The concert that never was

It took me so long to convince my mother to let me go to this show (Nirvana with The Melvins), that the first show of two-night stint was already sold out. I finally convinced her and was able to get tickets for the second night. I spent the time leading up to the show begging other people at my school to trade tickets with me so that I could go with the majority of my friends (and seemingly everyone else at school) who had gotten tickets for the first night.

It was not to be. Hours before the second show, Nirvana cancelled, and then postponed the whole rest of the tour a couple days later. A week after the show that never happened, Kurt Cobain attempted suicide in Rome, and a month later he killed himself for real. I considered myself the truest and purest disciple of KC and the Nirvanas, so it was the biggest gut punch to have never seen them live. Not only that, I was surrounded by people who had gotten to see the LAST EVER Nirvana show.

On the upside though, it spurred me to go see every show I possibly could scrape my meager allowance money together for, and I subsequently saw a lot of great shows, as well as a fair few shitty ones. Two years later I saw both Foo Fighters (with That Dog), and Hole (with Scarce), at the same venue complex (the old airport). In those days, you would always see forlorn-looking teenagers with Nirvana shirts and cardigans, lurking in the…