Nirvana

New York Marquee Club

September 28, 1991

I was standing in the balcony at the Marquee, sated, jet-lagged and sweat-soaked. When I arrived in New York a few hours earlier I had no idea that Nirvana, whose Nevermind tour had begun a week earlier, were even on the East Coast.

The set? Don’t ask me to explain. Sweat and long hair and screaming and righteous guitar riffs, venom and anger… it disappeared into a mess of blurred emotion long ago. Doubtless they played Teen Spirit and Lithium. Doubtless I thrashed along with the most crazed of them, head inside bass bins. The song Nirvana were playing during the encore… was it a song? It surfaced only twice in their live set, and as a demo in ’87… Vendettagainst. It sounded like there was an orchestra of guitars playing, despite the fact Kurt clearly wasn’t holding one as he crowd-surfed the rabid, raving audience. Sound desk trickery? Pre-recorded instruments? Bloody unlikely. Grohl and Novoselic kept up a thunderous beat behind