Way back in 2013 I was in the midst of this weird outpouring of Nirvana-related analysis here on the blog: spreadsheets, estimated set-lists, mapped tours, aggregated tables of information, which song did Nirvana play live the most/the least, which titles of apparently unreleased songs still exist…
As part of that, I took the data from the Nirvana Live Guide and looked at the bands known to have supported Nirvana over the years:
https://nirvana-legacy.com/2013/02/19/my-friends-nirvana-and-live-support-1987-1994-part-one/
https://nirvana-legacy.com/2013/02/20/my-friends-nirvana-and-live-support-1987-1994-part-two/
The crazy names, all the bands I’d never heard of, it fascinated me – so I ended up trying to track them down to interview them and the results turned into the I Found My Friends: The Oral History of Nirvana book (it’s $4 on Amazon.com at the moment – the publisher is clearing out their stock it seems.) Amidst it all, one of the people I was most privileged to meet was John Purkey and his friends Bob, Pat, Ryan, Sally, Mike (RIP) and Rochelle – my visit to Tacoma stays in my memory as one of the finest times of my past decade.
John was a friend of Kurt Cobain and he has recently commenced a YouTube series talking about his memories, playing the cassette tapes Cobain gave to him, generally describing a world n’ time some quarter of a century ago in a part of the world most of us know little of (though I recommend a visit).
I still treasure the memory of sitting in John’s front room and seeing how much it still affected him speaking of a lost friend – it was a privilege to be there.
If you’re interested, the videos are on YouTube under the channel ‘The Observer’ – all worth a watch.
Nirvana Legacy 