[NFC: The Internet Nirvana Fan Club]

December 31, 2003

The NFC wishes you a happy new year!
Thanks to everyone who visited this site in 2003 ... hope to see you next year! Maja Rasmussen, please be mine.

December 29, 2003

Now that 2003 is almost over, I thought it was time to do a little "what happened this year" status. It was the year where Saddam was caught, Arnold became governor and Britney made out with Madonna. But when it comes to Nirvana - not a whole lot happened. Well, nothing major, anyway. There were no new significant releases, be it records or videos, or other major Nirvana-related events. Though, here is a list of some of the things that have been reported in this news section throughout 2003 (check the archive for more details):

In January, the 10th (and so far biggest) NFC Competition ended and a handful of lucky winners were determined.

The truth behind the infamous 'electric' version of Opinion was finally revealed. NFC got in contact with the band that created the cover and we presented some background information on it, as well as a recording in good quality.

A limited-edition hardback of the Nirvana photography book by Stephen Sweet and Steve Gullick was released.

In February, Courtney Love was arrested following an incident aboard a trans-atlantic flight. Reportedly, she had been 'verbally abusive' to cabin crew. After spending 11 hours in detention she was released and all charges were dropped.

Speaking of Courtney, the March 2003 issue of Q-magazine featured her naked on the cover (and inside). The mag also included a Q&A session with Krist Novoselic where he talks about Nirvana and You Know You're Right.

In March, the much-hyped VH-1 special "Driven: The Secret Life of Kurt Cobain" finally aired.

As usual, early April saw many TV networks airing Nirvana and Kurt Cobain specials and shows.

More interestingly - in April, Brazil's TV Globo put up some rare clips of Nirvana's infamous performance in São Paulo on January 16 1993. The clips are still available in the misc. section and in the news section archive for April.

In June, an unofficial Nirvana DVD ("The Untold Stories") was released, featuring interviews and various footage.

In July, I published some information about a forthcoming book documenting Nirvana's recording sessions.

Speaking of books - Carrie Borzillo's "Eyewitness" book was published in a brand new, expanded edition with many photos and other new content.

Sometime over the summer - Krist Novoselic's band Eyes Adrift decided to call it quits. After releasing one album and touring most of the US, the band didn't achieve much commercial success and Krist announced that he would quit the music industry. Instead, he is apparently now focusing 100% on politics.

August 1 saw the release of the third NFC Compilation - a project that had been underway for several months. The compilation features songs by members of the NFC Discussion board (or their bands). More than 550 songs had been submitted for the project by the NFC users and ultimately, the best ones were chosen and put on the 3 CDs that comprise the compilation. In my humble opinion, the compilation represents some fantastic music by (mostly) unsigned musicians and Nirvana fans. It is available for download here.

A comprehensive Nirvana interview book was compiled this year - initially limited to 200 copies. The book features more than 60 major interviews and the best part is a detailed index which provides a quick reference to the essential parts of the interviews. For more details on how to pick up a copy of this book, check the news section archive.

In October, Frances Bean (the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love) was placed in the custody of Wendy O' Connor, following the arrest of Courtney Love. She had been seen trying to enter the home of her former boyfriend, apparently under the influence of drugs.

In November, the 'Journals' book was released in a paperback edition with some new content, including lyrics for early songs.

Also in November, the brand new design of this website was unveiled. Basically almost every document was updated and irrelevant content was removed. A more consistent layout was created and some new content was added.

Finally - in December - NME in the UK had Kurt Cobain cover stories over two issues, one detailing his 50 favorite albums, the other a supposedly 'new' song.

While there hasn't been that many events, it's still been a pretty good year for NFC. The number of visitors has stayed somewhat consistent throughout the year. Usually there are about 250,000 unique visitors per month, representing some 1 million page views and more than 5 million 'hits'. And that's only the statistics for the actual nirvanaclub.com website, excluding the discussion board hosted at nirvana2.com. The actual board currently stores more than 1 million posts (with many, many more available in the archive) spread over 40,000 different topics. Since the NFC opened in April, 1997 - the main page has been visited about 9.5 million times and is set to reach the remarkable 10-million milestone by early 2004. This month, it's been exactly 8 years since I started working on the website that started out as 'The Danish Nirvana Homepage' and would eventually evolve into the website you see today. Thanks for the support!

December 17, 2003

The 7th annual NFC Christmas Present is now finally online. It got a bit delayed for various reasons this year - and it was a bit difficult to come up with something unique. Each year around Christmas I like to put up something semi-rare by Nirvana, be it a live recording or some sort of movie clips. This year you can listen to the entire recording (well, what's available, anyway) of Nirvana's first ever concert. The 'show' took place at some house party back in March of 1987 in the city of Raymond, WA. It is not the most crystal-clear hi-fi recording one could wish for, but it is nevertheless quite good considering the circumstances and the fact that Nirvana were hardly a band back then. The setlist is interesting to say the least - offering some very early compositions, some of which have not been released officially to this day. This also marks the first update of the news section in almost a month in a year that has been quite dull when it comes to Nirvana-related events. Anyhow, you can find this year's NFC X-Mas present here.

Kurt Cobain graces the cover of the December 13 issue of NME, detailing his Top 50 favorite albums of all time. The Top 50 list was derived from the 'Journals' book which was recently published in a paperback edition with some new content. The previous issue of NME had an article where they set out to reveal a 'new' Nirvana song. "This is an exclusive look at some unfinished Nirvana lyrics, published for the first time in the new edition of Kurt Cobain's Journals. Alongside Cobain's thoughts and prose is 'Travelin White Thrash Couple', the verse/chorus format of [sic] which suggests it was intended for a song. The new lyrics raise the question of whether any more unheard material exists." Unfortunately, NME's journalists apparently forgot about Nirvana's Bleach album when writing the article as the song in question is merely Swap Meet released some 14 years ago. View the magazine covers: #1 - #2

Some news on a possible upcoming DVD edition of "1991: The Year Punk Broke" which features several Nirvana performances and backstage clips of the band: "We're getting together the first official Sonic Youth DVDs which will be jammed with anything/everything that needs to be jammed onto DVD. More info on these as they get closer but a full scale Geffen-era video retrospective will be released including the full on GOO video reel w/ extras. Commentary by a number of people from Kathleen Hannah to Richard Kern will be there for personal edification. Dave Markey, director of 1991: THE YEAR PUNK BROKE, has prepared an awesome 2-DVD set of that film with tons of unseen footage of us, Nirvana and others w/ commentary by Thurston and Dave. This one may have to wait for legal issues with various aspects of the film to be straightened out though." Courtesy of Sonic Youth's official website. Also thanks to Scott.

MSN recently compiled a list of the 'Ten Most Influential Popular Music Albums Since Elvis' (whew!) and Nirvana made it to spot #10 with Nevermind: "Dying young is always a good career move and Kurt Cobain took his own life when he was still in his artistic prime. With the jury still out on Radiohead, Nirvana is the last band to change the direction of mainstream music, combining the passion of punk with the power of heavy metal and the lyrical ambition of Patti Smith. 'Here we are now. Entertain us' is about as raw and honest as music gets." Number one on the list is The Beatles with Rubber Soul. Article by Eric Alterman. Link courtesy of Chris.