SOMETHING STUPID AND CONTAGIOUS

Nirvana perform "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on Top of the Pops. This four chord blitzkrieg attacked the world the year I moved to Seattle. In an instant, alternative rock was commercial, predatory A and R men descended upon Puget Sound, and sleek Paris runway models were sporting "Le Grunge." A screwed up Aberdeen kid from the muddy banks of the Wishkaw was suddenly a reluctant hero. He couldn't just "play the hit." As you can see, he did it his way. Punk or die.


This performance smells more like teen spirit than the official MTV-ready video. Ironic, right? In spite of the artifice, this is the real deal. A total refusal to simply entertain, to surrender, to just be stupid and contagious. We screened this clip during our underground garage party and people screamed and threw folding chairs. It was happy and kind of sad, and yet I guess it makes me smile. I found it hard--it's hard to find. Oh, well, whatever. Nevermind.

HERE WE ARE NOW, ENTERTAIN US

This is a vision of hell Dante never imagined. I just came across this and can't get it out of my mind. I feel like the Manchurian Candidate. Paul Anka, famous for singing "Diana" back in the Pleistocene Era, and for handing "My Way" to Sinatra, is shown on French television singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Evidently, this studio-tanned lounge lizard is into Nirvana. Not. This is schlock elevated to screaming nightmare surrealism.

Of course, I can't leave well enough alone. There is no closure. That slick bastard might rape the song, but there is still proof that a certain misfit kid from rainy Aberdeen on the muddy banks of the Wishkah howled like an earthbound ghost. Here is Nirvana, perhaps the greatest hardcore rock band in history, setting fire to the woods at the Reading Festival in England in 1992. This is an adult dose, a torch in the catacombs, a head-on collision, a rose in a shot glass.