July 23rd, 1993

I'm listening to this show. 
It's hard to realize that it was recorded 26 years ago, on July 23rd, 1993. 

It is surrounded by stories. 

Supposedly, Kurt Cobain overdosed before the show. 
As far as I remember, Krist Novoselic has confirmed it. 

Supposedly, MTV recorded the entire show. 
At least, several clips of the show –including excerpts of Scentless Apprentice, Milk It, Come As You Are and Lithium– appeared soon after, regularly on MTV. 

Fans have been waiting for an official release of this show. 
Paramount Theatre, Reading Festival and Live & Loud –three of the long awaited shows of the short career of Nirvana– were finally released after 30 years or so. 

Rumors about official releases of Hollywood Rock Festival (1993) and Paradiso (1991) appear on almost every Nirvana Fanbase on the internet. 
They seem to be just rumors.

Though From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah (1997) includes some rad versions of the most famous songs of the band in soundboard quality and though Krist Novoselic personally listened to entire shows and then selected a bunch of songs –supposedly, he even traded shows on the internet with fans–, it's unlikely that someday, some of these shows be available on its entirety as official releases for fans.  

I hope to be wrong. 

How would it be to have an official Roseland Ballroom release...?
How would it be to have an official release of Nirvana's last show in Seattle, four months before Kurt Cobain's corpse had been found on the greenhouse at his home in Lake Washington...?

On the internet, it's easy to find out several versions of the Roseland Ballroom show. 
Most of them were recorded with lo fi devices. 
People who attended to it, say it was a really intense show. 

Nirvana was about to release In Utero. 
Does anyone imagined that it would be their last studio album...?

The band had recently declared that they refused to make songs in the style of the multi-awarded Nevermind. 
They even had hired Steve Albini and they were so happy with the rough sound of In Utero.

Fans and media were starved for another Nirvana record and they were so impressed by the new songs.  

The recording of the upcoming album was also surrounded by stories. 

Supposedly, Geffen executives didn't like the original album version and so they forced Nirvana to hire Scott Litt to re-arranged a couple of songs –All Apologies, Pennyroyal Tea and Heart-shaped box... 

Supposedly, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter was the way the band made the audience to notice the censure of the record company they were forced to deal with.  

On this show, Nirvana played several songs of In Utero –Very Ape, Milk It, Scentless Apprentice, tourette's... – and they even invited John "Big" Duncan to the stage, to play a few songs as a second guitarist. 

Pat Smear was still not part of the band, but Kurt Cobain had spoken about the need to have a second guitarist to the rest of the band. 

John "Big" Duncan then was the guitar tech of Kurt Cobain. 

Duncan was so close to the leader of Nirvana that he recently has told to the media that Kurt was about to change from Stratocaster to Telecaster and that he wasn't really satisfied with the sound of the Jagstang that Fender had customized for him.  

I'm listening to an incomplete version of the Roseland Ballroom show, but it has soundboard quality. 
It includes excerpts of Scentless Apprentice and Rape Me.
It also includes Blew, School, Aneurysm, Come As You Are, Breed, Lithium and Drain You.

The picture I uploaded to this post, reminds me of one of the volumes of the Outcesticide collection that was illegally released soon after Kurt Cobain's death. 

I bought a bunch of Outcesticides when I was a teenager.

The one I refer to included the extended crazy version of Scentless Apprentice that Nirvana played in Rio de Janeiro in 1993. 

Today, I'm pretty sad and angst. 

I started to write a novel almost six years ago.
I submitted it to a contest a year ago. 
I submitted it to another contest on April. 

Between contests, I reviewed it several times.
This last time, the reviewing process almost made me crazy.
My entire life was devoted to the novel. 
It became some sort of obsession.
I became obsessive-compulsive to it. 

After a couple of weeks on my new job, the University was closed due to a strike.
The strike lasted for three months and I was broke and trying to deal with it, working as if money didn't matter to me.

I was really desperate and frustrated when I reviewed and re-wrote the novel and so I put all of my feelings on it. It might sound stupid, but I put my heart and my rage on it.

The novel has a solid structure. I worked on it for almost six years.
I've been writing since I was born. It's complicated to explain why I'm not another guy writing and pretending to be outstanding. Sometimes I think I really need to make friends with editors. 

The results of the last contest were announced today. 
A woman with 6K followers on Twitter won the contest. 
She also won another contest on the last years. 
She was also involved on some sort of TV show. 

This contest was meant to be for young writers. 
The last year a guy with a high-level scholarship for writers, won the contest. 
I understood that a "young writer" was more close to describe an "unknown writer" than to describe "a writer with few publications", but, maybe, I'm wrong. 

I just want to make it clear: one way or another, one day I will publish this or another novel. 

Demand A Sacrifice

It was a gray and damp afternoon.

My wife and I were walking thru the alleys of an unknown street. 

I was upset. She had acquired a compromise to be at a weeding party.
I didn't want to show up with her at this particular event 'cause I had the feeling that the bride was one of her best friends and also that I had had a closer relationship with the bride before I met my wife.

I was thinking how to skip this compromise, when we arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. There were a dozen guys around what appeared to be a ticket office.

Suddenly it came to my mind that this abandoned warehouse was an underground venue in which Nirvana was about to play later.

My wife walked to the ticket office and asked for a couple of tickets for us. 
Dunno why, but it seemed that the very same day of the show tickets were still available.

Everything was going so well, but the ticket seller asked to my wife for some sort of password. She didn't know it. I got mad. 

Dunno why, but she was the only one who could buy a couple of tickets for us. 

http://www.thesenseofdoubt.com/

I was about to collapse. I was so furious. 
I had always wanted so bad to be in a Nirvana show.

Somehow she got the tickets, but in different sections of the venue. 
We walked into the venue and we took different paths.

The venue seemed to be a bull arena, except that the floor was made of concrete.
At times, the venue seemed a circus. 

My wife was so close to the stage and I was almost in the last row of the last section of the venue. I couldn't believe it. She didn't even like Nirvana as I did! 

Someone in the tribunes, so close to me, started to speak about Melvins. 
In particular, he spoke about Houdini and Lysol.

So I figured it out that it was a Nirvana show, but that the Melvins would be the guest band. Immediately I thought we were in the middle of the In Utero Tour, when Melvins opened several shows for Nirvana in Europe.

Lysol (1992) is one of the most accesible Melvins' albums.
Sacrifice indeed is a Flipper cover. 

Look For "Sacrifice" By Melvins On Your Preferred Browser

I Wish I Could Eat Your Cancer When You Turn Black

I lost my mind, when I met you. All I wanted was to scream, and say "Is she really your sister?" 

Your brother played the drums and we wanted to make a band. I played the guitar. He liked Nirvana as much as I did, even though he didn't understand the lyrics 'cause he didn't speak english. We loved so much garage punk.

We started playing Aneurysm, and I yelled terribly. I was ashamed. Then we played Sliver and Sappy, and I just tried to whisper the lyrics. It was our first rehearsal. Despite my voice, the songs didn't sound bad at all. We even didn't have a name. The bass guitarist suggested "Chaos In Highschool", or something like that. He was your boyfriend, or I thought so. Maybe your brother told me so, to keep me away from you. Nevertheless, you looked at him all the time. I was kinda jealous. 

You were there, listening. Just you. Sometimes our gazes crossed thru the room. Maybe you laughed. I kinda wanted to tell you how much I liked you, for the very first moment I saw you. You were beautiful and your hair was painted in purple and pink sparkles. You dressed like a Babes In Toyland member.

"Are you really left-handed?", you asked me in a brief pause. Your boyfriend had gone to the bathroom. As we were drinking alcohol from the beginning of the rehearsal, at that point I was kinda drunk. 

via GIPHY

"Oh, yes... I am really left-handed... Do you know that Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, were straight-handed? Do you know that Billy Corgan is left-handed even though he plays a straight-handed guitar?", I told you, desperately. 

I had an awful left-handed Ibañez guitar. It was pale blue. 

Your boyfriend came back, and we started to play Heart-shaped Box. He decided to sing, and he was amazing. You stared at him, with devotion.

I never returned to practise. I was afraid of getting in the middle of a fight for you, because it was obvious that I would fell in love with you, sooner or later.  Also, I was a bad guitarist and I never could compete with your boyfriend. 

I was an idiot. 

Heart-shaped Box

If Tears Were Liquor I'd Have Drunk Myself Sick

The night was dark and quiet, but Nadine felt her heart was shining aloud. She told me so. I felt the opposite 'cause I didn't love her and I didn't want to stay anymore with her. She used to control me and she had threatened me many times. All the time, she was about to break up with me and to get involved with her favourite ex, again. He was an idiot, a sad stalker. Once, he'd tried to kidnap me and beat me up, just to make me suffer as he suffered because Nadine was in a relationship with me. I didn't understand why Nadine told me so, but I felt sorry for him, and I also hated him. He was pathetic. 

One of Nadine's dogs', a Great Pyrenees called Layne, in honor to Alice In Chains' singer, had died on the last week, so I couldn't be rough. We crossed the parking lot and got to the Taurus. A few minutes ago, we were watching Pulp Fiction, and I'd just hated when she mentioned that Tarantino asked Cobain if he wanted to appear on the movie as a drug dealer. Of course I'd heard of it. That anecdote was so popular, and I was sick of it. You just had to read the booklet of In Utero to have an idea. Nevertheless, I smiled and hold her hand.  

Under the moonlight, Nadine looked like a movie star, blonde and fragile as Marilyn Monroe, but somehow stupid and selfish as Cindy Crawford. I was profoundly confused and tired. My thoughts were focused on just one thing: I wanted to end up that relationship. 

Suddenly, Nadine stared at me. Dim lights made it impossible to not look at her pale blue eyes. They were absolutely beautiful. Then, she asked me if I was sick, and I just told her that I was tired. Ironically, I started to feel sick. I just wanted to sleep. Abruptly, she started to cry. I tried to feel empathy, but I couldn't. "If you need someone to support you, you should call Andreas... He's always available for you", I told her, and she screamed and freaked out. 

We got into the Taurus and I turned on the radio, and the radio was playing a Mark Lanegan's song. Nadine drove the car as I enjoyed and felt connected to the music. She was silent and angst, and, in the middle of nowhere, she told me that she definitely was breaking up with me and that Andreas was a better guy for her than me. She stopped the car, and asked me to leave her alone. I was scared, but I felt drunk and happy.    

What else should I do?

via GIPHY