Nirvana - Live at Reading
'Legendary' as it may be, this might as well be any other live footage of Nirvana.
Rock music always tends to have a very temporal raison d’etre. When viewed decades later, this rather makes it painfully easy, even inevitable, to miss the point. Sure we love the Beatles’ songs but do we really ‘get’ the counter-culture thing? Yeah, punk’s fun, but now we can go to the gigs and sing along without fear of a riot – and weren’t the Sex Pistols just a little bit naff anyway? By the same token, no matter how many rehashed journals and Cobain-opaedias you might care to read, it’s probably impossible to fully understand Nirvana’s attendant circus of drama from Nevermind onwards.
And so to Nirvana’s Live at Reading DVD/CD. Apparently this gig was framed by some considerable intrigue about whether it would be their last gig, or whether the band would even show at all. Fairly predictably, they did, and for the most part they put on a pretty good, Nevermind-heavy show. Of course, regardless of a true engagement with external factors, the songs survive: most will enjoy raucous renditions of ‘In Bloom’ and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (which deserves special mention for its pre-emptive ‘More than a Feeling’ intro). Meanwhile, disciples will coo at ‘Aneurysm’ and a frankly shoddy attempt at ‘Sliver’. However, for anyone under 35 – and the majority of those that weren’t there – this might as well be any other live footage of Nirvana; only attendees and die-hards should return for a second helping.
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