Tweet
From correspondents in Seattle
November 25, 2004
AFTER years of legal tussling, Nirvana's much-anticipated box set can finally introduce hundreds of thousands of fans to rare recordings and even living-room video of the groundbreaking grunge rockers.
"With the Lights Out" includes 81 tracks, 68 of them previously unreleased.
It was initially planned for release in 2001 - the 10th anniversary of the album Nevermind - but a dispute between Courtney Love, widow of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and the surviving bandmates delayed the project.
The sides resolved their issues in September 2002, allowing work on the box set to resume.
The set, which came out on Tuesday in the US, features three CDs, beginning with a Led Zeppelin cover recorded in 1987, and a DVD of rare performance and rehearsal footage - including nine songs rehearsed at the home of bassist Krist Novoselic's mother when Cobain was only 20.
The DVD also includes the first performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit, the song that launched Nirvana and Seattle's grunge scene onto the national stage in 1991.
"It is a true Nirvana fan's dream," said Seattle disc jockey Andrew Harms, whose station devoted an entire weekend to the rare tracks.
"You get to see how the band progresses. The whole box set tells a story, and it goes all the way to the end."
Cobain biographer Charles Cross agreed that the set, from Universal's Geffen Records, tells Nirvana's story well - a story that ended with Cobain's spiralling heroin use and suicide in 1994.
"It's not always a pretty story," he said. "The band wasn't always pretty, or always in tune. This is not Nirvana unplugged. It's Nirvana unedited."
AAP
*********************************
I'd buy it....
Comment