Nirvana set gives glimpse of early days
By Martin Garza
IV Leader Music Critic
All emotional ties aside, Nirvana, when musicianship is
brought into consideration, was terrible.
Kurt Cobain wasn't the greatest at guitar, Krist Novoselic
kind of fell into the obscure member, when he was there since the beginning, and
it took a few tries before they lucked out on getting a drummer as good as Dave
Grohl, and even with Dave, the band never really pushed him.
Now bring in everything else. Bring in great song writing and
Cobain's voice. That's what everybody remembers from Nirvana.
‘With the Lights Out’ is a three CD and one DVD box set that
covers Nirvana's entire career through obscure B-sides, unreleased demos, a
couple of Zeppelin covers, footage of the first gig the band played with Grohl,
the original video to "In Bloom,” and is littered with acoustic and live
versions of some of their best work. It's good to see what Nirvana was before
they were thrown into media spotlight. Before they became over-rated and
considered gods by the average grunge fan.
This was just a garage band playing songs written in a pal's
basement, a band that played Zeppelin covers because they were fanboys. It's
showing that Cobain wasn't some revolutionary. It was just a normal band with
normal guys who got lucky, and that is what the appeal of Nirvana is and will
always be.
Score: if you've got the cash, it goes great with the rest of
the mountain of Nirvana merchandise you own.