(Credits: Ian Tilton)
Grassroots gigs are dying.
Despite it being basically impossible to go to arena or stadium gigs due to overwhelming demand, those same people that fill Wembley Stadium for 15 nights in total for Oasis and Taylor Swift gigs will probably never go to a gig at their local venue. That is, if their local venue even exists at all, given the rate they’re closing at. Now, many people argue against this because “you might miss the next Nirvana”, and the truth is, that’s not the perfect argument most think.
One shouldn’t go to see grassroots gigs simply because the people playing them might be huge one day. They almost certainly won’t be. They almost certainly won’t even be signed, let alone play a venue bigger than a glorified pub. That doesn’t mean the music won’t be good. Nor does it mean the performances won’t be either. Music doesn’t have to be successful to speak to you, and local bands can be just as, if not more important to you than global megastars.
If anything, they might even be better than Nirvana were on their first tour of the UK. In 1989, Kurt Cobain (then christened Kurdt for reasons unknown), Krist Novoselic, and drummer Chad Channing (yes, this is the pre-Grohl era of the band) weren’t even the star attraction of said tour. They were a jobbing Seattle garage band who’d just released their debut album Bleach on Sub Pop, so they were there as the opening act for the real draw of the tour, fellow Seattleites, Tad.
Anyone who caught the initial dates of the Heavier Than Heaven Tour and arrived early enough to catch the opener would have found a band who looked unworthy of being signed, let alone becoming the biggest band in the world in a few years. The band was just settling into being a three-piece, having let their original guitarist, Jason Everman, go mere weeks before setting off on tour. They were not used to playing in this configuration, and one could tell. So much so that on the very first night of the tour, Novoselic got pelted by a beer bottle and hurled his bass through his amps in response.
Did this Nirvana tour get any better for them?
Behind the scenes, things weren’t a whole lot easier for the band. The English music press couldn’t give less of a shit about the grunge scene, preferring instead to focus on the building shoegaze and the Madchester scene, which was at the height of its popularity. Thus, while they were playing to 200 capacity rooms, said rooms were far from full. There was one thing to look forward to, though, coming right at the end of the tour.
The final night of the tour was also by quite a large margin the biggest, a show dubbed ‘Lame Fest’ at Charing Cross Road’s legendary, dearly departed theatre, The Astoria. After spending the tour warming up, Nirvana were ready to make themselves truly known. The band strode onstage, Kurt took to the microphone and, with uncharacteristic pomp, announced “Hello, we’re one of the three official representatives of the Seattle Sub Pop scene from Washington State!” before laying down the still-banging riff from their standard tour opener ‘School’. Then, almost immediately broke a string. Bollocks.
Cobain scurried offstage to pick up his spare guitar. Cameron and Novoselic started jamming on a proto-Royal Blood version of The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog‘. Unsure of what to do, the kids in the audience started stage diving. Something started as a genuine, anything-could-happen atmosphere started to build, and by the time Cobain came back onstage, they were ready to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. According to the Sounds journalist covering the tour, Keith Cameron, that’s exactly what they did.
“The Lame Fest show made my jaw drop,” Said Cameron, speaking to Louder, “It was a show that was full of problems for them. They were clearly unhappy, their equipment was breaking down, but their performance was thrilling. How they dealt with those tensions and problems onstage was electrifying really. Lamefest was the moment I thought, ‘Wow, there’s something truly special about this band’. They walked the precipice and won.”
A reminder that while we shouldn’t go to these local gigs simply on the off-chance we’ll see the future of music, sometimes you will.
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