Nirvana: Live at the Paramount Review: Nothing In The Way

In 1991, three unassuming guys from Seattle lobbed a sonic hand grenade at the collective consciousness of popular culture and the explosion is still ringing in our ears, having reshaped the music landscape permanently. That weapon of mass distortion was Nirvana’s Nevermind, an album that celebrates its twentieth year this month, reminding us all what real, organic, and honest music really is. Nevermind is being given the deluxe treatment with an elaborate box set, but also being released is the concert film Nirvana: Live at the Paramount, a film and performance that is every bit as incendiary as their legendary (also on DVD) Reading ’92 show.

Some background: In the late summer of 1991, Nirvana was ensconced in a tour of Europe in support of Sonic Youth and as they played their hearts out to a burgeoning euro-fanbase, they were completely insulated from what was happening to their band stateside; Nevermind hadn’t even been released and yet it was the most buzzed-about album of the year within the industry. Bootlegs passed between musican and executive alike with a fervor that had never been seen before. Their label DGC expected modest sales for the record and, with that mindset, booked a similarly modest North American club tour for the band. DGC only pressed 46,000 copies of the record, making it impossible to get a hold of. This, coupled with the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” beginning to air in triplicate over any given half hour of MTV programming made the want for the band and the record simply ravenous. Club dates were swollen with hundreds of fans teeming outside, willing to pay any price for admission. As the club tour came to a close, Nirvana were set to open for Mudhoney for the final dates in Oregon and Washington, but the sheer brute force of the Nirvana tidal wave was inescapable and the bill flip-flopped, putting Nirvana as the headliner. Let’s all repeat this for effect: The Opening Band’s Popularity Usurped The Original Headliner. These things don’t just simply happen. It’s a perfect storm of events that creates a tried-and-true cultural phenomenon, and it was all happening. On October 29th, Nevermind would go gold, selling 500,000 copies and exceeding all imaginable expectations. But this would simply be just the beginning. Two days later, on Halloween, Nirvana would play their final scheduled date, a homecoming show in Seattle at the Paramount Theater. A film crew would be present to capture what many in Seattle would call the beginning of the end or, less cynically, the end of the beginning.

But enough of history and on to the music! The reason why we’re all here! Live at the Paramount is Nirvana at the top of their game. Each song simply explodes and, had you known nothing of the band, you’d surely think that there were twice the amount of musicians on stage; amazingly, they are only three, stripped to the most basic elements a band can have and yet each song is an orchestra of cutting punk rock, each riff a machine gun burst of volatile awesome. The setlist itself is absolutely relentless, each subsequent song somehow louder and more heart-stopping than the one before it. As stunning as songs like “Come As You Are” and “In Bloom” are, there’s simply no place for them here. Nirvana have come to the Paramount hell-bent on bringing the entire place to the ground and minutes into the set, if feels like they just might actually do it. By the time they get to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, the crowd in the small theater has already gone completely ape-shit but with those unmistakable opening chords, they are pushed over the edge; and the set isn’t even halfway done yet. Deeper cuts like “Breed” and “School” detonate through the venue while “About A Girl” and “On A Plain”, rich with beautiful melodies, evoke what The Beatles may have sounded like had they adapted their sound to play CBGB in its heyday. Friends of the band wearing matching t-shirt and jeans combos flank the stage and go-go dance precociously throughout the show, much to the chagrin of label suits who nervously twitter about off-stage. As the end of the set comes and the band ambles offstage, it seems like there simply can’t be more after a sixteen-song onslaught. And yet they come back out to play a proto-version of the soon-to-be In Utero track “Rape Me” and close with “Endless, Nameless,” an awe-inducing art-rock noise fest. The show is nothing short of a revelation for a band that was about to eclipse the whole of popular music.

While there have been bits and pieces of this show released over the years (most notably the music video for “Lithium”), the full concert film remained unseen for all these years, but has since been cleaned up and restored for this anniversary celebration. Shot on 16mm film, the Paramount show is important in the Nirvana canon in that it is the only recorded concert of the band’s life to have been shot on film and therefore, able to be converted to high definition (all other known show recordings, authorized or not, were shot on Standard Def 480i video). The HD upgrade gives a much more tangible you-are-there feel to the festivities and while film grain is pervasive, the transfer is still crisp and vibrant. The film production crew did an effective job at capturing the manic feel of the show, employing a mix of steadicam and hand held cameras equipped with wide and standard sized lenses, providing everything they needed to capture every blistering moment. The audio component in all of this is unquestionably the star of the film, mixed with great care and seemingly dropping you smack dab in the middle of the show itself. Swirls of cheering crowds surround you amidst driving bass and feedback gloriously. It should be worth mentioning that the limited version of this film, as included in the Super Deluxe version of Nevermind contains music videos for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Come As You Are”, “In Bloom”, and “Lithium,” but is only available as a standard definition DVD.

Live at the Paramount represents Nirvana in its final moments of naïveté and innocence. They hadn’t yet been picked clean by mainstream media, had not yet become household names. Cobain is often portrayed as a depressed, moody, deeply troubled addict in the mainstream press and while those sad adjectives do describe aspects of who he was, it does not define him. As described by his closest friends, Cobain was, in fact, hilarious; As energetic and joyful as he could be despondent and his passion to be an artist fueled his drive for acceptance, the dichotomy of his very bipolar nature reflected in the pop-angst of his songwriting. This comes through potently in Live at the Paramount, which shows the band absolutely killing every song with great joy. The way in which Nirvana’s chronology ended has provided the more dramatic arms of the mainstream the leverage they needed to cast a dark cloud over most of the band’s career and while Cobain’s lyrics could lend themselves to be dark and cynical, Nirvana’s music was nothing but a brilliant shot of life. This is a band who wore dresses on stage, who French kissed each other on Saturday Night Live, who shot off fire extinguishers in green rooms and trailers. It’s that exuberant spirit that thrives within the music. Because that’s what really matters; the music, which lets the confused know that it’s okay to feel lost, that it’s okay to be conflicted, and it’s okay to rock your fucking ass off.

Nirvana: Live at the Paramount is available on DVD and Blu-Ray

Images courtesy of Universal Music/DGC and Keith Kuramoto

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