Archives for April 6th, 2004

Imagine standing on the fourth floor of a hotel in Ljubljana. Imagine wanting to take a peek outside, opening the hotel window and leaning your body out over a metal safety bar.

Now imagine that the bar suddenly breaks, sending you careening 10 meters (33 feet) down towards the ground. What do you do? Well, you probably die, that’s what you do. Maybe you scream first. And flail, too.

But if you’re name is Steven Jehu, and you’re a member of the British junior gymnastics team, you don’t do any of those things. Instead, you execute a full somersault and make a regular Olympic landing. And you survive.

I kid you not:

Gymnast’s skills save him in 10-metre fall (Reuters)

Kurt Cobain in the Hala Tivoli in Ljubljana, Nirvana’s penultimate show.

Yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death. On April 5, 1994, he killed himself via heroin overdose and shotgun blast to the mouth.

It was a terrible day to be a Nirvana fan, which I was. My brother had turned me on to them in high school and I had been feasting on their music for many happy years since then. I enjoyed absolutely everything they did. Amazingly, in all my scroungings for rare outtakes and special live versions, I never met a Nirvana song I didn’t like. Their music consistently tickled my cherries like no other rock band before or since.

I saw Nirvana peform live on the 29th of November, 1993, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Don’t worry, I didn’t memorize the date; I just looked it up.) I was in the mosh pit of The Omni, enjoying myself immensely, when midway though About a Girl, Cobain stopped playing and shouted: “Hey you fucking asshole!” to someone in the audience. Apparently, a guy had groped a crowd-surfing girl. Cobain asked everyone to point him out, which people did. He then asked for the spotlights to be redirected onto the groper. It was a successful exercise in public shaming, but for the rest of the concert Cobain was visibly angry and played without enthusiasm.

I don’t know what happened to the groper after that. Maybe he straightened up and became a portfolio manager.

Nirvana’s In Utero tour continued. With about a month left to live, Cobain arrived in Ljubljana. The band played in the Hala Tivoli in what would be their second-to-last show — the final one being in Munich a few days later. Shortly thereafter, Kurt Cobain was dead and Nirvana was gone.

In their memory, here’s a brief 30-second clip of their concert in Ljubljana. It’s a bit short but still interesting. (Special thanks to Smon for the technical support.)

Download: Nirvana-Drain You (Ljubljana 27-02-1994) (2.61 MB / 30 seconds)