From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah

by

Nirvana

Edit

The Amazon critic has it wrong: the chorus on "School" is "No recess," NOT "Don't be sad"! Now that we've got that cleared up....It is well documented that Nirvana could be very scattershot live in concert, usually depending on the mental & physical health of troubled singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain. On a bad night, the band could be very ragged and sloppy, even rude---some nights, they wouldn't even play their big hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," much to the dismay of their audience. But on a GOOD night---and there were quite a few of those, too---Nirvana were powerful, rockin' monsters. "From The Muddy Banks of The Wishkah" captures Nirvana live in concert on the various GOOD nights they had over the years, with the live tracks recorded between 1989 and 1994. Nirvana blast through 16 songs, featuring some signature tunes like "Teen Spirit" and "Lithium," as well as some lesser-known songs like "Spank Thru" and "Blew." The band sound incredible, with Cobain, bassist Krist Noveselic and drummer Dave Grohl interlocked together like a three-headed rock beast (though on some tracks, guitarist Pat Smear joins the trio, and original drummer Chad Channing is featured on a couple of tracks instead of Grohl). This is raw, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners rock of the highest order, with no bad performances anywhere, and the louder you can play this CD, the better. "From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah" is a brilliant document of what Nirvana could do live in concert on the nights when they *really* gave it everything they had. No Nirvana fan should go without this awesome live set.

Disclaimer - I possess and have listened to almost 200 different Nirvana concerts obtained through tape trading. I am not your run-of-the-mill Nirvana fan!

The good: A lot of the performances chosen for certain songs were very good...anything from the 12/28/91 performance (Drain You, Aneurysm, Smells Like Teen Spirit), Scentless Apprentice from the MTV Live and Loud concert, Tourette's from the famous 1992 Reading Festival, Negative Creep from the famous 1991 Seattle Halloween concert, and the Heart-Shaped Box is a good one.

Also, they only repeated one track from Unplugged, and the screaming intro was a nice addition.

The bad: Some of the performance choices were sub-par, and that's coming from a person who, unlike Krist and Dave, doesn't have access to soundboard recordings of every show...I could name dozens of better performances than the ones chosen for School, Been a Son, Lithium, Blew (suggestion: also should have been culled from Halloween 1991), Sliver (any 1990 or 1991 version would have been better), Milk It (the next night same city and venue was much better), Breed, and Polly (much better in 1991, but even sticking with pre-Nevermind versions as this album did there are way better ones).

Also, though longer than the travesty of a greatest hits album released last year, this only runs about an hour. In the 20 minutes of space left, they should have included other live staples not on Unplugged like Floyd the Barber, Dive, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Serve the Servants, and the grand finale should have been a live version of Endless, Nameless (preferrably, again the 1991 Halloween performance), the secret track off Nevermind.

Finally, the dates documented in the liner notes are often incorrect.

The ugly: That has to be the worst performance of Spank Thru I've ever heard. Wow, it's bad.

This is as good of a place to start to get into Nirvana's live performances (since there's nothing else available), but I hope that there will be a better release than this someday, preferrably one that is a full live concert.