Life can get really weird at times. No running water or electricity for close to two weeks, getting pepper-sprayed by an insane, crazy-assed mothefucker (and having to get him arrested), then moving into a trendy neighborhood where everyone dresses in black, drives 70's bicycles and wears funny eye-glasses and hand-woven Hippie hats. Woe is us...
But the crack team at ForTheDishwasher always perseveres against all that is pure e-v-i-l, and we come back not only stronger, but forged in cold, hard steel.
What a great lead-in to some post-suicide attempt Blurvana. And as with all Blurvana, if you want it, you better get it quick before it gets pulled.
From Anthony Lombardi at PopMatters:
Lord knows the last thing the music press needs is another tedious essay reiterating Nirvana’s cultural impact and influence. During an era of pop music where backstory means nearly as much as the tunes presented with them, it’s tremendously refreshing to discover an album that not only lives up to the expectations heralded by its history, but supersedes them. The year was 1992, and Nirvana were on top of the world—and we all know why, so I’ll save you the umpteenth recap of their meteoric rise and fall—when they took the stage to headline the Reading Festival. Amid a plethora of rumors that entangled not only the band’s artistic avenues but Kurt Cobain’s personal life, to say that the Seattle trio had a great deal of baggage to overcome is a bit of an understatement. When it came time to sink-or-swim, not only did the world’s biggest band disprove any skepticism lingering on the tongues of their critics regarding their endurance, they shattered them entirely, playing with a reckless, utterly joyous abandon that does everything in its power to belie any notion that they were on the verge of a collapse.
Making his grand entrance slumped in a wheelchair and draped in a hospital gown, Cobain thumbs his nose at the controversies enshrouding him and his band, cheekily downplaying the drama before diving headfirst into a surging “Breed” that sets the bar for the energy that throttles the band forward for the rest of the set. Given the tragedies that have inevitably marred Nirvana’s legacy since Cobain’s death, the sense of urgency and roaring ferocity that have forever acted as catalysts for their harrowing songs have often gone overlooked in favor of the romanticized, sensationalized pain and torment that’s easier read at face value. Here, that pulsing, beating heart—driven as much by bizarre humor and eccentricity as by suffering—is underscored through the band’s lively performance, their freewheeling tenacity gaining momentum as they tear through radio staples and buried treasures alike. What keeps this recording revelatory as well as exhilarating is how the band barely makes a distinction between the two, treating both fan favorites and rarities as one and the same as they jolt with ease from one highlight to the next, demonstrating with a ripping intensity how each song reveals a different, yet equally vital facet of Nirvana’s character. The elating sense that these qualities, which too often feel like long-lost attributes of a truly exceptional band, feel like they’re being restored may be the most heartening thing about Live at Reading.
While each era gets its time in the spotlight, the band are both wise and gutsy in dispensing with the hits halfway through the concert, allowing them the opportunity to not only trickle out a handful of In Utero cuts still due for release at the time, but also to accentuate their arty pranksterism in the process. Cobain’s sense of pride beams through the Wipers and Fang covers that pummel out toward the end of the set, but he also bestows upon his audience the caustic, irreverent attitude that places spastic freak-outs like “Tourette’s” aside bubblegum strummers like “About a Girl”. By delivering so many contradictory motions in such a sputtering, erratic fashion, the band draws a portrait that not only tears down any criticisms leveled at them as one-trick ponies, but gives a well-rounded illustration of what a multi-dimensional group they were. Live at Reading crystallizes a consummate moment in time, capturing Nirvana just after the blow-up that Nevermind sparked, yet just before that same impetus painted them into a corner. Here was a band pinned between two pillars of time, revolutionizing pop music while in the process of transcending the incendiary scene that propelled them to the forefront of the alternative rock phenomena.
It’s difficult to reason with the label’s decision to release the live compilation From the Muddy Banks of the Wiskah in place of this era-defining document just following the height of Nirvana’s cultural ubiquity. While the aforementioned disc caught in brief, brilliant flashes the character that helped Nirvana conquer pop music in the 1990s, the Reading concert presents in complete, untainted glory the same inimitable nature that Muddy Banks came up short of relaying. Floating around as a bootleg since the show halted to a conclusion on the night of August 30th, this recording retains every bit of the soaring, raucous spirit that has procured its status as one of the great not-quite-lost yet not-quite-renowned gigs of rock and roll. It’s precisely that spirit that makes Live at Reading a document not only worth preserving, but one that requires repeated return trips.
Technical Information:
Title: Nirvana: Live at Reading
Artist: Nirvana
Date: August 30, 1992
Location: Reading Festival, Reading, UK
Source: DVD9
Pro-shot: Yes
DVD Format: NTSC
Container: .iso + mds
Size: 7.08 GB
Length: 1:37:22
Programs used: ImgBurn
Resolution: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Video: MPEG2 @ ~8800 kb/s
Frame Rate: 29.97 fps
Audio 1: English- Dolby AC3 Stereo @ 192 kb/s
Audio 2: English- Dolby AC3 5.1 @ 448 kb/s
Audio 3: English- DTS 5.1 @ 1536 kb/s
Subtitles: None
Menu: Yes
Video: Untouched
DVD extras: None on source
Setlist:
01. Intro
02. Breed
03. Drain You
04. Aneurysm
05. School
06. Sliver
07. In Bloom
08. Come As You Are
09. Lithium
10. About a Girl
11. Tourette's
12. Polly
13. Lounge Act
14. Smells Like Teen Spirit
15. On a Plain
16. Negative Creep
17. Been a Son
18. All Apologies
19. Blew
20. Dumb
21. Stay Away
22. Spank Thru
23. Love Buzz
24. The Money Will Roll Right In
25. D-7
26. Territorial Pissings
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Live at Reading Megaupload Links