Music
Hard-core fans winners in Nirvana box-set battle

By Patrick MacDonald
Seattle Times music critic

MARK SELIGER From left, Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Related stories Six years sifting vaults, basement tapes

After being delayed for years by litigation, the long-awaited box set of rare Nirvana recordings and its first official DVD is finally released today.

"With the Lights Out" (Geffen Records/UME, $59.98), containing three CDs, the DVD and a 62-page booklet, is a remarkable document because it goes to the heart of the creative process by rock's last great artist, Kurt Cobain.

You see and hear him develop from a partying teenager in Aberdeen covering Led Zeppelin songs to an experienced, mature singer-musician who achieves worldwide success, but still takes great pains in trying to express deep pangs of confusion, guilt and paranoia. In essence, it's all about love — trying to understand it, find it, embrace it, feel it.

And it seems as if he never does. In a homemade demo of one of his most telling and gut-wrenching songs, "Rape Me," which is about loving a woman so desperately that you want to become the target of any hurt that may come her way — from violence to cancer — there is a sudden shriek, from a baby, Cobain's daughter, Frances.

It is ineffably sad, because right there in the room with Cobain is pure love, in the form of an infant, yet he doesn't even know it, because he is delving so deeply into his own self-conscience, his own soul and spirit as effected by his conditions and culture — which is the essence, after all, of being an artist.

You hear how he works with a key line in "Heart-Shaped Box," sharpening it until it is startling in its imagery — he rejects wanting to get her cancer, or kill it. He decides he wants to "eat your cancer," a line you can't forget even after hearing the song just once.

The same process of development is captured for Nirvana's greatest song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." There is a messy rehearsal demo, a video of the song's even messier first public performance, at the OK Hotel here in 1991, and the studio version that realizes all the song's power and potential. By hearing and seeing how the song got there, it seems clear that Butch Vig's production is just about perfect.

That song has many layers, but overall it is an energetic, liberating, dance-party kind of song. Many of the box set's 81 tracks — 61 of them previously unreleased — have that kind of positive energy, so the collection is hardly a downer. But it reinforces that Nirvana was a punk band. Most of the songs are short, loud and intense.

When all the court battles between the surviving members of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, and Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, over the box set and its contents were settled in 2002, after more than a year of wrangling, the agreement first called for a greatest-hits package. Titled simply "Nirvana," the CD was released last year. It took care of the most popular and familiar Nirvana songs, essentially the ones played on the radio (along with the previously unreleased "You Know You're Right.")

That left the box set to be directed to the more deeply committed fans who want to trace the development of the band, and appreciate the harder, punkier material of the pre-"Teen Spirit" era. This isn't a greatest-hits collection, and it doesn't have a lot of studio outtakes and B-sides, like most rock box sets. It's an overview of Nirvana's growth and development, with smart, careful selections that best tell the story.
 
The well-designed, informative booklet traces the recording and touring history of the group, and the background of each cut and video clip. There are lots of pictures rarely or never-before seen.

The DVD contains more than an hour of footage, including nine songs filmed at Novoselic's mother's house in 1988. There's lots of noise and hair-swinging, but even then you can see that Cobain is not just another kid who picked up a guitar.

The rapid development of the whole band into a tight unit is seen on the DVD, from that early home video to club appearances, in-stores and professional rock videos.

One of the last clips is from a show at the Crocodile Cafe here in 1992, after Nirvana had become the biggest rock band in the world.

"Hello, we're major-label corporate rock sellouts," Cobain says at the start of the show. "Do you know how much money we have?" He was being funny, but now it sounds foreboding, because his suicide note in 1994 cited rock superstar pressures as one of the reasons for the act.

While that dark undertone of impending suicide permeates the collection, there is also a lot of youthful energy, joy and fun on all four discs in the set.

It captures the grunge era, beginning to end — including the exciting days when it belonged only to us here in Seattle. It could not have stayed that way, because Nirvana's music was so undeniable, so much better than anything else at the time.

But you can't help but think that, if it had stayed in the Northwest, maybe just a little longer, Nirvana's story wouldn't have ended so tragically.

Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312, pmacdonald@seattletimes.com