_________________________________________________________________ The Internet Nirvana Fan Club Newsletter - # 24 - August 16, 1999 ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ ________________ - Introduction - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Welcome to the 24th Internet Nirvana Fan Club Newsletter. This newsletter contains, as usual, news about site updates and the latest in Nirvana news. There are now about 10.200 subscribers. ________________ - Site Updates - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Another forum was added to the discussion board. A couple of people had requested a forum only for guitar related talk, so a fo- rum just for that was created. Now you can use four different fo- rums that is covering four different subjects; The Nirvana forum, covering all Nirvana talk, a 'Swap Meet' forum for bootleg dis- cussion, a 'Junkyard' for all non-Nirvana related discussion and finally the new guitar forum. More than 5.000 messages have al- ready been posted in all. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/ubb/ ] The complete list of Nirvana songs was once again updated, to reflect some recent news and to wipe out some errors. This docu- ment that was created sometime in early 1996 is now up to ver- sion 9.0. The songs: [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/text/songs.txt ] The list of mislabeled shows and bootlegs was also updated, re- moving some errors and adding a couple of new dates. Thanks for the contributions. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/text/usurface.txt ] I have added a couple of pictures from the shooting of 'A Leonard Cohen Afterworld' as well as some info about it to my website - more to follow soon. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/afterworld/ ] I recently updated the majority of the html files present at the website, to reflect the same design and layout throughout the site. At least, now most of the sections use sky blue text on a black background, and most of the html files have a navigation bar in the footer. The navigation bar is basically an image with the title of the website, along with links to the most visited sections of the site. Thus, you can use this navigation bar when browsing around the site instead of going back to the main page all the time, when wanting to visit a new section. I could only fit ten links into the navigation bar, so you will of course still need to find the main page if you want to visit a part of the website that is not included among these ten links. So, now almost every section of the site features a header with lime text, and footer with this navigation bar. I hope you like the changes. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/ ] I have received permission from the author of an article about Bev Cobain, Kurt's cousin, to use it on nirvanaclub.com. The author, Ian Ith, who is a Seattle Times Staff Reporter, also noted that he was flattered to see the article presented here. At the same time he suggested I updated my text file of the article with a better html version, which I did. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/interviews/ ] ________________ - Nirvana News - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Kenneth submitted the following story to the newsletter; "In an Everlast song there is also a disturbing lyric and it goes like this: 'Blow your brains out like Kurt Cobain.'" I am not sure which song this line appears in. Thanks to noela@tinet.ie for the story. To finish off this subject, Joe Carpenter added that Kurt Cobain is also mentioned in the song "Terrible" from "The Amazing Jeckel Brothers" album by ICP [Insane Clown Posse]. I'd prefer not to put the actual lyrics, mentioning Kurt, in this newsletter. Jim Cleverly recently went to Seattle and visited the Sub Pop headquarters. He stopped at the receptionist's desk and noted that; "on it was a CD with all the original mixes/cuts from the J. End- ino sessions with a note that said 'To Krist, From Tammy W.' I asked the receptionist and she said that he needed it for work on the boxed set, and was coming soon to pick the album up, so I went outside to sit it out and wait. I walked around the block 5 times (1st Ave and Stewart St.) in hopes of spotting Krist, but I didn't. Anyway, on the CD were 'Love Buzz', 'About a girl', and some others from Bleach." Special thanks goes out to Jim Clev- erly for sharing this interesting story on the NFC discussion board. Jim is not the only one who has visited Sub Pop recently. Thus, Andrew Gunter did the same and submitted the following story to me: "Recently I was in Seattle on vacation and visiting family, and decided to check out the Sub Pop mega mart (it's not really mega, though. It's just a tiny shop in Pike Place market). I talked to the cashier person working there, and he told me about a special edition of Bleach being re-released. He didn't tell me when it was going to come out, however. He did say that they were going to put in a new booklet, and that they were working on adding unre- leased stuff to it. Also, he did confirm that the box set was going to be released in 2001. He didn't talk much about the box set." Check previous newsletters for more info on the re-release of the Bleach album, which is now rumored to have a release date early next year, which seems odd, since '99 is the 10-year anniversary. In addition, Brendan recently was in contact with a person work- ing for Sub Pop, he revealed that it would indeed be released in early 2000, and that it would be a re-mastered edition, with a 'big booklet', deluxe packaging and possibly extra songs. Very special thanks goes to Brendan for this info. [ http://www.subpop.com/ ] Shortly before this newsletter was sent out, the Nirvana website "The Happening" apparently got informed by Sub Pop that this re- mastered edition of Bleach would be released November 16, 1999. So while Sub Pop employees first announced the release date to be sometime in early 2000, it now looks like the correct release date is actually November 16, 1999. For now, we will have to wait and see if that date is correct or not! Thanks to "The Happening" and Ziegler for the new release date. [ http://happening.tsx.org ] Another couple of Nirvana domains have opened on the net. First there is: [ http://www.alternative-nation.com/ ] by Kyle, who also owns [ www.cobain.org ]. Another new domain is the following: [ http://www.spankthru.com/ ] named after the first Nirvana song. Here are excerpts from an article about 'A Leonard Cohen After- world' from the Seattle Times; "They held vigil with flowers and candles in hand. Standing in the Flag Pavilion at Seattle Center yesterday, thousands of kids in flannel shirts, baggy jeans and knit caps swayed to the music of Nirvana and mourned the loss of Kurt Cobain ... sort of. This was Cobain's vigil Hollywood-style, with raffles, door prizes for the crowd and extras jockeying for camera position. Yesterday's scene was staged for the New Line movie, 'A Leonard Cohen Afterworld.' New Line hired 500 extras, each bringing five costume changes, to populate the scene. The com- pany also put out a call for unpaid extras, promising prizes like snowboards, posters and skateboards. About 1,500 flannel wear- ing movie hopefuls showed up. 'It feels like a Fourth of July party without the beer,' said Conrad Goode, who plays one of the bone- breaking thugs. When the cameras got ready to roll, set directors played 'Something in the Way' [By Nirvana] and told the crowd, 'Get sad, get sad for me!' Paul Proios, a Seattle resident and stand in for lead actor Jared Leto, was at Cobain's vigil five years ago. He said that re-creations are by their nature somewhat exploitative but this one, he said, was 'exploitative in a good way.' 'It is a memorial to a memorial,' Proios said. 'It takes you back to the day, and you can't help but feel the same emotions even though the production crew is around. And it's an important effect for the movie.'" This story is copyright The Seattle Times. July 24, 1999. Camille DeSantis and Christine Clarridge wrote the article, used in this NFC Newsletter by permission from Christine Clarridge. Speaking of the movie, another couple of names has been added to the cast. Most notably John C. McGinley as 'Johnny the Fox'. Mr. McGinley was cast in films including: "The Rock", "Seven", "Nixon", "Wagon's east" [John Candy's last movie], "Surviving the game", "Article 99", "Highlander II", "Platoon" and many others. Also added to the cast were David J. Guppy, 'Mauzner' and Amber Roetemeyer who will play a 'Sexy Kurt Cobain Fan'! As I mentioned, in the last newsletter, Spin Magazine named Nir- vana's "Nevermind" best album of the 90's. Here is a brief ex- cerpt of their article; "Nevermind shakes the walls like a storm. You feel it as Dave Grohl's drum rolls make your heart race into the choruses and Krist Novoselic's melodic bass lines give you room to breathe in the roar. You feel it in the way Cobain's dis- cordant guitar never chokes the melody, but stains it with just enough doubt to make it real." The full article is available here: [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/interviews/spin_magazine.htm ] A full track listing for the 01/01/91 sessions at the Sound Source studios has been found. The track list includes 'Aneurysm' and 'Even in his youth' both on the 'Smells like teen spirit' single. Then follows a jam of 'Token Eastern Song' (better known as 'Junkyard') and 'On a plain'. Finally, the session should have yielded a version of 'All apologies' with tambourine and surpris- ingly an instrumental version of 'Radio friendly unit shifter'. Apparently Craig Montgomery who recorded the session confirmed the setlist. News was courtesy of M. Ziegler and 'The Happening'. In the Nirvana section of Krist Novoselic's website, he has now posted the message; "God bless all of you fans! Thank you so much for everything. Thank you for caring." Replacing the last message, which said something about working on the new album. Thanks to Shane B. and several others for notifying me about this. In the MTV show "Brand:New", Kurt Cobain was voted 'Greatest Rock Star Of All Time'. Thanks to Rich Cracknell for this story. Rich also added that Nirvana's "In Bloom" was recently #1 on MTV's Top 10 'Alternative Nation' video countdown. Hamid Karbasi submitted the following interesting story: "I have the June 5-11 copy of TV Guide, and I was flipping through it the other day and they had a count down of 'Television's 25 Greatest Musical Moments'. At number 17 they listed Nirvana's MTV Un- plugged performance. The list goes on to put The Beatles legen- dary 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show as number 1." Reidar, who writes articles for these newsletters, noted that in the January 23, 1999, issue of "Kerrang!" magazine Nirvana's "Nev- ermind" is in the Top 40 list as #4, while the "Unplugged in New York" album is at place #40. He also noted that Nirvana's official video "Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!" made it to place 27, in the 'UK Top 40 Videos' chart - special thanks to Reidar for these 2 stories. Thanks to Chris Minelli I recently got a copy of the June 28, '99, issue of Newsweek magazine. This issue features an article on Nirvana, as part of their "Voices of the Century" special; "From flickering black-and-white images to wide screens bursting with special effects, from scratchy Edison cylinder recordings to the black of rock, from vaudeville to 'A Chorus Line', the past hun- dred years have taken American entertainment on a rollicking ride from the cultural backwoods to the farthest corners of the globe. Here is the story of this remarkable explosion - of talent, technol- ogy and sheer exuberance - told in the words of the men and women who created it. Choosing what to include has been agoniz- ing, for this has been a century when every highlight seemed daz- zled by the next, and the sky twinkled with superstars." Thus, this 46-page special focuses on all the top moments of the century when it comes to show business and music. Among the 'voices of the century' they have Nirvana - complemented with a brief interview with Krist and Dave talking about 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', one of the most important songs of the century. Among other 'voices of the century' they have chosen artists in- cluding Madonna, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and others. [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/interviews/time2.htm ] The infamous "Kurt and Courtney" documentary is showing on the US cable channel "Cinemax" at the moment, as I described in the last newsletter. So to follow up on that I would like to bring snippets of a 1998 review of the film, by The Seattle Times; "For better or worse, 'Kurt and Courtney' will probably stand as the ultimate representation of how horrible, strange and bizarre the whole Nirvana saga turned out to be." - "'Kurt and Courtney' is sad, creepy and slimy, from the opening close-up of the notorious, heartbreaking - and now iconographic - Seattle Times color photo of Cobain's dead body after his suicide, to the closing sequence of glamorous widow/movie star Love in haute couture at an ACLU awards banquet. The movie is supposed to examine whether Co- bain was murdered and Love was involved, but Broomfield, an English documentarian known for his films about serial killer Aileen Wuornos and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, doesn't really pursue the truth. You know little more about the subject when you leave the theater as when you came in. What Broom- field is really interested in is creating a skin crawling freak show. And there is no shortage of subjects for his prying camera, from Love's long-estranged father to a private detective obsessed with Kurt-was-murdered theories, from a junkie who claims to have photos of Kurt shooting up (which never materialize) to a couple of small-time celebrity stalkers." - "'Kurt and Courtney' exploits Cobain as much, or more, than some of Broomfield's subjects. But if the movie is meant to make you feel awful about what happened to Cobain, and be suspicious about Love and her motivations, it succeeds." This review was written by Patrick McDonald, a Seat- tle Times staff critic, and is copyright 1998 The Seattle Times. Former Nirvana 2nd-guitarist Pat Smear could celebrate his birth- day on August 5, 1999. Pat was also formerly in the Foo Fighters, who, as we all know, features Dave Grohl on guitar and vocals. ______________ - Misc. News - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Speaking of The Foo Fighters, an official press release confirming their change to RCA records was released from their management company. It includes that; "the band's third album, due this No- vember, will find the familiar Roswell Records imprint joined by that of RCA Records. Bob Jamieson, President of RCA and Jack Rovner, Executive Vice President and General Manager / RCA commented, "Yahoo!!" and "Yeehah!!" respectively. The recently pared down three-piece Foo Fighters lineup of Grohl, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins is currently putting finish- ing touches on the band's third record. The album's title, exact re- lease date, and the name(s) of any additional touring musician(s) will be announced at a later date." The press release was courtesy of The Foo Fighters Internet Archive. [ http://www.foofighters.net/ ] In NFC Newsletter #16, I mentioned some E-mails that Courtney Love had supposedly sent to Andrew Amirault who runs a fanatic site dedicated to the Kurt Cobain murder theories. Now he has done it again, by publishing another slew of e-mails that were ap- parently sent by Courtney. This time not to Andrew, but journalist Matthew Richer who is, mysteriously, a friend of Andrew. If you would like to read these E-mails from "Courtney" along with sev- eral other conspiracy theories, check out Andrew Amirault's site. Here are a couple of highlights from "Courtney's" e-mails; "stop the lies scum BLOODSUCKER!" - "nt wot I asked you oberon. tell me wht kind of ppl you love?" - "does she luv god???? do you luv her..do you luv god......are your parents alive?i want to knw wht makes u tick does she make u tick .......tick....tick....tick" - "tell me your secrets and ill tell you mine. Eternally, cl" - "OH and STOP having ppl from AOL email me i dont like strawber- ries. tick tick tick." All spelling, grammar and punctuation is left as is. Here's an excerpt of her final e-mail, which funnily enough doesn't have all these errors; "Dearest Mr. Oberon, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. So I will say sorry for now and start over. I have been under alot of stress lately which is why my behaviour. What you said and what others have said made me realise that in truth I am Christian. Although I have beliefs that contradict the main Christian belief I know that in heart I believe in 1 God and his only son Jesus." - "In closing I would like to say again, this letter is written to rectify matters. Due to stress and people constantly bothering me, I was lashing out. Hopefully you will see things the way I do." The fun continues at Andrew's site - Here is the URL: [ http://www.tiac.net/users/tobya/bulletins.html ] The band 'Gordon' who has toured with Fuel and Buckcherry has finished shooting a video for the song 'Fortified Grapes'. It was shot by director Mark Racco who also worked on Nirvana's "Come as you are" video. This story was courtesy of MTV News. In the last few newsletters I have mentioned the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their new song "Californication" which features a lyric about Kurt Cobain. Now, MTV have done an interview with RHCP front man Anthony Kiedis - an interview that also briefly mentions Nirvana; "MTV: Would you guys be able to do an all- acoustic set? - Kiedis: Oh, hell yeah! That would be no problem. Nirvana went out there and did it, and that was amazing." If you would like to read the complete interview, which is quite nice, go here: [ http://www.mtv.com/news/gallery/k/kiedisfeature99.html ] ___________________ - Reidar's Column - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ This column will no longer be a fixed part of every newsletter, but it will merely appear whenever an article by Reidar is published - and will therefore not be in every newsletter. An article is ready for this particular newsletter, though. It is a review of the book "About a Boy" by Nick Hornby that I mentioned briefly in NFC Newsletter #23. Enjoy! What we're dealing with here is not just another book. It's a clas- sic. Luckily for all of us who care to receive Nirvana newsletters, this books fits into the category of Nirvana because of the frequent mentions of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana throughout the book. To get it straight, this is not a Nirvana book. Absolutely not. You won't learn anything about Nirvana that you didn't know before. Those who didn't know Nirvana before reading this book will not know anything about Nirvana after finishing the book. But once you've finished reading the book, you're left with the sense that you've seen the names Nirvana and Kurt Cobain more often than the names of the actual characters of the book. At least if you're paying attention to the Nirvana mentions and not the actual storyline ;) The main character of the book is 36-year-old Will. He digs his life as a single, and enjoys himself getting laid with single moth- ers. The reason why he prefers single mothers is simply because they are starved on sex, and always brake up the relationship themselves because they can't stand it. Therefore, Will doesn't have to go through what any decent male creature hates - hurting a woman by breaking up with her. But one day he meets the son of one of those women, 12-year-old super-nerdy Marcus. Eventually, the kid starts showing up at Wills door every day after school, and Will starts liking him after a while. What changes the life of this kid is when Will starts tell- ing him about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. Marcus meets a girl at school, Ellie, who's wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, and they be- come friends because she likes his innocence. A funny scene in the book is when Marcus is sent to the principal for the first time in his life. This is where he meets Ellie for the first time, too. He notices her T-shirt, and imagines it's a picture of Jesus on it. Kurt would've been proud, I believe. The girl tells him its Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the rock band Nirvana. As mentioned, this is a true classic. Every part of this book is ter- rific, every scene is described in a way where you imagine you're there. There are no ups and downs of this book, but if one has to find one definite highlight, it has to be the 'Dead Duck Day' scene. A person who doesn't find that scene hilarious is either blind or plain stupid. The book starts in 1993 when In Utero is released. Those who know the Nirvana history will know what time of the year it is by the Nirvana references. Like, towards the end of the book, you'll know it's the beginning of March because Ellie has just read about Kurt trying to take his own life in a newspaper. The book ends with the end of the Nirvana history, Kurt Cobain's suicide. Of course, there are no gory details, there are no mentions of Courtney Love supposedly killing Kurt Cobain, there is no El Duce and there is no Tom Grant. There are people on a train sta- tion carrying newspapers with an article about Kurt being dead on the front page. Just like it was back in the time when most people realized Kurt was dead. And Ellie breaks a window at a record store to steal a Kurt Cobain poster because she believes it is ex- ploiting Kurt's death. This book was released in 1998, but just recently it's been released in Denmark, the home country of NFC Webmaster Rasmus. As when it was released in my home country, Norway, in 1998, the translated title of the book sounds incredibly lame. Of course, the title is taken from Nirvana's "About A Girl," thus the true meaning of the title, and the Nirvana reference gets washed away when people try to translate it. The Norwegian title (in Norwegian) is "Boys Are Boys," and the Danish title (in Danish) is "Around A Boy." It doesn't really matter though; the book is just as brilliant anyhow. But it does sound lame. Nick Hornby debuted with his own story of growing up as an Ar- senal-fan and is a soccer enthusiast for the rest of his life. It's a brilliant book, entitled "Fever Pitch," and was released in 1992. A movie has been made from the book, also called "Fever Pitch." Some years ago, I saw the movie at the cinema. I fell asleep after two or three minutes. At that time, I didn't know Nick Hornby and I had not read any of his work. The movie was televised some weeks ago in Norway. I watched thirty minutes of it, and realized just why I fell asleep the last time. Definitely not a movie to catch. The book, though... His international breakthrough came with the incredible book "High Fidelity" from 1994. This book also includes some Nir- vana-mentions, mostly "Smells Like Teen Spirit", as the main character of this book is a music-fan and record-store owner who loves writing Top Five lists of his favorite songs and artists :) A movie of "High Fidelity" is currently being made. I look for- ward to this movie and hope it stays more true to the book, both in quality as in story, than what happened with "Fever Pitch." What is special with Nick Hornby's books is his amazing humor. In "About A Boy" it's not as obvious as in "High Fidelity," but it's still there and it's still incredibly funny. "Marcus is twelve. Wills is thirty-six. Why can't they both act their age?" Until next time - Reidar [ reidar@nirvanaclub.com ] Nirvana: Never Fade Away http://home.sol.no/~oeik/Nirvana/ __________________ - Practical Info - ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ * Subscribing Look at the URL: http://www.nirvanaclub.com/#join * Unsubscribe If you would like to unsubscribe from the list and have your e-mail address removed from the database: Send a blank e-mail to list@nirvanaclub.com - In the subject line of your e-mail, put 'unsub' followed by your e-mail address that you want to get unsubscribed. Example of this ..... Subject: unsub myname@myisp.com * Change of address If you want to get the newsletter sent to a different e-mail address, send an e-mail to the NFC newsletter at: list@nirvanaclub.com - and provide me with your previous e-mail address and the new one that you would like to have the newsletters sent to instead. Then it will be changed. * Contact information If you want to submit news or corrections concerning the newsletters, e-mail the author: webmaster@nirvanaclub.com Do not hit the reply button for these newsletters as the address they are sent from is invalid. Please don't forget to read the disclaimer, which is available on the newsletter page along with past newsletters - and translated newsletters. NFC Newsletter page: [ http://www.nirvanaclub.com/newslet/ ] * Copyright information This newsletter was written by Rasmus Holmen and is İ1998-99 The Internet Nirvana Fan Club. Complete re-production without permission from the author is not allowed. If you use something from this newsletter, please give me full credit and do not copy entire segments from the newsletter. This newsletter is in no way affiliated with Nirvana, Nirvana L.C.C. and/or Geffen Records, Inc.