News 10/2001
Apart from the uncut version of the "Kurt and Courtney" movie, Christie's
of London will also be auctioning off a rare Kurt Cobain painting. The painting
will go under the hammer at the Rockefeller Plaza in New York on November 15.
It measures 12" x 9" and was painted in 1995. It's estimated go to for somewhere
between $30.000 and $40.000 US dollars. So, time to raid your piggybank kids :)
More info here. Thanks to Rich.
Over at Sub Pop's website, you can order a "Grunge Valu-Pak" containing
Nirvana's album "Bleach", Soundgarden's "Screaming Life" and "The Grunge
Years" compilation for $25; "What with all the HYPE, we are celebrating 10
years or so (who's counting?) of grunge. Get your value pack containing the
finest grunge your money can buy! You will also receive a Sub Pop Sampler
with all the latest SUB POP music while supplies last." Order the Valu-Pak
here.
Thanks to Keith.
"There was an article in the latest Rolling Stone (#881) called 'Nirvana
Boxed Set Shelved Indefinitely', pretty much summarizing Courtney's new case
vs. the Nirvana/Geffen contract. It also says that the set was slated to come
out on October 23rd, but now it's uncertain if it will ever come out." Thanks
to Bruce.
The Edmonton Journal put up an interesting story about Nirvana's show in the
town in 1991; "At the time of the Edmonton gig, the trio was on its last tour
of Bleach and just about to record Nevermind, one of the most successful rock
albums of all time, with producer Butch Vig. Six months later, on Sept. 13,
Nirvana released the adrenaline-rushing grunge-rock single, Smells Like Teen
Spirit, and Cobain was hailed as the spokesman for a generation of bored,
plaid-wearing slackers. 'If you would've told me these people would've fundamentally
changed rock 'n' roll in a few months, I would've laughed,' says Matt Booi, who was
at Nirvana's one and only appearance in Edmonton. 'They were shambolic. They were
these three drunken guys making an almost intolerable racket. At one point, I
started playing pool and Cobain yelled, 'Sorry to interrupt your pool game, fellas.'
I remember thinking, He's taking this a little seriously.' " Read the full article
here
which also includes a promo poster for the show. Thanks to Don for the link.
Here is another story about an early Nirvana show, this time at a place called
Norman. Read it here.
This show was booked, but never actually played, and this article tells the interesting story
behind that; "For Norman, the Nirvana show scheduled for May 12, 1990, is more famous for what
didn't happen than for what did: Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and then-drummer Chad
Channing never showed up. The opening act, the Norman-based Angry Son, played nonetheless.
In between, a random prank phone call placed by a Norman resident would become an urban
legend of sorts. Rumors circulated Cleveland County until the story became as convoluted
as Cobain's lyrics." This great article was by Rob Collins who also provided the link.
Rob also wrote a good review of the new "Heavier Than Heaven" book that you can read
here.
Also check out this
article. All links courtesy of Rob Collins.
The site 'Light Voyer' are exhibiting some Kurt Cobain portraits that you can
view here. Thanks
to Paul for the link.
The Dutch band 'Green Lizard', currently on their 'Marlboro Flashback Tour',
recently did two shows where they did nothing but Nirvana covers, as a tribute to
the band. Here's some more info; "They already did one at the Paradiso in Amsterdam,
Holland and one in Haarlem, Holland. During this tour, they will play Nirvana songs
only. The next show will be played on November 1st in Groningen, Holland. After that,
they will go to Enschede and Leiden in the same country. The show (the Paradiso
one) will be broadcast on the Dutch channel SbS6 on December 22. In an interview it became
clear that by mid november, a CD will
be released of their Nirvana performance. Whether this is a compliation of performed songs
from different shows, or one shows in its entirety, is unknown as of now. The same counts
for whether or not it will be distributed outside of Holland.
In addition to this news,
here are the setlists of the first 2 shows. Amsterdam (probably not in this order):
School - About a girl - Sliver - In Bloom - Come as you are - Breed - Lithium - Polly -
Territorial Pissings - Drain you - On a plain - Something in the way - Scentless Apprentice -
Serve the servants - Heart-shaped Box - Rape me - Very ape - Pennyroyal tea and All apologies.
The setlist for the Haarlem show: 1. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter - 2. Drain You - 3. Serve
The Servants - 4. Breed - 5. Sliver - 6. Come As You Are - 7. Something In The Way - 8. On
A Plain - 9. About A Girl - 10. Polly - 11. Rape Me - 12. Scentless Apprentice - 13. Heart-Shaped
Box - 14. All Apologies - 15. Very Ape - 16. Pennyroyal Tea - 17. School - 18. In Bloom - 19. Even
In His Youth - 20. Territorial Pissings - 21. Lithium." Thanks to Marcel and others for this one.
Nirvana played a legendary show at the 'Paradiso' in Amsterdam in 1991.
Fox News put up an interesting story about C.Lo's latest adventures;
"Not everyone is feeling all patriotic, warm and fuzzy. Some people are still remembering their pre-Sept.
11 priorities. Take Courtney Love, the peripatetic rock personality, mythic widow and sometime actress. Love,
who recently won the right to sue Geffen Records/Universal Music to get out of her recording contract, is having a
meltdown on a record-industry chat site called The Velvet Rope. In the last few days, Love has posted several
hideously long messages — often rambling, always misspelled — attacking just about everyone she knows
in the music business. Each letter is signed with a facetious quote she's made up and attributed to
Allen Grubman, the famed music-biz attorney whose infamous daughter Lizzie is now facing jail time
for mowing down 16 people in the Hamptons over the summer.
The quote is: 'They are just the apples that fall and rot — we are the trees [signed] Allen Grubman Great Dad.'
Love's attacks concern not only her desire to get her rock band, Hole, out of their Geffen contract, but
also to get sole ownership of the publishing rights of songs written by her late husband Kurt Cobain,
including songs he wrote with his group, Nirvana. The latter issue is part of a separate lawsuit. In her
filibustering bromides, Love skewers current Geffen Records President Jordan Schur, claiming 'he's a pig.'
She also claims Schur recently did something to the group Weezer, although she doesn't specify what, and
intimates that he's a drug abuser. 'It's more about how much blow can you chop on Jordan's desk,' Love
writes." - "Meanwhile, Love assaults rock managers Gary Gersh and John Silva as well. Gersh was the exec
at Geffen Records who signed Nirvana, then went on to run Capitol Records before becoming a manager. Gersh
and Silva now manage the Foo Fighters, the group which Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl formed after Cobain died. "
"Love warns Universal employees: 'In your employment contracts you will find a clause preventing you from
making defamatory and slanderous statements about any artist on your label. Look closely — it's in there.
Remember this is the Internet,' she says. 'Anonymity is a pretense.' So what does Courtney Love want? Some
good things, some greedy things, it looks like. She wants health care for musicians under contract, respect
for women execs and artists, a revised recording contract that reflects 2001 and not the 1940s, and a way
to get hold of Nirvana's rich publishing rights." Story courtesy of Fox News Network and Roger Friedman.
Thanks to Chris for the link. Read the full story here.
As the main page reads, most of the sections on this site are currently unavailable. Therefore you will
currently receive a lot of '404 Page Not Found' errors while browsing around the site. Everything should
be back to normal around November 1st. Sorry for the inconvenience.
"Q Magazine had a '50 greatest albums of last 15 years'. 'Nevermind' was number 3 and 'In Utero' number 20."
Thanks to Dave.
The Spitfire tour is just about to launch again for a number of dates in
the fall. The tour will, as previous years, include speeches by Krist Novoselic.
He will appear at the following places:
The tour also includes names such as Jello Biafra, Woody Harrelson and John Trudell. "The Spitfire Tour was originally created in 1998 by a group of music industry friends who wanted to find a way to further promote the message behind the music they were involved in. It was their belief that a speaking tour would be a good way to generate interest in a number of causes that needed more grassroots attention. One of these people was human rights advocate Zack De la Rocha (Rage Against The Machine), who helped spearhead the project by reaching out to his activist friends like Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) and more. These folks signed up to launch the first college tour in the Fall of 1998, which turned out to be a terrific success. More than two years later, Spitfire continues to tour colleges, but is now a non profit foundation, and focuses on student activism year-round." The topic that Krist will talk about is censorship and inclusive democracy. Go here for more info. Thanks to spitfiretour.com.
MTV Europe will be airing Nirvana's Unplugged show this weekend (On October 13
and 14) as part of their "Rocktober" special. On Saturday, the show will air on
10 PM CET, and on Sunday it will be at 3 PM CET. They are also airing MTV Live
specials with The Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers on Sunday (at 11 AM
and 1.30 PM, respectively). Thanks to Viasat Magazine and mtve.com. In related
news, MTV Europe will have a 'Top 100 Rock Songs' weekend on October 20 and 21.
On MTV's website you can vote for your personal favorite - including Nirvana's
"Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as you are" and "About a Girl". Nirvana usually
makes it to the Top 3 on such charts, so go ahead and vote here.
MTV in the US will air the Unplugged show on October 16 at 1 AM EST followed by
the "Bare Witness" special.
The NFC Picture Gallery is now back online. Thanks to Michael Fara and directspeed.net,
I have a place to host the gallery, something that was no longer possible to do on this
site. A huge thanks to Mike for making this possible. Note that Vladislav Bajev's gallery
will not be hosted by this site anymore - at least for the time being. Check out the NFC
Picture Gallery here.
The latest progress on one of Courtney's lawsuits; "Courtney Love's contract dispute against Universal
Music Group just took a leap forward for Love with a September 26th court ruling validating the majority of the lawsuit's
causes of action, therefore allowing the contract termination suit to move forward to trial. Superior Court Judge
Fumiko Wasserman had initially denied eleven of the fifteen causes of action named in Love's complaint, among them
were fraud, breach of contract, declaratory relief, rescission of agreements and breach of fiduciary duty.
After reviewing new evidence submitted by Love and her attorney, Judge Wasserman overruled the previous decision
allowing six of those counts, now giving Love ten claims against Universal Music Group. Of particular interest is
Love's challenge of the Seven Year Statute in the California Labor Law, which prohibits companies from establishing
contracts with employees for a period of time greater than seven years. A decision in Love's favor could mean big news
for artists trying to get out of their recording contracts and according to Love's attorney it's a case that is being
closely followed by other artists and attorneys. Love, Don Henley and LeAnn Rimes spoke directly to the seven year
statute at a recent California State Senate Select Committee yesterday to discus artist issues, particularly contracts
between musicians and labels. Last week Love filed a similar suit against Universal as well as the surviving members
of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Chris Novoselic, challenging Nirvana's contract with Geffen Records."
Story courtesy of Yahoo! and Rolling Stone. More info here
and here.
Rocknews.com sent in this info; "We at RockNews.com thought you might be interested in knowing that we will
be running a Profile and Contest for NIRVANA's 'Nevermind' Anniversary between Friday 9/28 and Friday 10/26.
Prize: The person who best answers the question, 'What was your favorite Nirvana moment and why?' will receive
a grand prize consisting of Nirvana's three studio CDs -- Bleach, Nevermind and In Utero -- along with a copy
of Charles R. Cross' Kurt Cobain biography, Heavier Than Heaven. Three runners-up will receive a copy of Heavier
Than Heaven." The contest is located here. Thanks to
Rocknews.com.
As mentioned last month, on December 11th there will be an auction at Christies in the UK for the
uncut version of the "Kurt and Courtney" movie. Here is some more information regarding the difference
between this version and the regular one; "The difference with this version is that it contains Kurt's
music. Nick also has written inside the cover stating that this video contains music which Kurt's aunt
destroyed." The footage in question refers to a scene where Kurt's aunt Mari Earl is interviewed, and plays
some old recordings Cobain made - possibly the fabled "Fecal Matter Demo". Apparently, Earl later destroyed
these recordings. To avoid a lawsuit from Courtney Love, this footage was cut from the version of the movie
that got released to the public. Thanks to the NFTS Foundation for info.
The Boston Globe put up an article on the 'Nevermind' 10-year anniversary. You can read it
here.
Thanks to 'NutsatBU' for the link. A Cleveland newspaper also put up an article on the anniversary that
you can read here.
Thanks to Jeremy.
Ben sent in this one; "At R.E.M's performance at Channel [V] headquarters for their promotional tour in Sydney earlier this year,
for their album REVEAL, I got the opportunity to ask Michael Stipe a question live on air regarding his planned collaboration
project with Kurt Cobain. Here is his reply, quoted word for word from an audio extract from the Channel [V] interview: 'It was
a score for a film by the Starm Brothers who ... we have a record called 'Out of time' and they provided all the photographs
for that. They're visual artists so it was a film that they made, and it was to be a score for that film.' "
Ben also provided a different story; "I contacted Sub Pop recently through e-mail to ask them about the song 'Ain't
it a shame' which was recorded by Kurt Cobain, Mark Lanegan, Krist Novoselic and Mark Pickerel under the name The Jury.
Sub Pop have a copy of it stored in their vaults, although they are not just prepared to send a copy out to me. They
convinced me that they are planning to release it, though, sometime in the future in some way or form. I'm currently
aiming to set up some sort of project in order to get a copy of the song. If you can help me out in any way at all or
are willing to set up your own project please email me at ben75@start.com.au" Again thanks to Ben.
Please note that the entire picture gallery is still unavailable, as I currently
don't have the necessary bandwidth to host it on nirvanaclub.com. Therefore, if
you own a domain and want to host the gallery, please let me know (no geocities,
angelfire and other free hosts please!). It only takes up around 30 MB in space.
Vladislav Bajev's gallery will no longer be hosted by NFC either, I'm afraid. I'm
sure Vladislav will re-open it at a different place soon. Otherwise, the rest of the
site should be working ok. As previously mentioned, the NFC Discussion Board is now
located at www.nirvana2.com. Also note that the popular Nirvana website "Never Fade
Away" is now hosted at this domain.
Here are a couple of other news stories on the latest Courtney Love vs. Nirvana
lawsuit; #1 (courtesy of
Allstar), #2
(courtesy of Associated Press), #3
(courtesy of Reuters), #4
(courtesy of Rolling Stone) and #5
(courtesy of E! Online). The Norwegian 'Nettavisen' also published a story about the lawsuit that you can read
here. Thanks to Reidar for the link.
Finally, Much More Music put up a blurb about it; "Courtney Love really needs a little hobby. Knitting perhaps.
Anything that doesn't involve suing someone. She is now suing Universal Music Group and the remaining members
of Nirvana for control of Nirvana's master recordings. Courtney is suing on behalf of herself and daughter
Frances Bean Cobain. Love claims the lawsuits aren't against Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.
They are only named for technical reasons. Courtney also sued Nirvana in June. In both suits she suggested that
Nirvana was really more of a solo project for Kurt, not a band. Until all of this is settled there will be no
new Nirvana releases." Thanks to Marko for the link.
As mentioned earlier, this site was among the nominees for the dotmusic.com People's
Choice Award. A Westlife fansite won the award, and the complete Top 1000 has now been
announced. The Internet Nirvana Fan Club made it to spot #38 out of 2.611 sites!
I think it is quite cool to have the site in the Top 40, out of a field of more than
2.500 music websites - including many official ones. In fact most of the sites in the
Top 40 are official and are thus much more prone to receive a lot of hits, as they are
promoted by the band and the band's official releases. Sites that we beat include the
official Jimi Hendrix website, eltonjohn.com, britneyspears.org, m-jackson.com, greenday.net,
The Pearl Jam Network, theoffspring.com, madonnaland.com, and even dotmusic's own website.
Thanks a lot to everyone who voted, bringing The Internet Nirvana Fan Club to the Top 40.
A total of 150.000 fans cast votes for their favorite sites. Special thanks to Franck Alfier.
Oops! She did it again; "Courtney Love has struck again. The Hole singer has filed
another lawsuit against Universal Music Group and remaining Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave
Grohl, this time for control of Nirvana's master recordings. Her suit, filed Friday in Superior
Court in Los Angeles, claims that Geffen Records is not the same label Nirvana signed to in 1991,
due to its acquisition by Vivendi Universal, and that therefore the band's contract is void. Love
also alleges that Universal cheated Nirvana out of $3.1 million in royalties.
'In or about January 1999, ... Geffen, the unique entity with whom Nirvana had originally contracted,
literally ceased to exist,' the suit states. 'With [Universal], Geffen's contractual obligations were
purportedly assigned to Interscope, which had no rock expertise or commitment.' Love's suit is also
filed on behalf of Frances Bean Cobain, her daughter with late Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain. She and
Frances are the principal beneficiaries of Cobain's estate. 'This is not a case against [Dave and Krist],'
a spokesperson for Love said Monday. 'They're only named for technical legal reasons because they didn't
participate in the suit.' Warren Rheaume, attorney for Grohl and Novoselic, said the suit 'is not going to
change Dave and Krist's objective to get Nirvana's music in the hands of their fans.' A spokesperson for
Universal said the company had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment. The suit also claims that Universal
released and distributed a song by the German dance act Balloon that featured an unauthorized sample of Nirvana's
breakthrough hit 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' The cover of the 'Monstersound' single featured a skinhead holding
a shotgun. Love claims the song 'debased and devalued one of the most influential rock recordings in music history.'
She was already embroiled in a legal battle with Universal over her own band Hole's contract, and in that suit
she alleges that major labels force artists to sign unfair contracts. In June she filed a lawsuit in Seattle to
dissolve Nirvana LLC, the business partnership she entered into with Grohl and Novoselic in 1994. Both Nirvana suits
downplay Grohl's and Novoselic's roles in the group, suggesting that Nirvana was more of a solo project than a band.
The June complaint effectively stalled the release of a Nirvana box set planned for release this fall to commemorate
the 10th anniversary of the landmark album Nevermind. The set was to include several previously unreleased recordings,
including the band's final completed track, 'You Know You're Right'. UMG/Universal has since given notice that Nirvana
are in breach of contract for failing to deliver the box set by June 30. '[Krist and Dave] formed an LLC when I was stoned,
so I had to remove the LLC, which I'm in the process of doing and will succeed at,' Love said recently. 'This isn't about
taking their money away or anything else, but the reason you have no [new] Nirvana material is we can't function.' "
This story was courtesy of Teri
vanHorn and MTV Networks. Looks like the fabled box won't come out for another (insert large number here) years. If I ever
get 'stoned', remind me to file a lawsuit afterwards, rectifying all the actions I comitted while under the influence ;)
The winners of the latest NFC Competition have now been picked - one day later than planned. The winners of
the eight prizes are, respectively; Mark Martin, Stefan Churbetdji, Jens Peter Risaul, Pascale Vallee, Jake Mathis,
Håvard Edvardsen Hellerud, Andy Hall and Matthias Christian Richter. A little over 1000 people entered their name
to this competition. The lucky winners have been notified and will get their prizes in the mail later this month.