As announced yesterday, the Dutch 'Planet Internet' was hosting a chat with
the Foo Fighters earlier today. The chat went pretty good, though the applet
used for the chat was a tad annoying. I got a couple of my questions answered
by the guys, including if they'd come to Scandinavia anytime soon and what it
was like to perform on David Letterman's recent 'Welcome back' show. I also
asked if Dave had visited this website but I don't believe the question was
answered, as Dave wasn't behind the chat screen at the time. Apparently, the
four band members were taking turns in answering the questions. I put up a
couple of screenshots from the chat that you can check out if you'd like.
Screenshot #1, #2,
#3, #4 and
#5. I'm working on getting a complete log
of the chat, but do let me know if you have one. Once again thanks to Jeroen
for telling us about the event. For the lucky Dutch people, the Foo's will
be playing at the 'Melkweg' in Amsterdam tonight. The same place Nirvana did
a show some ten years ago.
I finally got around to updating the rare pictures gallery with some great
snaps from the Nirvana book "Winterlong". I added nine pictures, all shot
by photographer Steve Gullick who gave me permission to put some of his work
on this site. The photos were mostly shot of the band while they were on the
road, ie. at Reading '91 and in Scandinavia 1992. I hope you'll enjoy the
photos. More from the same book will probably be put up eventually. Check
the first nine scans here, courtesy of Mr. Gullick.
Tomorrow, there will be an online chat session with the Foo Fighters, hopefully
including former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. I believe the chat will start at
6.30 PM, Central European Time. It should last half an hour or so. The session
is hosted by the Dutch 'Planet Internet'.
Thanks a bunch to Jeroen Bos for this news.
On April 5, 2000 there will be a Nirvana special on the television channel
M2 (MTV 2). They will air a 'Kurt Cobain remembered special', Nirvana's MTV
Unplugged show and a 30min show called 'Nirvana - A video history'. "On 5th
April Kurt Cobain took his own life, he was 27. To mark the 6th anniversary
of his death M2 will be showing a special evening of programming as a tribute
to undoubtedly one of the most important musicians of recent times." Thanks
to 'Wev' for this news. Be sure to mark this day in your calender, as I'm
convinced several other channels will also be airing Nirvana specials this day.
The latest poll "Did you like the new Foo Fighters album, 'There is nothing left
to lose' ?" ended with the following result: 'Yes' - 1113 votes (75%). 'No' - 369
votes (25%). So, out of the roughly 1.500 votes, 3/4 of them were for "Yes". Thus
we should be able to conclude that the wast majority of this website's visitors
enjoyed the latest album by the Foo's. I just put up a new poll: "What is your
favorite part of this website?". This is strictly to determine which part of the
website is most visited. So, go vote already! The poll can be found in the
bottom of the main page.
I just put up a very interesting article about one of the very first
bands that featured Chad Channing, the former Nirvana drummer. The band, Color Me
Gone, was formed while Chad Channing was still attending Anacortes High School in
the state of Washington. Chad was just 18 years old at the time. A magazine called
Klipsun wrote an article partly about the band - an article you can now read here.
The article features a review of the band's first ever gig, and a brief interview
with them. The band consisted of Chad Channing on drums, Stan Bennett on vocals,
Doug Cassidy on bass and Mark Madenwald on guitar. Special thanks to Stan Bennett
for the Klipsun article. Read it here.
The March 2000 issue of the magazine 'Rock Sound' has some exclusive pictures
of Nirvana, by the photographer Youri Lenquette. Thanks to Mark for this one.
The magazine also has a 'Gone but not forgotten' poll, where Kurt Cobain is
#1, and 3 Colours Red are #2 with Soundgarden taking the #3 spot. Thanks to
Aaron Williams for this.
As announced earlier, the British VH-1 aired a Nirvana/Kurt Cobain special
last night, in honour of his birthday. Unfortunately, it was only aired on
the British VH-1 which is available in the UK only. The European/Nordic VH-1
was airing some Depeche Mode special at the time, while I believe
the US VH-1 aired a Weird Al special. I did obtain a recording of the show's
audio part though. It sounds like an interesting program, offering some common
interviews, live clips and clips of Nirvana's videos. But nothing extraordinary.
Yesterday was the day for the 42nd Grammy awards, a definite highlight in the
music industry. Santana ran off with most of the big awards - such as 'Record
of the year' and 'Album of the year'. The 'Hard Rock Performance' award went
to Metallica for their "Whiskey in the jar cover" (its beyond me why this
song was nominated) and 'Best metal performance' went to Black Sabbath. Phil
Collins and Madonna also won for their respective soundtrack contributions. View
a full list of winners here.
Steve Gullick, one of the authors of the Nirvana book "Winterlong", put up a
few cool snaps of Nirvana at his official website. I have not yet scanned any
of his terrific photos but I will soon, and put them online. In the mean time,
check out his website here.
I just joined the 'affiliate program' of allposters.com, a website selling a
bunch of posters, including a few nice ones of Nirvana. If you are interested
in these or some of the great movie posters they have, just follow this link:
All Posters.
A couple of days ago (February 22 to be exact) the lovely actress Drew Barrymore
turned 25. Happy birthday, Drew! Drew was dating Hole bassist Eric Erlandson for
a while, and is a close friend of Courtney Love. Speaking of birthdays, the great
actress Jennifer Love Hewitt turned 21 on the 21st of February. Happy birthday, Love!
Today, Kurt Cobain would have turned 33 as he was born on the 20th of February,
1967. So happy birthday Kurt, wherever you are. Speaking of birthdays, it has
now been about four years since I opened 'The Danish Nirvana Page' upon which
the Internet Nirvana Fan Club was built in April 1997. This site opened on April
8, 1997 so there is still a couple of months to go before we can celebrate the
3-year anniversary of nirvanaclub.com. I don't know the exact date of when the
'Danish Nirvana Page' opened but I believe it was around late February or
early March of 1996. Anyway, happy birthday Kurt. Rest in peace.
As you might know, David Letterman will return to his late show this Monday. He was
away from the show for a couple of weeks due to undergoing heart surgery. Appearing
at the 'welcome back show' will be the Foo Fighters, apparently performing the song
"Everlong" from their second album. David Letterman is said to have requested this
band specifically, and he also requested that they would play "Everlong". This seems
likely as the 'late show band' have been jamming on the song a bunch of times, and the
Foo's themselves have also been on the show playing the song a while ago. So, all you
lucky people in the US can catch the Foo's on Letterman this Monday night on CBS. Other
guests on this show include Regis Philbin and Robin Williams. Thanks to 'stoptherap'
and several others for this story.
Rich sent in this story: "I've just found out using the UK television Guide program
'DigiGuide' that VH1 UK will be airing a program called Egos and Icons about Nirvana.
'A fascinating look at the short history of the most important band of the 90's. Includes
rare footage of the late Kurt Cobain discussing musical influences and his unusual take
on fame.' The show is aired at 10 PM on Wednesday, February 23rd." Thanks Rich!
Mitch Vassar, one of the webmasters of the terrific 'digital nirvana', is working on
a FAQ about the popular "Outcesticide" bootlegs by Blue Moon Records. These bootlegs
were the first to surface some of the more rare Nirvana recordings out there today.
If you can help with the FAQ, or just want more information about the project, go
here.
Here is a very very interesting, but also mildly disturbing, story from All Star;
"Courtney Love, Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson, and the Estate of Kurt Cobain filed a
lawsuit Thursday (Feb. 17) against two Toronto-based individuals, Ray King and Adam
Corelli, for cybersquatting, among other complaints. Through Homebranch.com, Inc.,
the two men own the Web sites www.kurtcobain.com, www.hole.com, and www.courtneylove.com,
which are not sanctioned by either band. The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District
Court for the Central District of California, states, 'Without plaintiffs' permission or
consent, defendants have engaged in a deliberate scheme to infringe and dilute plaintiffs'
valuable rights in their names and marks.' The sites in question also have 'reproduced,
displayed and distributed in interstate commerce, and therefore infringed, numerous
copyrighted works which Estate of Kurt Cobain owns or in which it has a beneficial
interest.' The www.kurtcobain.com site can easily be mistaken as an official site,
as it has numerous Nirvana audio and video clips, lyrics, and some of Cobain's artwork,
among other materials. In addition to cybersquatting, the plaintiffs' complaints also
include trademark dilution, trademark infringement, statutory misappropriation of name
and right of publicity, unfair competition, and copyright infringement. Also named as
plaintiffs are the Estate's executor Kenneth L. Shubert, Jr.; the End of Music, LLC,
which owns the Kurt Cobain trademark; and Hole's company Doll Head, Inc., which owns
the Hole trademark. They are seeking an amount up to $100,000 for each infringement
by defendants. The suit claims that the infringements total 'more than 90 recordings
of musical works written and/or performed by Kurt Cobain, the lyrics for more than
75 musical works by Mr. Cobain, and at least one video for a musical work written
and performed by Mr. Cobain.' " This story was courtesy of AllStar News. Thanks to
Tyler for the link. Feel free to discuss this on the NFC Discussion Boards.
Here is an update on the story above, again courtesy of All Star News; "Adam Corelli,
one of the defendants named in the lawsuit filed by the Estate of Kurt Cobain on Thursday
(Feb. 17), is denying that he has 'anything to do with the sites' in question. Corelli,
his company Homebranch Inc., and Ray King are named as defendants in a suit filed in
Los Angeles over the domain names kurtcobain.com, hole.com, and courtneylove.com (see
story, this page). The Estate, along with Courtney Love, Hole's Eric Erlandson, and
Kenneth L. Shubert, Jr., the executor of the Estate, is suing for a variety of
complaints, including trademark dilution, cybersquatting, trademark infringement,
statutory misappropriation of name and right of publicity, unfair competition,
and copyright infringement. However, according to Corelli, he does not own the
domain names in question. Ray King is listed as the owner of the site, according
to Network Solutions, a domain name look-up service. Corelli says that King, his
former site host up until 18 months ago, was notified by him that his site was
erroneously going to kurtcobain.com and he asked him to fix the problem. 'I sent
him seven emails to correct the DNS [domain name system] server information because
his name was pointing to my site,' says Corelli on the phone Friday (Feb. 18) from
Canada. 'I had nothing to do with the name. This is a DNS conflict.' "
Today, the 'Nirvana' forum of the NFC Discussion board will reach post number 10.000!
Though, these posts only date back to November 16, 1999 which is just three months ago.
This leads me to believe that the 'Nirvana' forum is getting approx. 3300 monthly posts.
Most of the posts prior to this date have been deleted, except for the most interesting
posts which were moved to the archive. Also, you can currently find thousands of posts
in the other three forums, topped by the 'Junkyard' which currently holds more than 5.000
posts (only dating back to January 8, 2000). All together the four forums currently contain
something in the area of 20.000 posts made by the approx. 750 registered users. Thanks to
all those who have created interesting discussions and special thanks to the nine moderators
for keeping it all together. NFC Discussion Board.
For the first time in a while, the NFC FAQ was updated. All the text is now 'justified'
to make it look a bit more pretty. A few corrections here and there were done as well.
No new questions/answers were added in this update but they will follow shortly. Check
the FAQ here. Also updated, again, was the Nirvana in movies
and TV section. The US gameshow "Who wants to be a millionaire" has been mentioning the
word 'Nirvana' in their questions several times lately, so that was noted in the file.
Check out the latest update of this file here. Thanks.
Over at mp3.com they have some clips of Krist Novoselic talking about censorship, WTO
and politics. The clip was recorded at one of the stops of the Spitfire tour, a tour
organized last year to advertise for free speech and such. The tour features artists
such as Krist Novoselic, Woody Harrelson and others. You can get the MP3's of Krist's
speech here. You can
also check out the official Spitfire website.
The Spitfire tour will continue in 2000, where Krist Novoselic is scheduled to be at
the Reed College in Portland, OR on March 9 along with Moon Zappa, Kennedy (of MTV),
and Michael Franti. More details.
Chad sent in this, which I thought was somewhat interesting; "This is a mass message
too all who have supported Students Against University Censorship in one way or another.
The petition is going strong, we have over 200 signatures, and that's not bad considering
the site has been up for less than a day. Our goal is to obtain 10,000 or more signatures
by March 15, 2000. If we attain that number, we may be able to gain free legal support to
explore our options. We want to fight the RIAA. We have added a news page and mailing list
to the front page, if you want to check that out and subscribe to it, that would be great.
Up Records has decided to support our fight, they sent us a message that you can check out
on the front page. Also, the CEOs of K Records and Sub Pop Records have signed the petition
as well. The key thing we need now is growth. I want to get as many universities in on this
as possible, so it would be great if you could give the organization exposure, if you have
the means to do it." RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America who have been
cranking down on college campuses lately, to expose students distributing illegal mp3 files.
For more information on this, go here.
In case you are interested the Academy Award nominees were announced today. And no,
Courtney Love was not nominated for her part in "Man on the moon" ;) You can check
the full list of nominees here. Courtesy of EW Online.
A couple of minor updates were done today. The list of Nirvana songs was updated,
fixing a few errors, and the list of Nirvana in movies and TV was updated as well.
Check the list of Nirvana songs here and the latest
update of Nirvana in movies and TV here. Make sure
you also download the two MP3's put up recently, with noise-reduced versions of the
songs Bambi Kill and Clean up before she comes. Both files are offline now, sorry.
The most fanatic "Kurt was murdered" website has once again been updated with
e-mails that were allegedly sent by Kurt's widow, Courtney Love. A while ago,
the guy running the site, Andrew Amirault, also received e-mails from someone
claiming to be Courtney. Amirault shortly after published all of the e-mails to
his website. The fact that the e-mails were sent from a University in Scotland
didn't seem to bother him. Now, the fun continues with another interesting e-mail
allegedly sent by Courtney; "thought you would like to know,that i am a major
succubus,and i wanted to warn you,to stay away from Time Square on April 8th
2000,i have been hired $4500 to dispatch you .Thats all your worth I guess. I
would'nt know.I dont know who you are,I dont know why this person wants you
burried,but he is a very rich man,and he is 29 years old...ring any bells?
Other than that,I dont know much about him.Id thought Id give you a sign
flashing BEWARE. This is not a joke,nor a fake quote. You will be destroyed
if you attend Time Square NY on April 8th." - following that is the line
"im sorry" repeated about 5 billion times. The e-mail is supplemented by an
article written by Andrew Amirault, featuring an interview with himself ... !
Read the article here.
A website called 'Rock FM' is featuring Nirvana as the artist of the month at
the moment. The feature tells the story of Nirvana in headlines and provides
a soundclip of 'Been a son'. Generally it is a pretty nice website, offering a
mailinglist, music news, charts and much more.
Rock FM website. Thanks to Helder Gomes for the link.
Since most of the reactions to the MP3 I put up yesterday have been positive,
I thought I'd put up another. As Eric correctly noted, these are not actually
"re-masters" since you need the source master recording in order to be able to
produce a re-master. But in lack of a better word, I'm just going to call it a
re-tune up or something. In any case the song "Clean up before she comes", also
from the Outcesticide IV bootleg, had a lot of hiss on it so I removed that and
performed some other small improvements. I think the result is pretty good. You
can download it here. I am not sure when this
track was recorded but it was probably around the same time they recorded the
'Bambi Kill' clip that I put up yesterday. Enjoy!
As you might remember, there was a huge WTO protest in Seattle a couple of months ago.
This yielded an anti-WTO concert by the 'WTO Band' featuring Krist Novoselic and Kim
Thayil from Soundgarden, among others. Now it seems that a recording of this concert
will be released officially; "SHIPPING MAY 08, 2000 : virus 250 THE NO W.T.O. COMBO
(featuring JELLO BIAFRA, KIM THAYIL, KRIST NOVOSELIC, GINA MAINWAL) live from the
battle in seattle LP/CD. On November 31st, 1999 Jello Biafra, Krist Novoselic, Kim
Thayil and drummer Gina Mainwal performed a one-off protest concert against the
World Trade Organization, and all that it stands for, at The Showbox in Seattle."
"History, insurrection and tear gas was in the air, as hundreds of fans and weary
protestors defied the Seattle police curfew to show up and rock the house. Tension
was everywhere. No one knew if the show would even happen 'til the band walked out
on stage. Biafra had been out rabble-rousing to gatherings big and small. Krist
spent days filming as much of the ruckus as he could. Kim and Gina just wanted to
reach the venue without being gassed and arrested. Somehow amongst it all, time
was found for three rehearsals. The plot began when Biafra and Krist were
brainstorming with protest organizers for music talent to add to the events.
Big names were proven 'unavailable', so Krist drafted Biafra and the all-star
pseudo-supergroup was hatched. The NO W.T.O COMBO was recorded live on multi-
track and mixed by Krist Novoselic and legendary grunge wizard Jack Endino;
capturing the energy and 'you-are-there' ambiance of a night like no other.
Artwork includes lots of W.T.O. info, photos, and a personal journal and
reflections by Krist Novoselic. Biafra ties together many ideas from his
spoken word albums and adds a few new ones on the opening track. The NO
W.T.O. COMBO performs two new Biafra songs and two more that may be familiar.
'Live From The Battle In Seattle' is just over 40 minutes in length. Roughly
15 minutes of spoken word and 25 minutes of music." Thanks to Micah Jasper and
Derek Allison for this news. I don't know where you'll be able to get the CD
once its released, but I'll keep you posted if I get more information.
So I was listening to some of the Outcesticide bootlegs the other day and noticed how
crappy the quality was on some of the tracks. So I decided to do something about it.
While my skills at re-mastering songs are quite poor I think I managed to make a few
songs sound a bit better than they did on their original source. So, for now, I made
a re-master of the song "Bambi Kill" (aka. "Bambi Slaughter") from the Outcesticide IV
bootleg. I tried to remove all the hiss on the track, and I cranked up the decibel rate
a little bit. While the result makes the song sound a bit too 'clean' I'd still argue
that its better than the original. Some speculate that the song was lifted from the
legendary "Fecal Matter Demo", but the most realistic theory is that it was recorded
sometime in early 1988 or late 1987. The song will be online for a limited time, in
MP3 format. Download it here and let me know if
you like it. Ideally you should listen to the 'old' version on Outcesticide IV first.
The terrific actor Jim Varney, better known as 'Ernest', has died of lung cancer. "Jim Varney, the
rubbernecked comic who played his rube character Ernest from hundreds of television commercials
to a series of hit movies, died Thursday at his home. He was 50." This sad story was courtesy
of CNN QuickNews. More here.
I just registered the domain "nirvana2.com" which will, for now, merely be an alias of this
website. So if you go to www.nirvana2.com you will automatically see the exact same content
as you can see at www.nirvanaclub.com. So both those URL's basically point to the same files.
This little feature should work for everyone within the next couple of days. If you can't get
nirvana2.com working properly just use nirvanaclub.com as usual. Later it's the plan to put
some sort of Nirvana site up on the domain, possibly several sites. It is still very much up
in the air as to what the domain will be used to host. I am of course not going to build a
whole new Nirvana site just for the sake of that domain name. So while the future of the URL
is decided, you can use it as an alias for NFC.
A lot of sources, including dutch 'TMF' and St. Lois radio station 105.7, are still reporting
that the Nirvana boxed set will be released soon. This is not correct. Again: there is still
no official release date for the set and only a few of the songs that it will contain have been
confirmed. A release this year is possible but not very realistic. We'll keep our fingers
crossed though. Check the latest info on the box here. Thanks to
Nick and Koen for some of the rumours.
A new Nirvana book, written by Kurt St. Thomas who did Nirvana's 1992 Interview CD (Nevermind:
It's an interview), is getting closer to a release date. A source involved with the project says
the book has been finished and contains a lot of interesting material. AllStar news reported a
while ago that it would possibly be entitled "Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects".
Dan sent in this story that he found in the January 27 edition of the New York Post;
"Our favorite rock goddess, Courtney Love - who expressed her fashion genius at
the Golden globes by removing the trim of dead mice and tiny beer cans from her
revealing John Galliano gown - was recently shot for next month's Fashion of
the Times supplement. When she arrived at the studio and was asked what she
wanted on the sound system, she replied Nirvana - 'and I better not read about
how I listen to my dead husband on Page SIX.' Sorry, Love." Hmm, interesting :)
Dave Grohl just commented on his little drunk driving incident recently; "Foo Fighter Dave Grohl
has taken the time out of his Australian touring schedule to respond to his Jan. 23 run-in with
the law on the band's official Web site. 'Taylor and I had rented these little scooters on our day
off so that we could go riding around from beach to beach,' says Grohl in his posting. 'They were
awesome, little suckers that don't even go 30 mph, but cool nonetheless. The day of the show, we
decided to ride them over to the show grounds instead of taking the shuttle. We played, had fun,
I even brought the scooter up onstage for a laugh, to make fun of Rob Halford. 'After the show we
watched a few more bands, it started to rain, so we decided to get the scooters back to the hotel,'
he continues. 'Taylor and I got on and whizzed our way back towards the hotel. About a mile or two
before the hotel, there was a police breathalyzer stop thingy. Maybe like six or seven cars ahead
of us. They were checking everybody, but I wasn't worried because A) I was on the silliest little
scooter you've ever seen, and B) I only had four or five beers in a period of three and a half or
four hours. I thought they'd wave me by. I wasn't driving recklessly, I wasn't pulled over. I drove
up to them.' Grohl was arrested and spent a few hours in jail in Southport, Australia before being
fined by Southport Magistrates Court on Jan. 31. 'I got fined, and it's over,' he says. 'I wish I
hadn't done it, of course, but I don't want anyone thinking that I'm out here on tour, wrapping cars
around trees ... just riding rental scooters straight into the police's hands. So, people, I guess
if there's anything to learn here, it's don't drive after a few beers, even if you feel entirely
capable like I did,' he continues. 'Don't underestimate the definition of a 'Motor Vehicle,' and
always let Gus [Foo Fighters' manager] drive you home. Sorry if you all think I'm a dork. Believe me,
I feel like a total dickweed, but you gotta kinda laugh. Ever see that scene in Dumb and Dumber where
they take the mini-bike to Aspen? Picture that, but here down under.' " Thanks to AllStar News and
foofighters.com for this story.
I just received permission from photographer Steve Gullick to put up some of his work on
this site. A lot of the photos he shot of Nirvana are presented in the book "Winterlong",
published late last year in the UK - accompanied by an extensive exhibit of the photos
in the book. Steve followed the band on their 1992 Scandinavian tour, at the Reading '91
festival and several other interesting dates. So, some of his terrific Nirvana photos
will be put up on the site soon. Special thanks to Steve Gullick for granting permission.
"It may have been one of the hottest Golden Globes parties, but some of the guests were
slightly miffed at COURTNEY LOVE, when the hostess herself made some stunning gaffes. First
she mistook 'The Sopranos' star James Gandonlfini for her bodyguard and barked orders at him,
until he finally convinced her he was actually a guest, reported Australia's New Weekly Magazine
this week. Then back went her foot in her mouth when she thought Lara Flynn Boyle of 'The Practice'
was 'Ally McBeal''s Calista Flockhart. 'I just love you in those miniskirts on Ally', she said
to her. Flynn Boyle then told her she was in 'The Practice'. 'You're practising what, dear?'
asked Love. Then she sashayed over to a pregnant Annette Benning and offered her a cigarette
and 'stiff drinks'." Thanks to Dan for this story.
The 5th NFC Competition finally ended today and the winners were randomly picked. It surprised
me a bit that only a little more than 300 people entered, but in any case, out of those the two
lucky winners of the first prize - a signed edition of the new book "Winterlong" - are: Nitzan
Chelouche and Magnus Valen. The lucky winner of the second prize is Peder Enøe Pedersen while
the lucky winner of the third prize is Henri Immonen. Congratulations to the four winners. We
will have yet another competition up for you soon. I still have a couple of signed copies of
the "Winterlong" book left that will be given away in future competitions. Thanks to Proud
Galleries and Esprit Records for providing the great prizes for the 5th NFC Competition.
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