With the Lights Out

by

Nirvana

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For anyone who has not gotten the new 3CD/1DVD box set "With The Lights Out" from Nirvana... This set is absolutely amazing. Many of the songs and demos that are on the set I have had for years now on cassettes that have found their way to me but on this set they have been cleaned and mastered fantastically. Then there are the songs and demos that have never seen the light of day... They speak for themselves.

There is some great humor here starting right off Disc 1 with the band at their very first gig about to launch into Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and Kurt can be heard yelling in the background "I don't know this song!" Kurt's trippy demo of "Beans", with his harmonized vocal is hilarious. There are great "Bleach" era demos ("If You Must", "Pen Cap Chew"), to some killer sessions with Mark Lanegan doing Leadbelly covers. But here is where it hits the hardest...

The very last song (rumored) to have ever been recorded is a demo included here called "Do Re Mi" (sometimes referred in the past as "Dough, Ray and Me"). This demo (along with the acoustic "You Know Your Right") is the clear example of where Kurt was about to go musically... The melody is breathtaking, and the beauty of the composition is absolutely devastating knowing what was to come. The recording is Kurt himself with an acoustic guitar (probably at home, Courtney can be heard talking to him in the background as the song finishes) and the starkness of his voice with his lone acoustic sets up a landscape of undefinable melodic beauty. This song is worth the price of the entire set.

All you need to be reminded of the value of this set is to turn on the radio... Today's rock music genre is a a soul-less desolate landscape of 4th and 5th generation imitators of previous forms. This box set historically shows the most important band since the Beatles before and during the most important time in musical history since the fab four walked off the plane at JFK airport. Who else came along, sent a music genre before them to the graveyard, defined a generation, opened the gates for a whole new genre of musicains, and left a void in it's wake a generation wide? Exactly.

The bullet that killed Kurt Cobain didn't just kill a person, it blew a hole thru a rock n roll in a way that no one could have ever imagined, even more so than John Lennon. Imagine if Lennon or McCartney had died at the height of their skills? You don't have to, it happened in Seattle in 1994.

When you listen to "Do Re Mi" the "What could have been" is absolutely heartbreaking...

I can comepletly agree with some of the negative reviews of this. So far I think I have only read one review that is typical nirvana-hate retard who says the same crap "kurt complain was a coward and sucked at guitar, go listen to a real guitar player blah blah blah blah blah" I wish that those people not Kurt would have killed themselves. They are just taking up space.

With that said let me give my own opinion on this. for what it's worth I LOVE this box set. It's a good look into the more raw elements of this band. It's cool to hear home demos and them jamming around trying to get it just right. It's deffinetly not for everyone. If you don't have much of an emotional attachment to this band I can see how you wouldn't care much for hearing home demos and live stuff or Kurt joking around. I LOVE LOVE LOVE "Do Re Mi" , "Aint it A Shame" the best.

Some of my grumbles on this are that there are plenty of other songs that they have recorded that I had hoped to be included. And then there's the DVD. It is cool but I think Live! Tonight! Sold Out! is much better. I was hoping for more footage of them in the studio, and goofing around. Plus there was NO in utero-era footage which is some of the best live footage of them.Oh Well maybe there is more on the way. I'd like it becasue the weeks before this came out was so exciting and it sucks that that is over. All in all this is a great collection to have if you really like Nirvana.