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Krist Novoselic Joins Foo Fighters Onstage In Seattle 12.10.99 18:15 EST | www.mtv.com | Thanks, Ro! Former Nirvana bandmates Krist Novoselic and David Grohl were musically reunited on Thursday night during the Foo Fighters' performance at the KNDD "Deck The Hall Ball" radio show at Key Arena in Seattle. According to the Foos' publicist and KNDD personnel, Novoselic jumped onstage with the band to play bass on "Big Me," a situation made possible when the Foo Fighters' regular bassist, Nate Mendel, was forced to sit out of the show because of a lingering case of the flu. Novoselic wasn't the only guest bassist to sit in with the band, as Beck's bassist, Justin Meldal-Johnson, also joined the Foo Fighters for a rendition of their current single, "Learn To Fly." For the rest of the set, the band altered its live flight pattern from a quartet to a trio, with new touring guitarist Chris Shiflett switching to bass. The publicist for the band noted that it wasn't the first time that Novoselic had sat in with Grohl and rest of the Foos, as they previously played together at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle in 1997 prior to Pat Smear's departure from the group.
As Mendel is still ailing, the Foo Fighters have decided to pull out of an
appearance at the
KITS radio show on Friday night at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San
Francisco. The
band is still expected to play KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas in Los
Angeles on December 11 and KWOD festival in Sacramento on December 14.
There's updated plot infomation available from the link above. In addition, see a few photos at New Line Cinema's site.
I'm currently on the lookout for any release that this might be on. It's quite possible that this track was recorded for the Leonard Cohen Afterworld soundtrack!
"He hated his guts!" Love said. "For five years I've been quiet about this. [Kurt] loved him at first, because he was sweet, funny and lovely. And then he turned into such a dick. This whirlwind of success was happening for Dave, and he really turned his back on Kurt. His singer had a drug problem, and he wouldn't talk to him, he wouldn't take his phone calls. He wasn't his friend anymore." The assault sprang from the new Foo Fighters single, "Stacked Actors," which Love claimed was written about "what a bitch I am." Sample lyrics: "God bless, what a sensitive mess/Yeah, but things aren't always what they seem/Your teary eyes, your famous disguise/Never knowing who to believe/See through, yeah but what do you do/When you're just another aging drag queen."
"I would think he'd have other things to inspire him," said Love, who sang for Stern what she claimed was a song she wrote in response. "When the drummer tries to sing/Everybody better hide!/When the drummer tries to sing/God, let's all go inside./Oh yeah, all of you that love all things Foo/Dave, I have to tell you/Kurt hated you!"
Taken by British photographers Steve Gullick, Stephen Sweet, and Martyn Goodacre, the shots of Cobain and the rest of the group, are now on show at London's Proud Gallery until Jan. 21, 2000 and are accompanied by the book Nirvana: Winterlong, which was released on Tuesday (Nov. 23). Although the selection of photos is wide-ranging, with half of them being black and white pictures from concerts in the U.S. and Britain, it's the other half of the shots, which are posed and scream "magazine feature," that bring the exhibition down. Shots of Cobain standing on a street near Times Square in New York with a sign that says "Men Don't Protect Anymore" in the background, taken by Sweet in July 1993, are particularly stiff. There's something too staged about the pictures, with Cobain hiding behind dark glasses and his stringy dyed hair that puts the viewer off. The photo tries too hard to convey that Kurt is a rock rebel and superhero. Close-ups of the band, taken by Goodacre in 1990, are also very contrived, as Cobain has put on some out-of-character, heavy eyeliner for the occasion -- which just happened to be a session for the cover of NME. This photo has actually been criticized a lot; for instance, in the forward to the book, The Nirvana Companion: Two Decades of Commentary by John Rocco, Everett True writes, "It looks nothing like the Kurt Cobain I knew, presents such a one dimensional, distorted picture of him... I have nothing against Martyne Goodacre, it's the lack of context I can't handle." Yet, there are also some more natural moments that have been luckily immortalized. Steve Gullick, who was a personal friend of the band, took many candid photographs of them in 1990 when they were staying at a hotel in Shepherd's Bush, West London. One hotel room shot especially captures the group's casual attitude towards stardom and their teenage mentality as all four sit on the floor and Cobain gives the cameraman the middle finger as he covers his head with a sleeping bag. Another bemused shot of Cobain, taken by Gullick in Seattle in 1993, wrapped in a long tinsel Christmas wreath demonstrates that deep down he was just an average guy who happened to play guitar and make millions from it.
The commercial aspects of the show seem to be far reaching as it's sponsored by
Levi's and prints are priced from £420 ($675) for the small ones up into the
thousands for the larger ones. However, fans who kept up with the music scene
during this time period will be asking themselves what's all the fuss about as
they've probably seen most of the shots before. In fact, this exhibit is more a
tribute to the band's ironic, snowballing success since Cobain killed himself
in '94, than the group itself -- the scruffy looking boys who made "grunge" a
household word.
Jackson's dancing zombie opus "Thriller" scored the No. 1 spot on 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made, a countdown compiled by the staffs at MTV and TV Guide. "Thriller" was chosen because it was "innovative and ambitious for its time," TV Guide's senior editor Lisa Bernhard says. "Michael saw a lot of images [in videos] that didn't make sense. He brought videos to a new level. It shifts planes--from B-movie to horror story to dancing and back to a traditional narrative. He broke the doors open on videos." Filmmaker John Landis (Animal House, Trading Places) directed the 14-minute video and turned it into a landmark short movie that had its own theatrical release. Playing queen to Jackson's king was Madonna, whose "Vogue" checked in at No. 2. "You see beautifully shot black and white images. It's perfectly edited," says Tom Calderone, MTV's senior vice president of music and talent of the video. "When making the decision, someone at MTV said, 'If you put a Madonna video in an art gallery, this would be the one.' " The Material Mom landed another clips in the Top 10, "Express Yourself" at No. 10 (Jackson was the only other artist to score a Top 25 twofer, with his other immortal Thriller-era clip, "Beat It," also placing in the upper tier.) MTV mainstays like Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" and Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" both finished near the top, alongside the most recent clip, the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." Sadly, two Top 10 artists are dead: suicide victim Kurt Cobain, whose Nirvana ranked No. 3 with "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and slain rapper Tupac Shakur, who weighed in at No. 9 with "California Love." The Top 100 were selected from the 19,000 videos aired on MTV over the past 18 years and judged based upon five criteria: creativity and innovation; longevity; performance; music; and cultural impact. MTV begins the weeklong countdown December 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. "This is something everyone will talk about," says Calderone. "This list is always open for debate. Certainly we had our own." Here's a rundown of the Top 10:
The many black and white performance shots, especially those taken at New York's Roseland Ballroom (July 23, 1993) and the U.K.'s annual Reading Festival (August 1992) were ultimately some of the best pictures on display. Cobain's unposed stage diving and furious guitar playing with hair flung over his face were the real thing, whereas pictures of him standing by signs reading "Men Don't Protect Anymore" were obviously constructed for one reason only: promotion. The image could have just as easily been slapped onto a postcard, and didn't feel surprising or impressive. "I'm happy that the band get an exhibit dedicated to them, but it feels very contrived," said Andrew Lucas, a longtime Nirvana fan who attended Tuesday's press opening. "Prints on sale for large amounts of money weren't what grunge or Kurt for that matter were about. This is an exercise in studied shabbiness, and the photographers are cashing in on his head." But despite the stiffness of many photos, there was an occasional shot that caught Cobain and the rest of the band with their guard down. These included shots of Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic standing in high grass and actually smiling at the camera, as well as a candid 1992 picture of Cobain, wearing a "Grunge Is Dead," while holding his baby daughter Frances Bean, as the two of them yawn in unison.
Nirvana 1988-1993 is accompanied by the coffee-table book Nirvana:
Winterlong, which retails for £15 ($24) and was released in the U.K. on
Tuesday, Nov. 23. The exhibition, which runs through Jan. 21, 2000, might
end up being the only chance to see these shots of Nirvana up close unless
you want to purchase a print which run on average at £700 ($1120).
Nirvana fans may want keep an eye on the import section of book stores in the coming weeks, while those with a lot of money to burn may want to book a trip across the drink to England. A new book on the late legendary Seattle band, "Nirvana: Winterlong," will be released on November 23 in the U.K., in conjunction with the opening of a photo exhibit in London. Both the book and the exhibit will feature photos by Steve Gullick, who photographed the band in their pre-"Nevermind" days, and Martin Goodacre, who took the classic image of Kurt Cobain that appeared on the cover British music paper "NME" the week after Cobain's death. In other Nirvana news, look for the band's long-awaited box to be released sometime next year (see "Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl Plan Nirvana Box Set"). Former Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic has just completed a brief stint on the Spitfire spoken word tour, which also featured the likes of Perry Farrell and former MTV VJ Kennedy. Dave Grohl, meanwhile, has just released his third album with the Foo Fighters, "There Is Nothing Left To Lose" (see "Foo Fighters' Grohl On Guitarist's 'Painful' Departure; New Single, LP Due"). -- Meridith Gottlieb
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All articles © 1999 Katelynn Corrigan and other individually noted sources. Please credit and link to this site if quoted or otherwised used elsewhere.
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