Why I Hate The Blues

I admit it. I am not a fan of The Blues. I mean seriously, does B.B. King really look like he has, “The Blues” right here?

Rich People Blues

 I just find it hard to believe that someone adorned in gold rings, a crushed velvet suit and a $10,000.00 guitar with gold plated pickups has “The Blues.” What could you possibly have the The Blues about that others can relate to?

· The Penthouse Suite was Already Booked Blues

· The I Couldn’t Get a Dinner Reservation So I’m on the Waiting List Blues

· The My Other Limo is in the Shop Blues

· The I’m Sorry But All I have is Hundreds, Can You Break it Blues

And I don’t care if Blues is the basis for Rock music. I hate it when people say, “Well everyone should like The Blues because it forms the foundation for rock music.”

 I like beer but by that logic I’m not gonna run around ingesting raw barley and hops just because it’s the basis for all beer.

 I don’t wanna hear about heartache and loss coming from people who fly first class and buy private planes and shopping centers for fun.

Poor People Blues

 I don’t wanna hear blues from rich people, and frankly, I don’t wanna hear it from poor people either. If you thought you were gonna make a fortune in music and solve all your problems, then you should’ve stayed in school.  Making money in music is a longshot on the level of winning the lottery. You wanna solve your problems? Sell your guitar, buy a suit and get a job.

White Guy Suburb Blues

 Some people may say there’s lots of talented local blues musicians, but frankly, your buddy from work who drives a Prius, rents a house and has DirectTV and who's band plays the local Yorgurtini on Saturday’s is not my idea of, “The Blues"

The British Invasion

 Just for the record, a bunch of frilly pretty boy middle class Englishmen who thought they were blues just because they owned a Muddy Waters album, is not blues either.

PS: The Moody Blues (pictured above) is not Blues either. 

                                       The Blues Brothers

 Rich white comedians are not blues. Although the fact that John Belushi was fat, and on heroin and died of an overdose IS kind of Bluesy

In Conclusion

The Blues is a dead art form. It is inherently bland and so minimalistic that it is incapable of evolving. The same chord progression and the same scale done hundreds of thousands of times for decades, ad nauseam.

 Rock music remains the superior genre because it is able to grow and evolve in radically ever changing ways that their dinosaur blues men counterparts could never dream of.

A life forever bound to the same chord progressions and scales?

Now there’s a thought to truly give one, “The Blues.”

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Too Old to Be in a Band

2 acoustic guitarists in QC looking for a bassist, singer and drummer to jam with. We do 90's alternative covers and play once or twice a week. We eventually want to gig but are in no hurry to do so right now. Looking for people we can get along with and hang out, have fun and jam in our spare time while we fine tune our sound. Must be able to travel to Queen Creek. Female singers encouraged. 

 This is what I posted on Craigslist recently. 

 I'm looking for some people for me and my other guitar playing buddy to jam with and maybe actually get a band together and gig. Since I don't know anyone else in town, I figured it was worth a shot. Like the ad says we would like to get a band going but we're not in a big hurry, so we really just want to find some like-minded people out there too who are also into the music we play and who just want to play a couple times a week, just for fun. Then we'll see what happens. Sounds reasonable right?

  What I didn't know was that almost every response I would get back was asking for demos and mp3's and Youtube links and where we had gigs lined up.

 WTF? Either nobody bothered to read the ad or my idea of how bands come together is simply and outdated model.

  We were just looking for people to jam with.  You would think we were looking for people to sign to a contract and start immediate paying gigs or something. 

  If this is the way things are nowadays then I'm definitely too old to be in a band. 

 In my day, you met people first, then started a band then made records and videos. 

 Apparently these days you start a band, then make records, then make videos, then finally meet the actual band members. 

EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!

 

 When I say I'm a guitarist, I mean that literally and entirely. I'm only a guitar player. I'm not a guitarist/computer wizard/recording engineer. I know how to play guitar and thats it. I know nothing about Pro Tools or recording software. I only know how to play guitar. 


Apparently, guitarists who only play guitar are just not in demand anymore. 

 How Jimi Hendrix would look like today...maybe

 I'm too old to be in a band. I need a psychiatrist, a therapist and medication to just not be able to fuck up a cup of coffee. I would a need an entire team of Swiss psychiatrists working round the clock to be able to begin to learn Pro Tools.

 Rock Bands are for the young. An unemployed, teenage dropout has all day to learn pro tools.

 I'm too old to be in a band. I'm married and have kids and work 40 hours a week and I can't practice more than twice a week. 

 Rock Bands are for the young. In your teens and twenties you can rehearse all night every night. 

This is the kind of band that people my age start.

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The 27 Club

What is the 27 Club you ask?

The 27 is:

a) A swingers sex club in Phoenix, AZ

b) the 27 women who have let me see them naked. 

c) musicians who have died at age 27

If you answered A, you are obviously on the wrong blog. If you answered B, you're way, way under. And if you answered C you're correct. 

Original Bluesman Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain are just a few of the members of this prestigious club.  But there are a few rules for membership:

27 Club Rules

1. You have to be a famous musician. 

2. You have to be dead at age 27

3. Your death must be from something drug or alcohol related.

* the third rule isn't really a rule, just more of a guideline. 

The Truth About the 27 Club

 The truth is, there is no 27 Club and its all bullshit. There is nothing unusual or mysterious going on, and there is no curse that causes musicians to die at age 27. Furthermore, this phenomenon has been studied by scientists and researchers and it has been proven that musicians are just as likely to die at any age, not just 27. 

 An Australian study conducted at the Queensland University of Technology performed a mathematical analysis of over 1,000 musicians and found 86% died at ages other than 27 while only 7% did. (source: Time.com)

  Likewise, the British Medical Journal published a study in 2011 that also concluded there was no increased risk of musicians dying at age 27. 

 For all the poor, unlucky bastards who died at 27, there are just as many , if not more musicians who died at other ages. John Lennon (40), Elvis (42), Jerry Garcia (53), Sid Vicious (21), John Bonham (32), Bon Scott (33), Keith Moon (32) Layne Staley (34) are just a few I can name off the top of my head. 

 And don't forget the ones who have used drugs/alcohol heavily and survived like Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards, Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, and Lou Reed to name a few. 

Getting Old: What Rock Stars Dread

 PsychologyToday.com has written that getting older is a major threat to our creative enterprises.  

 After age 30, we become more emotionally stable, more conscientious, more agreeable and less open to new experiences. 

 The fact is, becoming older more boring, conforming and adjusted can be a major threat to a rocker who's livelyhood depends on being youthful, rebellious, wild and dangerous. The public wont buy into it. 

 Want proof? Look at Paul McCartney. He wrote/cowrote 27 number 1 songs with The Beatles all by age 30. Since then? His last number one hit was Say Say Say in 1983 over 30 years ago. 

 The Rolling Stones, who began their careers with several number 1 hits, last topped the charts with Honky Tonk Women in 1969  

What Does This Prove?

 Rock n Roll is for the young, and for those rock stars nearing age 30, getting older can be a scary concept. To think that they are only 3 years away from waking up one morning 30 years old, irrelevant, obsolete and your palm blinking red hoping to God that perhaps you will be renewed. 

...Ahh the firey ritual of Carrousel. 

 So yes some rock stars die at 27 but no more than at any other age. 

 If Hendrix or Morrison died in their thirties we would all be talking about the. "Thirty Something Club" today. 

 Which of course would all be bullshit too. 

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The 10,000 Hour Rule

The 10,000 hour rule is a definite key to success – from Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

 

The 10,000 hour rule was proposed by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success.” He proposes that, in order to become an expert in a field of study, it takes 10,000 hours of focus and practice on the subject at hand.

 Among the examples he includes in his book are The Beatles, who performed over 1200 times in Hamburg, Germany from 1960-1964. The time The Beatles spent in Germany turned them into professional musicians. They looked and sounded like no one else. Their hectic schedule prepared them for the insanity that was Beatlemania. Without that time in Hamburg, The Beatles may not have ever left The Cavern Club in Liverpool and rock music would look and sound very different today.

For guitar playing, the 10,000 hour rule basically equates to 20 hours a a week for 10 years. That’s what I want to discuss today.

The good thing about the 10,000 hour rule is that it’s true: If you spend 10,000 doing something you WILL become an expert at it.

The bad thing about the 10,000 hour rule is that it’s also true: If you spend 10,000 hours doing something you WILL become an expert at it.What does this mean? It’s all about how you spend your 10,000 hours.

If you spend your 10,000 hours in unfocused practice, screwing around, you will be an expert at screwing around and playing unfocused music.

 If you go into your 10,000 hours with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish on guitar and have a good game plan then your music will reflect this. It will be polished and professional.

HOW I SPENT MY 10,000 HOURS

  I’ve been playing guitar for 30 years. I always wanted to be able to play the songs I heard on the radio, and eventually be in a band. For most of my pre-teens and teenage years I had my dad’s old 1970’s Alvarez acoustic guitar. It was great for rhythm playing but I couldn’t solo on it, so I learned to become a rhythm player.

  When I got an electric guitar, it was a cheap Fender Squire that would never stay in tune so I just played chords.  I wanted to be in a band, and I wanted to develop my soloing, but I was not focused enough to practice my scales. I found it boring and tedious and it much more interesting to me to learn chords and songs. I always found it much easier to get girls by playing an entire song than just showing off how fast I can blaze through the Pentatonic Minor scale. I was never willing to work and save to get good equipment so I could be in a band. Since I couldn’t solo very well, I was extremely embarrassed about being in a band so I avoided doing what I should’ve been doing which was working whatever jobs I could, saving money and playing with other musicians wherever and whenever possible.

 And 30 years later, I do consider myself an expert at what I practiced. Acoustic guitar. I’m an excellent chord/rhythm player and I have an excellent ability to play whatever it is I hear.

 It’s only in the last few years that I’ve made an effort to learn solo playing. I practice my scales just like anyone first starting guitar. I also find it fun to play my own solos over my favorite songs. This really helps me to understand how solos are constructed in a fun way that isn’t tedious or boring. So I’m putting a new 10,000 hours as I learn to become a better solo player.

There are no rules here. If you spent 10,000 hours unwisely, you can always start another one. It’s never too late.

USING YOUR 10,000 HOURS WISELY

In my opinion, I think it’s hard to put in a quality 10,000 hours on guitar for the following reason. The levels of progression get increasingly more difficult to reach.

For example: You can take someone who has never picked up a guitar before and in a matter of one practice session, teach them 3 basic first position chords (let’s say E, A &D) and they’ve instantly picked up enough chords that many artists have based entire careers on. Give it another practice session and introduce the moveable power chord shape and they’ve gone from nothing to intermediate in just two practice sessions.

 But just like in a video game the first levels are easy but as you progress the levels start getting increasingly harder to reach, and I think this frustrates many guitarists and without the proper direction you can become stuck.

 So how can you use you 10,000 hours wisely so you don’t get stuck?

1.       HAVE A CLEAR IDEA OF WHAT YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH ON GUITAR: This can be as simple as knowing:

  I want to be in a band 

 I want to be able to write my own songs

I want to be able to play my favorite songs

2.       SET ASIDE TIME TO PRACTICE: Just like you have designated times for school or work, or dinner you should have a set designated time to practice guitar. And by practice I don’t mean playing guitar while watching tv, talking to your girlfriend and screwing around on the computer all at the same time. Your practice time should be free of distractions and you should only be playing guitar and not doing or hearing anything else.

3.       PLAY WITH OTHER MUSICIANS: Whether you want to be in a band or not, you should always play with other musicians whenever possible. If you don’t have anyone else to play with, them find some either thru school, work, music store, craigslist or your local bar’s open mic night.

4.       GET WITH A TEACHER:  Whether it’s thru a friend or relative, your local music store or even youtube you should always have a teacher. There are a ton of resources available on the internet for free, if you can’t spend the money, or just prefer learning on your own. You should always have that resource to go to when you’re practicing so you can stay on path (see #1).

Always remember the 10,000 rule will make you an expert. How you spend that time will determine whether you want to become a talented, polished expert or an expert at mediocrity and unfocusedness. So use it wisely.

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Abilified

Among the more than five million adults in America who have Bipolar Disorder, these “mood swings” can be extreme or frequent. These changes in mood aren’t as simple as transitioning from “happy” to “sad.” With Bipolar Disorder, symptoms can include both a lowering of mood (depression) and an exaggerated elevation of mood (mania). These changes occur in cycles and are referred to as “episodes.” People with Bipolar Disorder experience extreme mood swings that can take three different forms: manic, depressive, and mixed episodes.-  From www.abilify.com


  My new psychiatrist put me on Abilify about a month ago. It's supposed to help manage bipolar 1 mania, and make me less paranoid and delusional.


Clinical studies have shown the effectiveness of ABILIFY in the treatment of acute manic and mixed episodes in adults or pediatric patients (10 to 17 years) with

Bipolar I Disorder.-  www.abilify.com

I've spent a few years now getting help for whatever is wrong with me. Although bipolar disorder was first brought to my attention a few years ago, I was adamant I didn't have it, because I was unable to admit that I had manic (high mood/elevated) episodes.

On average, people with Bipolar Disorder spend ten years seeking treatment before finally getting diagnosed. One survey found that as many as 70% of people with Bipolar Disorder are initially diagnosed with a different condition. Often, this is because people only tend to seek treatment during a depressive episode and neglect to discuss manic symptoms with their healthcare professional. There are no lab tests or other procedures for diagnosing Bipolar Disorder. Instead, a healthcare professional must take a very thorough history  - www.abilify.com

What I now know as part of this illness, I always used to think was my normal mood. But after a couple years of therapy, of psychiatrists and a stay in a mental hospital, I've been able to get some insight into my episodes and the cycles they follow. 


You can help others, such as family and friends, support you by talking with them about your condition and allowing them to help and support you. It is helpful for family and friends to learn as much as they can about your condition so you can discuss it more openly and they can find ways to support you. The support and encouragement of loved ones can be an important part of your treatment plan.- www.abilify.com


 The Abilify website says that talking with your friends and family is helpful. I want to believe thats true. I guess thats why I do this blog, but I really don't have many friends in AZ, I get the impression most of family and friends either get too creeped out by this subject to talk about it with me, they think its all bullshit, or they think I shouldn't be airing my dirty laundry out for all the world to see so they try to just pretend that it doesn't exist, and that just makes me feel awkward and I just want to avoid people even more than I already do. 

  So this blog is pretty much how I interact with the world and how I share my experiences with bipolar disorder.

Until very recently, I had been on an amazing, manic episode that had started back in the begining of February. I was dieting on almost entirely all egg whites, I had lost 40lbs, I was running 3-4 miles a day and my energy levels were literally superhuman. 

  Abilify's website has this picture on it. I'm assuming that this what Abilify says you're going to feel like when you start taking this medication. 

It also says you will feel like this:

  But in reality I feel like this:

But I hate looking at myself in picture so in my mind I look more like this:

  The elation and euphoria is gone. My energy levels are nonexistent. My creativity is nowhere to be found. I feel empty and awkward because I'm used to either being manic and obsessed about something or angry paranoid and depressed. 

  But its not all bad. I definitely feel less paranoid, delusional and slightly less irritated. Sometimes I wish I could just hang onto that manic  high feeling and just take medication when I'm on the lows. But I know now that it doesn't work like that. You can't have the wonderful highs without the earth-shattering lows. And the more manic and depressed episodes I allow myself to have go unchecked the harder it is on my wife, my step daughter and my job. And that ultimately hurts me. 

   I think this how normal people are. Not high, not low, just "there" neither happy or sad, not obsessed but not depressed. I'm not used to feeling like this, its not natural for me and I'm not sure I like it. But mentally I'm a lot more stable and that's ultimately whats in my best interests because I'm married and have stepchildren who rely on me and for the first time I realize how difficult I am to deal with when I'm having these episodes.

 I'll never be normal and there is no cure for what I have. But it can be managed and thats the best anyone in my position can hope for.

 I dont have a nice little ending planned that sums everything up. This was more of an extended rant. I guess I just wanted to vent today, so I'll just end it now.

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Too Old for Heavy Metal

 Heavy Metal is angry, young people's music. As my 40th birthday looms overhead just a few short months away, I find myself neither young nor angry anymore. Heavy Metal used to define me as a person. It was more than just music. It was a culture and a lifestyle. But these days I just find it increasingly loud and annoying, and today I want to talk about why that is.

WHAT IS HEAVY METAL?

 Now I know a lot of you out there will say that there are many rockers in their 60's still performing and making music, and you would be right in saying that. Alice Cooper, Steven Tyler, Ozzy, and Robert Plant all turn 65 this year, but that's hard rock not heavy metal. And there is a difference.

 Hard Rock in general is good time, party music

Heavy Metal is anger, death and war in clown makeup

Hard Rock is getting laid music with fast, driving rhythms and soft introspective power ballads

 Heavy Metal is mosh pits, acne, angst and black t-shirts

 Growing up I was angry. Angry for being born, angry at my parents, angry at school, angry at the law, angry because it I didn't fit in, angry because I didn't have a girlfriend, you name it and I was probably angry about it. Metal gave me an outlet for my aggressions. It gave me a voice and gave me a chance to meet other people who were just as angry as I was.

 Growing up in Catholic schools, it was the perfect way to stand out, get attention and make a name for myself. I never fit in or had many friends and was forced to be an outsider looking in, but metal let stand proud and say, "Yes, I'm on the outside looking in because I want to be not because you forced me here" 

I didn't really say that, mind you. It was more symbolic. 

GETTING OLD

 I don't hate heavy metal these days, and I don't REALLY think it sucks, I simply no longer find that Heavy Metal has any meaning for me now. I'm not the same person I was as a teenager. I'm not as angry and reactionary as I used to be. I'm still awkward, and an outsider who still doesn't fit in, but I'm old enough to accept that now and it just doesn't bother me.

 I'm middle aged, married w/kids and a job. With half my life behind me and a clear sense of my own mortality, my life finally has meaning for me now. So likewise I look for more meaning in my music.

 Even though there are many kinds of metal these days, (too many to go into here) I ultimately find it very one dimensional. War, anger, death, aggression, all the negative and dark corners of the human experience

I'm not as one dimensional as I was when I was younger. 

So what do I listen to? lots of stuff.

Classic Rock, like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. Punk Music like Iggy Pop, The Misfits and The Clash. All the Top 40 hits from the 80's, 90's Grunge and one or two modern artists like The Black Keys, Radiohead and The Mars Volta,

Even the metal artists themselves seem to outgrow metal.

The once mighty Metallica cut their hair as their music grew more and more commercially oriented and "MTV Friendly"

About the only thing resembling metal you will find on my I-Tunes is System of a Down. They have such a unique sound and I just find it fascinating. It's metal, its art, its progressive it's alternative...

Complex and diverse music for complex and diverse times. 

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Ask a Guitarded Person: The British Are Coming!

 This Weeks Question:

Why do most English singers sound American when they sing? - from my Brother Reverend Steve Galindo (and the only person to send in a question this week) visit his blog HERE


Answer:



  
 If Rock n Roll had started in England then we would all be singing in British Accents. Dr. House is correct once again. Rock and Roll is an American creation so it's sung in an American accent. But let's expand on that.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.- Pablo Picasso

  The singers from the British Invasion were inspired by the original rockers like Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins etc...They wanted to be cool and sound like their idols. Later generations of British Rockers wanted to emulate those original rockers and so on...

   With the start of the Punk movement some rockers like The Clash and The Sex Pistols started to rebel against this and began singing with very pronounced British accents. Some American bands like Green Day even began to sing with a hint of a British Accent since they were inspired by some of those early punk bands like The Clash.

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You can ask me anything about music, guitars, mental health. I'm in real need of some good questions so if you send me something you're pretty much guaranteed I'm going to answer it. And I will try to answer everything in as entertaining a manner as I can.

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Why Nirvana Unplugged Rules and Your Parents are Shooting Heroin in Your Bedroom.

Nirvana Unplugged (full version)

Back when MTV used to have music, The Unplugged series was a chance for artists to show off their hits in not only a new medium (acoustic) but it was also a chance to see your favorite artists in a small, intimate, and informal environment.

  By the time Nirvana came around. It had become as essential for artists to go on Unplugged as it is now for Presidential candidates to go on SNL during election season. Paul McCartney, Stevie Ray Vaughn, & Mariah Carey are just some of the names that had already played on Unplugged. Eric Clapton even won six Grammy's for his Unplugged CD. If you were already a big star, doing Unplugged would make you even bigger. 

  And Nirvana was already big. I mean Nirvana fans would go so crazy they would do shit like this whenever they heard their music

   But Nirvana's Unplugged was a departure from all that. It proved a hard rock band could be just as powerful when the amps weren't turned all the way up to 10. It proved that you don't need to play your hit songs or even your own music, and it showed just how powerful a stage presence Kurt Cobain really was. It was their swan song performance. It was the best performance of the Unplugged series, and it was their best of their televised performances. And if you don't agree then you are simply:

  And you should also be laughed at like this:

And like this:

THE STAGE

 It's almost prophetic watching this unplugged not just because this was filmed only a few short months before Kurt Cobain's death, but because it looks like you're watching a funeral. Lillies and black candles, subdued lighting, make it seem as if you're watching a suicide note versus a musical performance. 

 Then there's Kurt Cobain's demeanor. With the exception of a few moments onstage, he is sullen, softspoken, and almost aloof. He was going thru heavy drug withdrawls during the performance, but I heard that someone actually offered him drugs before the show. And it was caught on video, look below:

THE SET LIST

1. "About a Girl"
2. "Come as You Are"
3. "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" (The Vaselines)
4. "The Man Who Sold the World" (David Bowie)
5. "Pennyroyal Tea" 
6. "Dumb" 
7. "Polly" 
8. "On a Plain"
9. "Something in the Way"
10. "Plateau" (The Meat Puppets)
11. "Oh, Me" (The Meat Puppets)
12. "Lake of Fire" (The Meat Puppets)
13. "All Apologies"  
14. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" 

  Unlike all the artists before Nirvana who used Unplugged as a chance to showcase all of their hits acoustically, Nirvana said "Fuck That" and went with a set list that MTV was not happy about and almost resulted in their show being cancelled.

  Out of the 14 songs, 6 were cover songs and only one, "Come As You Are," was a hit song. Three of the six cover songs, were performed with The Meat Puppets, a band MTV was not happy with either, as they were trying to get Nirvana to agree to perform with bigger names a la an Eddie Vedder or someone like that.

THE LITTLE MOMENTS

All the stuff that MTV usually will edit out are the things that make this the best unplugged ever. I don't think they've ever officially released this on dvd but the bootleg copy I've had for years has some great little moments. It's these funny, quirky, unpolished moments that help make this great.

1. Dave Grohl is heard bumming smokes from Pat Smear (18:25) as they go to the backstage area for Kurt Cobain's solo version of Pennyroyal Tea

2. Kurt didn’t want to play “Dumb” and “Polly” back to back. “Because they’re exactly the same song,” Cobain explains. (26:43) “Who cares, it will be edited different. This is a television show!” he reasons. (22:30)

3. . Kurt and Krist discuss “Davey and Goliath.” “Remember the little black bird on ‘Davey and Goliath?’” Novaselic asks Cobain midway through the performance. Cobain doesn’t, but he does have other memories of the show. “Remember that really evil episode where he was really mad at this kid and he had all these visions of how he was going to, ‘First I’m going to take him up to a hill and tie him to a tree and tar and feather him!’” Cobain recalls, adopting his best Davey voice. “It was evil! That wasn’t Christian at all.” (38:18)

4. There was almost a performance of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Kurt slurs and grunts his way through the first two lines of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic during downtime before the Meat Puppets are ready. (41:15)

5. Kurt came in early on the first chorus of “Lake of Fire.” Oops. Hear him catch and cover up his mistake at 50:12.

6. On his way off stage, Kurt stops to sign autographs for fans before (the story goes) arguing backstage with  MTV producers because he refused to do an encore. And he was right. There was no way you could've topped that.   (1:05:40)

7. Kurt is basically sitting in an office chair. You’ve gotta sit in something, I guess, it just seems odd that for such a ghostly performance, Cobain is sitting in a chair that looks like it was picked up by an intern at the Office Max around the corner a few hours before the show started.

8. The set list didn’t seem to be ironed out ahead of time. Fans shout titles from the audience and the band considers them, and at one point Grohl suggests they do “Sliver,” but Cobain decides against it because he has to scream in it. “What else do you want to do?” Grohl asks him. (57:30) The band also at one point toys with doing “School.”

 9. Pat Smear DIDN'T WEAR SHOES! See below

5. Kurt reads zines in his downtime. While a guitar is being tuned off stage, Kurt can be seen on stage reading. (41:11)

It feels like you're watching the biggest rock band in the world rehearsing and having a good time, and showing that they weren't just another hard rock band. They showed themselves as something larger than music. If that performance never happened, I honestly think that Nirvana would've been relegated to just another part of that 90's fad that was grunge music.

  To this day it still remains an intense, gloomy performance. I don't know if I'm alone in thinking this but I honestly have trouble watching the video or listening to the cd in its entirety just because it is that intense. 

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