The Nirvana reunion officially happened right after the Foo Fighters set at Cal Jam Fest this year. The surviving members of Nirvana performed several Nirvana songs with a few special guests: John McCauley of Deer Tick, Joan Jett and Brody Dalle of the Distillers. Nirvana played the songs: “Serve the Servants”, “Scentless Apprentice”, “In Bloom”, “Breed”, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “All Apologies”.

Honestly the band did a pretty good job… they played the music well but my problem were the vocals. These songs are pretty hard to hear without Kurt singing them. Nobody can sing like Kurt ’cause Kurt had his own unique singing voice. Both John and Joan tried to match Kurt’s singing style but not even close. It’s hard to match Kurt’s vocal style. Kurt wasn’t much of a singer and I remember Dave saying in an interview once that Kurt never had any professional vocal training but he still had a great rock voice.

The surviving members still hasn’t changed much over the years. Krist Novoselic stills plays bass like he always had… holding the bass down so low and still hopping around on stage like he always done. Krist is wearing a hat to hide his bald head ’cause he is 53 now.  He can’t grow the long hair like he used to when he was young.

Other than that, it doesn’t matter how well you think these musicians played the Nirvana songs. It was about celebrating the music of Nirvana and celebrating Kurt Cobain. That’s what they did this for.

If Kurt Cobain was still around to see this,  I’m sure he would have been proud. Now I think the Nirvana reunion should play a full length concert and play a lot more Nirvana songs. Who knows… maybe that could happen next. We’ll have to wait and see if Dave plans on doing more with them.

Kev