Like the Zep covers, it’s the sound of a guy who penned his own script, playing it for all he’s worth. The DVD ends with a 1993 cover of ’70s pop hit “Seasons in the Sun”–you know, “Good-bye my friend it’s hard to die / When all the birds are singing in the sky”– with Kurt singing and playing drums, intercut with heartbreakingly goofy home-movie footage. Things get scary by Disc Three, beginning with two versions of “Rape Me”–a brittle acoustic take and a shredding band demo in which you hear a baby (Frances Bean?) wailing in the background.
#With the lights out plus
You hear the latter in the early demos here: the Ween-like “Beans,” the strummy indie-pop tune “Clean Up Before She Comes,” and the dubby postpunk of “Don’t Want It All.” There’s also a 1989 trio of Leadbelly covers–the howling acoustic “They Hung Him on a Cross,” a bluesjamming “Grey Goose,” and a rockabilly-ish “Ain’t It a Shame”– that show the band experimenting in ways they never did on their album releases.ĭisc Two has acoustic demos both familiar (“Lithium”) and unknown (the brilliant “Opinion”), plus bootleg fodder like “Verse Chorus Verse” that shows the band hitting its creative peak. And turn the lights back on Lights out on our love today Let me plug it in, But I wont play Lights out Im getting colder Lights out I cant take it no more Lights out On our love today Let me plug it in But I wont play Lights out Im getting colder Lights out I cant take it no more Lights out On our love today Let me plug it in But I wont. The camera pans, mid-song, to the face of a beer-swilling dude on the sidelines his slack-jawed amazement is priceless.Īt bottom, Nirvana was always a mix of Zeppelin-esque heavitude and arty punk rock. But you quickly realize that musically, Cobain’s not kidding.
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It’s amusing to see the self-deprecating punk aping the self-aggrandizing rock gods. It’s not the only Zep cover: There’s also a partial “Moby Dick” and, on the DVD, a startling version of “Immigrant Song,” from a rehearsal-cum-hang videotaped at bassist Krist Novoselic’s mom’s house.
#With the lights out how to
It begins with a 1987 live cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker.” Someone yells the title, and Kurt yells back, “I don’t know how to play it”–before ripping through the song almost perfectly, speed-wank breakdown included. Disc One recalls how funny Nirvana could be, at least in the early days. So prepare to be depressed, when you’re not being blown away.
![with the lights out with the lights out](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xm0WgBu1_8A/hqdefault.jpg)
But this kind of posthumous vault-cleaning is always depressing, especially when it illuminates roads not taken, which this set does. Sure, the material on the three-CD/one-DVD With the Lights Out–outtakes, B-sides, demos, live cuts, radio performances, and video footage–is mostly great. Listening to this, I can’t help but think of the wisecracking carnival barker in that famous 1960s antiwar song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-to-Die Rag”: “You can be the first one on your block / To have your boy come home in a box!” Kurt Cobain has indeed come home in a box, rectangular rather than heart-shaped, after years of legal wrangling between his bandmates and his widow.