A (delayed) assessment of Post Malone’s Nirvana project
[This comes from frequent contributor Gilles LeBlanc. – AC]
I am starting to come around to the fact that concerts may never, ever go back to being the same again. Don’t know if I can see myself doing the drive-in thing, no matter how retro kitsch. If At the Drive-In aren’t going to reunite to play one, what’s the point really?
I’ve become pretty blasé about live streams too, but that probably has more to do with Zoom meeting fatigue. One exception however has been Post Malone’s all-Nirvana covers set he did way back in April as a fundraiser for the WHO. I was one of those who had been indifferent towards Mr. Post pre-pandemic; I had heard “rockstar” and knew that kids today were into him like I adored Kurt Cobain as a twentysomething. Oh, and the face tattoos of course, although over the course of 75 or so minutes Post Malone proved to me how he’s so much more than that.
I watched a bit of the Post Malone show of Nirvana covers, and I wasn’t fully impressed. Yes, he was able to perform Nirvana songs note by note, and it was kinda cool. I’ve seen a lot of cover bands that played the songs I know and love, and, in the end, they were just cover bands. Just about anyone can perform songs just the way the original band did. We don’t see many of these great tribute bands (like Rain, for example) getting headlines for performing classics to the masses. Call me cynical, but I’m sure the Post Malone gig will be forgotten in a year or two, but the memories of Nirvana during the 90s will remain in people’s minds forever. I don’t think it is fair to compare Kris and Dave’s Nirvana “reunions” as a measuring stick to what Nirvana was. By then it was all for fun, and not to be taken as historic moments. Without Kurt around, there will never be a real Nirvana reunion.