Nirvana
With The Lights Out

"With the lights out" was a line from "Smells Like Teen Spirit": Jack Endino always refused to talk about "grunge", he preferred to call it "new american rock & roll". Back then I didn’t care much, I called it grunge and joined the young voices singing "With the lights out" at the top of my lungs at the pathetic parties of the years gone by.

I have always blessed Courtney Love, Novoselic, and Grohl. It is thanks to the deep hatred these characters nurtured for each other that the nirvanian heritage - after Cobain’s death - was not made a mockery of, as has bitterly happened with other prominent figures (Buckley Jr.). Who will take the largest share? And if there’s a division, but how much will you give me? Yes, but who gets more, the wife, the daughter, or the grandfather? And if the grandfather takes more, will the bassist then get angry? And is the wife, the drummer, or the grandfather the greediest?
It is on the trail of existential questions like these that time - exactly 10 years - has passed in vain, for the poor pockets of Lord Geffen. In the end, they evidently convinced the grandfather and reached an agreement. "He didn’t think like a star, but he was one" Jack Endino now justifies, the twisted mind behind the scenes of the biggest scam of recent years, the unreleased Nirvana celebratory box set, a colossus of 3 CDs plus a DVD through unreleased materials, (just) rarities, horrid demos, covers buried in drawers, live recordings of terrible quality ("we could have made them perfect, but I didn’t find it right to violate them" - always Endino).

A mishmash of about sixty tracks, opened by a live cover of Led Zeppelin’s "Heartbreaker", and then unfolding through acoustic versions of published songs ("Rape Me", "Opinion"), famous reinterpretations ("Here She Comes Now" by Velvet Underground, three songs by the beloved bluesman Leadbelly), enjoyable b-sides (the wonder of "Marigold" above all) and the dirty and extraordinary gem of "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die", pogoed until then only by Beavis and Butthead.

In the DVD, finally, unreleased clips of Nirvana playing at Mama Novoselic’s house, of Kurt playing with his face to the wall to overcome shyness, of a "Seasons In The Sun" with Cobain on drums, and even a soon-forgotten cover of Zeppelin’s "Immigrant Song". All very, very sad in truth, but the saddest news of all is not the publication of this useless mammoth good only for Geffen’s greedy bank accounts; it’s not even the greed of Mrs. Cobain, or of the rhythm section, or the shame one feels imagining what Kurt would feel in front of such scavenging.
The saddest news is that this merry band of jugglers, musicians, and clowns has just revealed that - all this - is not really all. Around here it translates like this: found the first agreement, let’s forget the past and have some cookies and wine for everyone and as long as possible. Around their parts, it translates just about into cash.
Dear Nathalie, who lent me With The Lights Out, says she spent 45 pounds. But are we really sure that all this constant barrel-scraping is absolutely necessary?