Seems To Me Time Was, Little Bit As Complicated Then

«Yes, it's him», she said. And she was sitting in her chair, in front of her computer, in the office that both of you shared at that time, a thousand years ago, before the storm, before the earthquake, before the apocalypse..., when you were ill and tired of dealing with your health issues. 

She looked at you, and you listened up and you thought what kind of life was her life, and what kind of life was your life. You really hated your life. Everyday was an inner war for you. And she used to be happy, her husband was still alive and they were a pretty happy couple, and she was smart, strong and absolutely amazing at his job.

And her eyes were like almonds and her face was white and pink, and her hair was long and it had a strange shiny color, between black and brown. You sort of had a crush on her. While she spoke –«Yes, it's him»–, you couldn't stop feeling attracted to her lips, and you wanted to kiss them and to devour her tongue, and you desired to touch her face and her hair, and to hold her hands –to loss your mind in the brief glimpse of her nails–, and to look at her almond eyes forever.

She referred to another researcher and one of the undergrads of this researcher. Three or four antibodies had been lost and the lab had run out of budget. 

Suddenly, she shut up. This researcher entered the office. And it was awkward. 

And this happened a thousand years ago, but you remember it right now 'cause she appeared out of nowhere in your dream. You were inside a van, someone drove you up to an academic event. Apparently, both of you had been invited to give a conference. You didn't know what the hell would you speak about, but you didn't care.

She had a guitar and she said that she admired Izzy Stradlin, and you started to teach her how to play “Seems To Me”, her guitar was not a left-handed guitar, so it was not easy for you.

Then she said that Izzy was the brain of Guns N' Roses, and you felt so impressed. You agreed with her, and you felt so happy. At last, both of you had something in common!

And it is Saturday, and it's Izzy's birthday and it's also the 29th anniversary of the discovery of Kurt Cobain's corpse in the Green House of his mansion in Lake Washington, and you don't know why did she appear in your dream. And you write about it. 

And you are a moron and you wait for her to read what you just wrote in this blog.

 

I Preferred Her To Any Other Marijuana

I'm working in this nightmare lab, again, and I dunno why still I'm frightened and attached to it. I hear voices from my ex advisor's office. It seems he's interviewing someone and having a good time. He laughs, and I think “what's goin' on? 90% of the time, from Monday to Friday, I'm the only one in the lab, he always seems unsatisfied with my work, I have published four papers as first author, I never skip none of the seminars in the lab... and he doesn't even says Hi when I say Hi”

Suddenly I don't give a f$ck and I leave the lab. I'm determined to never come back.

Then I sense someone walks behind me. Kinda see her face and her body. 

It all happens as in a movie. 

She's NN, a woman whom I felt attracted to when we were in elementary school, a thousand years ago. Obviously, she's now a woman, not a girl. 

She's all dressed in black and she kinda wants to make eye contact with me, so, at some point, it is impossible to get rid off her eyes, and I look at her, directly to the eyes. She smiles. Her lips are enormous. I cannot stop thinking about a paragraph of The naked ape, one in which Lorenz states a relationship between the size of the lips and the size of the vagina. And it is somehow scary.

Suddenly we're having some sort of picnic, between Las Islas and El Paseo de las Facultades. It is a sunny afternoon. She's having tamales. They look warm and nauseating. She says something about tamales and the way they seem a warm vagina. As she says 'vagina', she emphasizes 'vagina' and gives me a strange look. Again, she smiles.

I tell her I don't like tamales, that I eat them once in a year, and I'm about to tell her that my family has a weird tradition, that they have bought tamales in each each funeral I can think of, when she kisses me.

Her saliva is magnetic, strong and hypnotic. I feel like a bee attracted to a beeswax. 

Then I kiss her and I do it remembering the boy I was in elementary school, the one who believed she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Somehow I am on top of her and I can see her face in a very detailed way. Her eyebrows are weird. It seems she just came out from the beauty salon. And, again, I look at her lips and think about what Konrad Lorenz said about lips and vaginas in his book.

NN smiles again and I feel weak and strong and happy and sad, all at the same time, and I want to get laid with her, and I tell her, and she says “Great! Let's do it!”

Then I wake up. 

I'm So Excited, I Can't Wait To Meet You There

As the quietly room is occupied by cats and sunlight and street sounds and wildlife, I start to forget you. Before the soft and blue substance of these thoughts vanished, I will make my best to maintain you on this secret spot I have been building for the last decade. 

I just can't ignore this calm that invades me. I just can't ignore this atmosphere. It smells like freshly washed sheets and it evokes several cozy ideas on me. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager. It makes me close my eyelids and to travel miles away from my real life.

I almost see myself from my inside.

We are in 1999. 

I'm walking to the swimming pool. 
My parents decided to bring us to these cabins in Cuernavaca.
It's the first time we spend a weekend in this place. 
I can't tell how they find it out, but it's a nice place. 

There are soccer fields and basketball and tennis courts. 
There are twenty or thirty cabins, next to a forest.
There is also a restaurant.  

A few hours ago, we played a soccer game with some tourists. 
We were giving them up a ridiculous beating. 
They were so stupid to play soccer. Most of them were fat and clumsy. 
A moron didn't tolerate the humiliation. He hit the soccer ball so hard that it made my dad bled. I hated him. I'm thinking on revenge.   

I've been also playing tennis with one of my brothers. 
I didn't remember how much I enjoy to play tennis. I even used to watch tennis matches on TV when I was a kid, instead of watching cartoons. I guess female tennis players attracted me. I loved the way the air made their skirts flew thru the court as they ran to hit the ball with the racket. I also loved the shapes of their firm legs. It also surprised me that women seemed fragile and quiet, but they could be so strong and they could scream violently. 

I'm thinking that I barely have the opportunity to play tennis. I think it sucks. 

I'm kind of pissed off. I would have preferred to stay home. 
I have realized that I just find it awkward to be surrounded by my family. 
It's not like our last holidays. We even brought our small nephew with us. He's four years old and seems to be the only really happy one. 

I love my family, but I just don't feel OK. 
I'm just a teenager, pretending to act like an adult. 

The university is on a strike since April. It is a disaster. The last time I went to see how it was goin' –some of my classmates and a few hundred other students, are “taking care” of the facilities–, the School of Psychology was a hotel and the Central Library was a dinning room. The entire Ciudad Universitaria was a dump surrounded by cyclonic mesh. 

It was so creepy. 

Nobody knows it, but it's a pretty stressful situation for me. I'm lost. I'm worried. I'm depressed. The only thing I do, is to be a student. I'm such a coward. 

Why haven't I just looked for a job, to keep my mind busy...? 

I've been obsessively thinking on the uncertainty of my academic future. 
I've been supposedly reinforcing my History of Psychology lessons, but, to be honest, I just cannot tell you about a single topic. I have had difficulties to learn. 

I also have been reading Dante Alighieri's most famous book and I just have had difficulties to enjoy it. I've been daydreaming with my own Beatrice and I've been suffering my own private hell. 

What would happen if I dared to give a 180° turn to my life...?

I could work on Mix up, I could work as a waiter on a coffee shop, if I really wanted to. 
I'm so apathetic. I'm so pathetic. I just can't quit my comfort zone. 

Besides daydreaming with the sudden appearance of my own Beatrice, I read 19th century writers, I write 19th century like-poems and weep and complain.  

The sun rays irradiate my childish body as I walk to the swimming pool.  

“I'm so excited, 

I can't wait to meet you there...”

sings Kurt Cobain inside my head, as my heart beats so hard. 

Though it is the calm part of the song, I'm sure that my heart sounds louder than Dave Grohl's drums and that Kurt Cobain's Jaguar on the noisy part of the song. 

My most precious treasures are an old Aiwa walkman, my headphones and my small collection of cassettes. This time, obviously, I'm listening Lithium. 

Music is so important to me. Nirvana has accompanied me since I started senior high school. It has been sort of a cursed. I am stuck in the past. I know I should listen to different genres and to listen different bands (alive ones?), but even though I have tried, it just hasn't work. 

I've been trying to listening No Code, too. I can't tell exactly why there is something about Eddie Vedder I dislike. This album seems so 1995. 
  
I have a crush. I'm almost sure that I will find you in the swimming pool, like I did the first time I saw you. I'm really excited. 

Suddenly, my legs start to shake.  

Though I don't even remember your face, I feel so enthusiastic about seeing you again.

A few days later, I watched a soccer game on TV. 
Our national team won its most relevant tournament so far. 
The Mexican players beat up Brazil in an exciting game. A young player named Ronaldinho was on the field. TV commentators said he was the next star of Brazilian soccer. He's nineteen years old, or so. 

At the time of the game, it was raining. It had been a hot day. 
At a moment, before the soccer game, I was so bored that I went to swim.

And then I saw you.  

You had a black swimwear. Your natural way of behaving left me breathless. 
You looked so gorgeous. Your brown long hair floated on the water like a living miracle defying the laws of gravity. I would like to write an elaborated thought about each component of your beauty, but I would be a liar. I have to admit it. I couldn't ignore your breasts. They made me feel weak and strong at the same time. 

Immediately, I dove into the water to hide my excitement.
I sort of swim to get close to you. You were swimming, too. 

At a moment, as we stopped swimming, we made eye contact. 
It could be for a second, but it felt like eternity. 

I believed you smiled and waited for me to speak to you.
I sensed it, in the very same way I sensed it in those girls in junior high school I kissed. 

Despite all our efforts to make it clear that we own a neocortex, we're still mammals. 
Our brain has evolved, but we still need water and food, to survive. Our brain has evolved, but we still need sex to perpetuate our specie. Our brain has evolved, but we still have to cut it off when we're starved, no matter if we have to interrupt our most sophisticated cognitive abilities. Hormones, olfaction and sight remind us that we are still animals. It's hard to be exempt from our nature.  

Of course, I didn't speak to you. 
 
                              

Though I barely saw you then, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I have felt like a confused young, like I think of Marcel Proust when he wrote how he idealized mysterious women on his vacations on Balbec. 

(In fact, as I am pounding the keyboard and trying to capture you on this secret spot, I see myself as the main character of In the shadow of young girls in flower.)

Since that hot day, your presence has been haunting me. 

I closed my eyelids this morning, while I was in the shower. 
I had impure thoughts about you. I also thought about your eyes and your beautiful hair floating in the swimming pool. Yesterday, as I fell asleep, I started to have hypnagogic hallucinations on which you allowed me to watch your naked breasts behind that black swimwear. It was so exciting. The images left me breathless. For a second, as I woke up, I had no reasons to consider that dreams aren't better than life. 

I finally arrive to the swimming pool. 
I sit in a chair, a few steps from the water.
I sense on my face the reflection of the summer sun diving into the water.  
My lungs are penetrated by the singular smell of chlorine. 
I'm so happy. 

I turn on the volume of the walkman. I focus on Kurt Cobain's voice. I focus on Dave Grohl's cymbals and snare drum. I focus on Krist Novoselic's bass. 

I take a deep breath. 
I look for you. 

There you are. 

Lithium

Territorial Pissings

Still remember when my life was such a simple thing. I had a lot of time. I miss the way I could simply waste my time. I miss how silly I was, pretending I knew things I didn't know. 

I miss the way I could write stupid thoughts on stupid notebooks for entire nights and then go to bed at 3 or 4 am after a smoke and then immediately fall asleep and then wake up at 8 or 9 am feeling strong and lucid. I miss all of that. Sometimes I would like to smoke again. 

Nowadays, no matter if I don't drink nor smoke and no matter if I go to bed at 10 or 11 pm, I'm tired and sleepy all day long. It's so difficult to fall asleep and to not wake up at 3 or 4 am. 

On this week, some ugly things have happened. 

At this moment, my wife sleeps. She had a big impression on Wednesday and her arterial pressure is high since then. It really worries me. Her family has a history of hypertension, cancer and diabetes. Some of her aunts died due to these conditions.
Her grandparents had a million kids. I guess it explains, in part, why these diseases spread like air. 

She has told me that her grandfather used to gave her sugar piles when she was a baby. I've seen her having pressure issues. I've seen her having troubles with her sugar intake. She's addicted to candys and bread. I've told her that her grandfather is responsible for her curse. I feel pity of him. 

I didn't know him so much, but he apparently had a sad and terrible life. In fact, I'm not sure if he ever experienced happiness at all. His entire life he was a survivor. His only activities seem to be to breed, to have miserable jobs and to watch TV. 

I remember when her wife died, almost ten years ago. He started to behave like a zombie. He seemed to be unable to behave like a grown up. He said sad things all the time. No one was able to ignore him and he seemed too weak to care about it. 

It seemed that he didn't even own his own life. 

(Is there something more pathetic than that? I'm scared to be more pathetic than I know I am.)

I don't want to be such a desperate man, suffering in front of strangers and making them feel uncomfortable. I'd rather die than behave like a fragile man. I'd rather die than have such an awful life. I'm so scared to be weaker than I know I am.  

A few months after her wife died, he had a stroke. It was so horrible and sad. He started to fight against everyone. He was mad and ill and no one knew it. He died soon after. 

Before these ugly events, I had felt melancholic. Sometimes, on my way to work, I had thought on the irrelevance of my life. Sometimes I just feel so pointless and tired of my existence. No matter how much I try, my efforts seem to be powerless. The world seems to promote stupidity. It seems to be the way evolution will end with human beings. 

Who cares about research and brain function, or who cares about teaching about these issues to pupils –the things I do–, when you can sell silly products to silly people and get tons of money for them?

On this week, I've been sort of ill. I've had more negative thoughts than usual. 
There is an arrogant posdoc who represents the ugliest characteristics you could ever think about a researcher. He's a jerk off and a hypocrite and a conflictuated-frustrated man. He seems to be used to give orders and to believe he's so smart and proactive. He hasn't worked with us not even for three months, but he's asking for holidays. (Can yo believe it?)
He's abussive and lazy and he seems to be guided by one single ambition: to be recognized like a smart guy. He really pisses me off. I knew he was this way since the first time I met him. I have to deal with him almost two or three days per week. It's so annoying. He behaves like if he knew everything and he's so desperate to make it clear and also to look like the one who never makes mistakes. He always looks for the small opportunities to point out when someone else makes a mistake. He's a low quality person. Obviously, the way he performs experiments sucks. 

Also, I've had some silly fights with toxic strangers on Facebook. The situation makes me ill, too. It drives me wild. I just can't get rid of situations as easy as I would like to. All day long I'm thinking obsessively on stupid fights. It really pisses me off. I can't control myself. It's a curse. It is associated to my writing habits. I am used to think about my life, retrospectively. 

Last Friday, a friend of mine shared some news about decriminilization of recreative marijuana use. Since I obtained my PhD performing research on the physiology of the cannabinergic system on murine models –and so I am familiar to specialized information about marijuanas' biological effects and its potential to trigger neuropsychiatric disorders, for example–, it seemed too natural to me to made a comment about the risk of this decriminalization upon human health... specially on my country. We're a bunch of morons. We kill people for money. We take the eyes out of the face of a stranger just to take a place in the parking lot. We fight against people who think differently. We criminalize people by the color of their skin. We admire people by the quantity of banknotes on their wallets or the size of their automobile. 

A moron –I still haven't decided how to call him– appeared out of nowhere and he started to call me “ignorant”. I didn't want to have an argue, I didn't even think of him when I made that comment. I even didn't insinuate someone was an idiot. 

But he seemed to be so bored and frustrated and avid to look like the smartest guy on the entire solar system. Obviously, I reacted. Why should I allow him to call me an ignorant just for free? Is it normal to be violent as a primate who detects its life on danger, while employing a smart device that requires our thumbs to be controlled by our neocortex and our striatum and our spinal cord? 

The situation really pissed me off. This guy ended up insulting me in a pretty primitive way. I also insulted him, though I am not sure if he understood my offensive comments. He was just an ignorant brainwashed character, but I spent a lot of energy on the issue. 

Later, I had a meeting with my colleagues and I felt very stupid. As we spoke about some research projects and their viability to be approved by the Council of Department of Biological Health Sciences, I assumed that none of them spent time with stupid people as I just had done in the morning. 

(The guy on Facebook was so smart that he didn't see my message: health, not just money, it's important. He probably also thinks that I even haven't smoked pot.) 

A few weeks earlier, I had a fight with one of my relatives also on Facebook. It really pissed me off. I didn't want to fight, neither. He wrote a note about technology and he called it science. I read it and I just made a comment. I just said that “science” and “technology” are not synonyms. I've been working for almost fifteen years on academy. I'm a scientist. I have written scientific papers. I have spoken about scientific topics for pupils on diverse schools and on the radio, on congresses... so I guess I know why aren't they synonyms. He's a journalist and he's my relative, but he behaved like if we were a couple of strangers and the worst enemies in the history of humanity. The situation really pissed me off. It really deceived me, too. 

People love to look like an authority on all issues... even on the issues they don't know or they haven't imagined. People are so pathetic and they assume they're the smartest guys on Earth and that everyone else just learned how to write and how to read by miracle. 

A writer once said in a conference that we employ social networks like our ancestors employed knifes: not to cut meat, but to kill our enemies. Isn't it?

Sure I know I'm not a good guy, but I also know that I am not looking for fights for free. 
I'm not attracted to fight to strangers that probably just desire to leave a territorial pissing on Facebook. I guess I'll leave it. It seems that a stupid person will always come from nowhere to look for a fight. The most elemental ability of our specie seems to be to humiliate strangers on social networks. 

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. 

Runny Nose And Runny Yolk

We're about to leave the city. 

As I'm blogging, my wife is waiting for the moving truck.

The apartment is a disaster. 

There are boxes everywhere.

The cats are so freak out. 

I'm web surfing on a Samsung tablet, sit on an old easychair. 

It's one of the few furnishings available. Everything else is wrapped on plastic.

The first thing I did today was to caugh. 

I feel dizzy and ill. 

In the whole year I never got sick, but I had to get sick precisely now. 

I would like to rest the entire day, but I'll have to be awake. 

Our new house is about an hour and a half from here. 

Things have to be done.
I prefer to be sick right now than to be healthy and unemployed the entire next year.

This is the price I have to pay. 

The last six months I was looking for a better job.

I was about to quit and to give a different direction to my career. 

A month ago, out of nowhere, my boss told me about a potential opportunity. 

We're moving to Lerma. I got a new job. 

It's going to be the best job I ever had. 

It's better to have a sick day than to have a dark future.

In The Someday, What's That Sound? 

Distill The Life That's Inside Of Me

Twenty five years ago, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York was recorded. 
It was meant to be release as a double album, including this acoustic set and an electric live set. 

(Due to Cobain's death, the album was released almost one year later as a single album. From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah, released in 1996, was supposed to be the other half of this double album.) 

It was 1994' Christmas Eve, when I listened this album for the first time.
It had a month or so in stores. 

My dad gave us money as a Christmas gift. 
He drove us to a store where my brother and I used to buy music. 
My brother bought Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved. It was a tribute album on which several artists such as Lenny Kravitz, Lemonheads, Anthrax, Gin Blossoms and Dinosaur Jr. covered Kiss' songs. 

I bought Unplugged In New York on cassette. 

There were a couple of posters of the album cover in the store.
Though it was the first time I saw this propaganda, it called my attention. 
The band looked so mysterious and focused on the concert. 
They didn't seem the classic punk rockers I thought they were supposed to look like. 
Grohl was in the back of the drum set. Novoselic at the left. Smear at the right. Cobain in the middle, wearing a fuzzy cardigan, jeans and Converse sneakers, looked so attractive. 

Immediately, I wanted the album so bad and I was afraid that copies were unavailable. 
Still remember the chills it provoked me to watch it in stock. 

For the last six months, I just had listened Nevermind from a cassette a friend of mine had recorded for me. I wanted to have my first Nirvana album. 

It was a sad Christmas Eve. It was cold and dry. 
My parents wanted that my grandparents went to our house to have dinner with us, but at the last hour they called by the phone and said that they wouldn't be with us. 
My grandparents didn't like each other a lot. 

My mom served the dinner on the table.
My dad had a long face. 
His sadness was so contagious. 
He stood up and hang up the telephone. 

As dinner was cooling on the table and my dad was trying to convince her mother to accompany us, my mom was in the kitchen.
She murmured something. Maybe she couldn't believe that my dad was more concerned about his mother than about his sons. 

I took advantage of the moment and I put some whiskey on a glass. 
It was just a taste, not even a quarter of the glass. 

I stood up and walked away. 
I climbed the stairs, hiding the glass of whiskey underneath my cozy jacket. 

When I arrived to my room, I closed the door and I put the cassette on my old player -it was a late 80's Panasonic with a turntable included- and sat on the floor.  

I was naive to live albums, so it was a big surprise to listen to the crowd clapping at the beginning of the album. 
I was also naive to Unplugged albums, so it was a big surprise to listen Kurt Cobain speaking to the audience at the beginning of the first song.

About A Girl blew my mind. 

Thought how was it possible that a noisy band as Nirvana had so nice and quiet songs. 
I wanted to have a guitar and to learn how to play that song. 

I took a sip of whiskey. 
It was so hot that I almost cough. 
It hurt my throat so bad. 

Wondered how was it possible that people drove wild with that kind of alcohol. 
It seemed to be a beverage for outlaws. 
I was 14 years old and all I had drank was a beer or two, in a party of my old high school classmates. 

Come As You Are sounded so quiet and different from the Nevermind version. 
The drums sounded so quiet, too. 
Cobain's voice sounded a lot more emotive, too. 

At the end of the song, Cobain spoke again. He introduced the next song. It was a cover of a band called The Vaselines and it was a rendition of an old Christian song. 
It was included an accordion. 

Then Cobain spoke again. He guaranteed that he will screw the next song. 
It will be a cover of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World. 
At times, the feedback was so notorious that it didn't seem an acoustic concert. 

Cobain said that he will performed the next song by himself. 

Pennyroyal Tea gave the chills. 
I took another sip of whiskey and felt that alcohol was having an effect on me.
Obviously, it was just my impression. 
(Did I mention that I just served less than a quarter of whiskey in the glass?) 

I desired to be in that concert, listening to Kurt Cobain almost breaking through this song. 
Also I wanted to have a guitar and to learn how to play this song. 

On my cassette version of Unplugged In New York, is available an unedited version of Pennyroyal Tea. Cobain got wrong in the last part of the song. It was so evident and also so emotive. It reflected for a brief period a nervous guy singing to a bunch of strangers and whose nerves made him to forget the song. 

The side A of the cassette ended up after Dumb and Polly. 
Dumb sounded so sad. It seemed to me that it was about a drug addict feeling hopeless. 
The sound of cello was new for me. Never had thought that it could fit so nice in a supposed punk band. 
Polly was not my favorite. Thought it sounded better on the original version, maybe 'cause it was originally an acoustic song. 

Side B started with clapping and soft drumming. 
The acoustic version of On A Plain left me speechless. 
The original version of Nevermind was so noisy that I couldn't even pay attention to the lyrics and to the bass lines. 

I couldn't stop imagine myself in that concert. 
  

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

Touch Me, I'm Sick

I started to listen Mudhoney in 1995.

It had just came out a bootleg from Nirvana's Reading Festival show.

It included an almost complete soundboard source recorded on August 30, 1992.

Back then Nirvana was the most popular band of what journalists around the world had called the Seattle sound. 

The show started with Kurt Cobain mumbling Some say love is a river... 

It was a cryptic phrase. 
I felt attracted to find out where those strange lyrics came from. 

For months, I didn't know it was the first verse of The Rose. 

I was fifteen years old. 

A friend of mine got The Money Will Roll Right In from the same show, except that it was from an audience source.

Although it was originally performed by The Fang, this song would introduce me to Mudhoney. 

Since my friend and I were interested on having a band, that song drove us wild. 

It sounded like a song really fun to play. 

Back then, it was really difficult to get albums from Seattle's underground scene.

In Mexico City, we barely got albums  from Nirvana or Pearl Jam.
It was almost impossible to get albums from Soundgarden and Alice In Chains.

Imagine how difficult it was to meet someone who had already heard Mudhoney.

On December 5, 2014 they played at El Circo Volador. 

A year ago, they had just released Vanishing Point, their sixth studio album. 

The venue was so small.

It looked like an average small bar from the 90's, like those that appear in the movies or music videos of the time. 

A couple of garage Mexican bands played before Mudhoney. 

The crowd was so enthusiastic.

The band came out and started to play Sonic Infusion. 

As the hypnotic patterns of the guitar went by, the audience started to crowd surfing.

Guy Madisson told us that Mark Arm was ill.

He had sore throat and he often coughed, but it was one of the best shows of my life. 

From the beginning, the audience went crazy.

I particularly remember when they played In N' Out Of Grace. 

Can't take out of my mind Dan Peters' prolonged drum solo, while Mark Arm and Steve Turner seemed so impressed by the surfing crowd. 

The band played almost all the songs I wanted to hear, except Mudride and Suck You Dry. 

That show ended up with The Money Will Roll Right In. 

On these days, it was the 30th anniversary of Touch Me, I'm Sick