative Creep on John Peel’s BBC Radio One show at some point in the summer of 1989. After that one and only radio hearing, this song spoke to and stuck with me. I was coming out of my first metal phase, and Negative Creep had one foot in metal, one foot in the indie world I was now discovering.”
However, Nirvana live and in person did not live up to my sky-high expectations:
“Nirvana were very enjoyable live, but – as heretical as it might seem – they were by no means the best band of that night. Mudhoney were easily the stars of Lame Fest. The crowd went significantly more wild for them than for either Nirvana or Tad. Indeed, I saw Nirvana two further times (again at the Astoria when they headlined in October 1990, and then at what would prove to be their final UK show, closing out the Reading Festival in August 1992). Based on each of those three shows, they were always very good live, but never outright great, never amazing. However, Nirvana’s December 1989 Lame Fest set did boast a spectacular ending. We were treated to a last-night-of-the-tour moment of complete equipment destruction. Drummer Chad Channing (this was the pre-Dave Grohl days) demolished his kit while a spontaneous guitar baseball game saw Kurt Cobain throw his guitar directly at Krist Novoselic, who swung his bass in the manner of a baseball bat, doing ungodly damage to both instruments and creating an ungodly, exhilarating noise in the process. A very good set to kick off the Lame Fest evening.”
Not so negative creep?
So, was I being a negative creep about Nirvana in concert? Perhaps not…
This past week, I discovered that I was and am not alone in this opinion of that night. It turns out that not only was Alexis Petridis (who in 2026 is the Guardian‘s head rock and pop critic) also present at the December 1989 Lame Fest, but also that his reaction to seeing Nirvana was the same as mine. Contributing to an article entitled ‘I was there!’ Writers remember legendary gigs by Beyoncé, Brian Wilson, Britney, Oasis, Daft Punk and more, Petridis says:
“Nirvana were good, noisy and shambolically appealing. Broken guitar strings forced them to temporarily abandon their set and jam a version of I Wanna Be Your Dog. People stage-dived and they smashed their equipment up at the end: all splendid chaotic fun. But if you’d told me that night I’d just witnessed a show that would be deemed historically important – about which articles would be written and which would be cherrypicked for tracks on a posthumous live album, because Nirvana were 18 months away from literally changing the face of rock music – I’d have been genuinely baffled. Then, if you looked over 18, I’d have asked you to go to the bar for me.”
Hear, hear. Good to hear that we are of a mind on this one, sir.
I will conclude this post with some more words from my own recent post on the Nirvana Lame Fest experience:
“I am glad I was there and will always cherish the memory of that gig. But honestly, if you never saw Nirvana in concert, you did not miss a live band of world-changing brilliance.”
May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
IMAGES
- Kurt Cobain in childhood via Wikimedia Commons.
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Image of Nirvana live at the London Astoria, Sunday 3 December 1989 (with MJCarty in the audience – directly to the right of Krist Novoselic’s forearm ) taken by an uncredited photographer and used as one of the images in Elite Toaster’s YouTube upload of the audio of Nirvana’s set. Similar story with the stagediver pic, which I found via Pinterest. I have screengrabbed these images from the aforementioned sources. I make no claim to the copyright for these images, and will remove them from this post immediately if required.
MJCarty 