Grunge
A treat is coming for lovers of Nirvana. Unpublished and richly illustrated, the book on the Italian concerts of the first tours.
Smells like Italy
Nirvana’s Italian concerts, 1989-1991
by Riccardo Cogliati
25 euros, 360 pages
FROM 17 MAY IN BOOKSTORE
Tsunami Editions
Le Tormente necklace (20)
On this thirtieth anniversary of the end of one of the most influential groups in global pop, the center of Seattle’s legendary grunge scene, Riccardo Cogliati proposes a new point of view in this work. Thanks to dozens of interviews with fans, venue managers, photographers, promoters, artists and journalists, he reconstructs the relationship of the in detail Nirvana with Italy. The book is mainly focused on the concerts of 1989-1991, when the band was still experienced as a novelty, not yet in the hyperuranium of mega stars.
From this unpublished article, accompanied by photos of the various events (Cogliati also curated an exhibition of shots at the Bloom of Mezzago for the thirtieth anniversary of the last concert in November 2021), it emerges that the Italian dates were the anticipation of something that would come later. In the first tour (of Bleach) it was the break with Channing and with the legendary (but insufficient for Cobain) Sub Pop Records, in the second the global success of Nevermind which was climbing the charts in those days, while the last Roman concert saw the frontman’s first very sad suicide attempt.
Cogliati certainly does not neglect the rest of the group’s parable, with key moments such as the arrival of Dave Grohl and the first time it was played at the OK Hotel Apartments in Seattle ‘Smells like Teen Spirit‘, simply focuses attention on the Italian first time of that song, al Verdi Theatre of Muggia. To reconstruct in detail what happened in those now fabled concerts, Daniela Giombini is interviewed, who with her small but determined Subway Productions organized as a promoter five dates between 1989 and 1991, living side by side with the group for several days . In addition to the tasty anecdotes about the personality of Cobain and his associates, this book highlights the crowd’s thrill in hearing songs like ‘Lithium’, Polly, ‘Rape me’, ‘About a Girl’ or ‘Territorial Pissings’ played live. Finally, we point out all the available recordings (audio and video) of these concerts and how to find them: a real gem for enthusiasts that will also satisfy those who simply want to know more about Nirvana, seen from Italy.
Riccardo Cogliati (Lecco, 1980) has been hanging out in the Lombard underground scene since the end of the nineties, playing bass in various punk rock bands. Having landed, at the dawn of the new millennium, in the online community of the American site LiveNirvana.com, he carried out a long research together with a group of friends (the Italian Team) focused on the passage of the Seattle band in Italy, which resulted in this essay. In 2011 and 2014 he organized two Nirvana-themed evenings at Bloom in Mezzago, home to two of the band’s Italian stages, which have remained in the annals. In his life he deals with quality procedures in the automotive sector.
