Nirvana Reading 1992 DVD Is Ultimate Festival Souvenir

Posted on Oct 23rd 2009 9:23AM by Spinner Staff
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As Spinner reported back in April, Nirvana's now legendary headlining -- and heavily bootlegged set -- at the 1992 Reading Festival is to be released on CD and DVD.

The band's last ever UK performance, regarded by fans and press alike as one of the defining moments of recent rock history, hits the shelves on Nov. 2 and Spinner has had sneak preview of the entire performance.

Fully restored and colour-corrected, the footage is a warts-and-all view of the band at the peak of its success. It doesn't disappoint.

Just a year earlier they played an equally legendary, pre-'Teen Spirit' mid-afternoon slot at the same festival, and a few short weeks later they became a full-blown cultural phenomenon.

If you were there (and Spinner was), it's not only the ultimate souvenir of the show but the chance to see the performance in closeup. This was a Reading Festival in the days before the corporate sponsorship, big screens, TV coverage and mass mobile phone and digital camera photography meant the whole world could get access to footage and images almost instantly.

Here's a taster from the release, with the band ripping through the 'Bleach'-era classic 'School'.

All weekend prior to their Sunday night headlining slot, the festival site was plagued by rumours of a Nirvana no-show. Was Cobain ill or dead? Had the band split under the pressure of success? Did organisers really have Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine waiting in the wings in case the grunge icons failed to turn up?

In the end, after a miserable day of cold temperatures and persistent precipitation, the rain stopped and the band took to the stage with Cobain in a wheelchair, long blond wig and hospital patient's smock.

What followed was pretty special, and was a headlining show the likes of which we're unlikely to see again. With only a white backdrop and minimal lighting, an unkempt, willfully ragged and defiant three-piece power-punk-pop band (also the reluctant and newly crowned recipients of the title of 'Voice of a Generation') silenced their doubters in no uncertain terms.

There are false starts, bad jokes, deliberately fluffed guitar solos and utterly thrilling blasts of vocal-cord-shredding angst and intensity. They even blew the big hits early in the set to encore with covers of songs by obscure Cobain faves the Wipers and Fang. There are also a few eerily prophetic jokes about the band's future and a genuinely touched Cobain leading the crowd in a tribute to his wife, Courtney Love.

It might have taken quite a while for this release to finally surface, but we're happy to report it was definitely worth the wait.