Have any of you worked at a venue? Maybe like 5% of you have and i’m one of them. So i worked at a small club in LA from 1989 to mid 2004. It was a mainly punk club with a lot of underground bands that disappeared but every once in a while one band would play right before they hit big. I remember hearing that soundgarden played a show right as my shift ended so i heard maybe the first three songs but i have no idea what they were. I did however hear and record full sets from nirvana and green day.
Nirvana i believe played in august of 1990 with the drumer of the melvins i think. I recorded soundcheck and the show. i can’t remember the setlist fully but they played for sure in bloom, love buzz, school, lithium, negative creep, and blew plus at soundcheck they played paper cuts and mexican seafood, kinda as it was more of a jam than the actual song with it turning into a improv solo after the second chorus. my guess is that no one remembered how to play the song fully. I remember making a copy for myself and one for my friend who after kurt’s death asked me for copy so he could go to trading circles and use my tape to get rarer shows. I haven’t listened to the tape in 15 or so years and i can’t find it so i can’t upload it. I thought it was on live nirvana but no one knows that this even happened.
The more interesting item i had was two green day concerts, one from early 94, and the other 04 right before i quit. The 94 concert was right as longview started to appear on the radio but this show had like 100 people when the max capacity was 250 so it really wasn’t that big.They just went on stage, checked that everything was working, then started playing. The setlist was really weird as having a blast, in the end, and pulling teeth were played and this was the only time they played the songs on the tour and wouldn’t til 2013! I might have the cassette with this show somewhere but i probably won’t upload it unless i transfer it.
The last show i recorded was a 2004 show they did before they left for a gig in japan. They played under a pseudonym that i can’t remember but i know that me and the staff knew that green day were playing. This show was werid in that it was just green day with their touring guitarist. The sound check was also strangely long with them playing too much too soon, stuck with me, and some tracks off nimrod like nice guys finish last. I remember that i asked if too much too soon would be on the new album and one of the guys said it was a leftover from an album that was 75% complete before they decided that it wasn’t as good as they hoped it would be. Also they told me that some of the tracks on the scrapped record were merged into tracks on American while some might be recorded as b sides. The main setlist was like a proto verson of the actual setlist for the tour with American idot, jesus of suburbia, Holiday, and WMUWSE being played but there also was Letterbomb,Chump before longview,A bit of Burnout,Shoplifter, and J.A.R. This show ended with time of your life but during the bridge it turned into a full on jam with people stage diving and the whole place just exploded into chaos. After that they walked off and i was just shocked of how good they played.I recorded the show digitaly and multi tracked so i might find a recording on my computer and i may post after mixing the tracks. I quit as the place soon closed after green day played so i now work at another punk venue which is kinda unknown so i don’t feel like giving it’s name.