Feels Like the First Time

非官方发行。 Early 90s live outings from off the telly Nirvana were heavily bootlegged in the 90s, yet such products now seem quaint in our instantaneous digital age – right down to the copied sleeved and misspelled track titles. Feels Like The First Time, however, consists of legally-obtained tapes of the trio’s December 1993 appearance at MTV’s Live & Loud, coupled with Aussie radio broadcasts and Saturday Night Live appearances from the same era. Because better performances from Cobain and co are available – cough – elsewhere (not least last year’s smouldering Live At Reading CD/DVD), the point of this collection seems hard to pin down. Clearly someone at Smokin’ lucked out, and you can bet Nirvana aren’t seeing a dime. The MTV material is rough in the extreme but, underneath the skree, you can just make out how hard the band worked; how tight a unit they were. Heart-Shaped Box betrays a quality backing vocal that wrong-foots anyone thinking Nirvana were simply punks. Even the Nevermind tracks still sound like the records, so well drilled were their creators. But you can’t escape the feeling of cash-in here, so purchase with consideration: for completists only.