But unlike most rock bands who divided pop history between before and after, Nirvana's impact was not immediate. Upon its release, Bleach was a modest indie rock success at 40,000 copies sold, and the album's low-budget legend-- it was recorded for a scant $600, footed by the band's temporary second guitarist, Jason Everman-- often overshadows the music within. At that point, Nirvana had yet to divest itself of its Pete Best: drummer Chad Channing, whose scrappy style wasn't fully suited to the band's growing propensity for crater-inducing stompers. (Three Bleach tracks-- "Floyd the Barber", "Paper Cuts", and "Downer"-- were actually helmed by Melvins thud-master Dale Crover, and you can really tell.) And the album's first single-- a cover of 1960s Dutch-popsters Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz"-- is more emblematic of the dementoid new wave that Nirvana would indulge in on their future B-sides than the metallic Pixies-punk that would turn them into stars.
Cobain's newly acquired, generational spokesmen duties didn't make him any more fond of engaging the audience with stage banter, ceding emcee duties to the jovial Novoselic during guitar changes. And even when playing to the biggest audience of their career, Nirvana blast through the 25-song setlist with a barrel-down, no-bullshit intensity that suggests it didn't matter if they were playing to 100 people or 100,000. And most pertinently, both concerts capture the band at crucial, between-album turning points: where the Pine Street Theater set shows a band burnishing its pop appeal, Live at Reading betrays Cobain's eagerness to tear it down, dispensing with the obvious Nevermind hits by the mid-set point, while reserving the encores for seething covers of 80s California punks Fang's suitably sardonic "The Money Will Roll Right In" and the Wipers' "D-7". In retrospect, the concert crystallizes the moment when Cobain stopped serving his servants and started serving himself, pointing the way to 1993's notoriously caustic In Utero.
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Given its long-standing popularity as a bootleg, you can't help but wonder why Live at Reading wasn't officially released back in the mid-90s instead of the live compilation From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah; certainly, Reading makes for a more appropriate, electrified complement to the band's other career-defining performance, 1994's Unplugged in New York release. And for the sake of squeezing the entire set (save for "Love Buzz") on a single disc, the Reading CD excises pretty much all of the DVD's between-song interactions (most notably, the goof on Boston's "More Than a Feeling" that precedes the similarly riffed "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and key contextual interludes that reveal the tumult leading up to this triumphant performance (e.g., a heartfelt plea from Cobain to have the crowd shout a conciliatory "We love you Courtney" in the wake of her receiving the Yoko treatment from the British tabloids). But the CD's career-spanning tracklist-- touching on the best of Bleach, most of Nevermind, choice singles and B-sides ("Sliver", "Aneurysm"), three In Utero previews ("Tourette's", "Dumb", "All Apologies"), and the aforementioned covers-- actually makes it a far superior, more comprehensive introduction for Nirvana newbies than the band's 2002 greatest-hits compilation. Like the Who's Live at Leeds or Cheap Trick's At Budokan, it's an indispensible document of a legendary band at their most invincible. 2ff7e9595c
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