One month after Nirvana released Nevermind, they performed at Seattle's Paramount Theatre on Halloween. The joy of Live at the Paramount is hearing the charge of this moment: a great band newly famous, still reeling and flooded with nervy adrenaline.
Kurt's voice sounds remarkably powerful here: He sang in a way that was obviously unsustainable, even with the aid of heavy cough syrup, and there's a thrill, although a slightly selfish one, of hearing his voice rip the air before he had begun to scream it down to the threads. His peculiar, yowling phrasing may have been a deliberate choice, or it might have been the only way he managed to wrangle those notes from a constricted voice box, but there is a terrible, riveting intensity to it: Words feel torn from him, bearing fishhooks on their way out. "Aneurysm"'s "Love you so much/ It makes me sick" becomes "Laahve yeww sowl much et makes me SECK." It physically hurts to hear, as it always has, but it gives you some of the most committed, clear performances of Nirvana's canonical songs as you're likely to get.
| A1 | Happy Halloween |
| A2 | Aneurysm |
| A3 | Drain You |
| A4 | School |
| A5 | Floyd The Barber |
| A6 | Smells Like Teen Spirits |
| A7 | About A Girl |
| B1 | Polly |
| B2 | Breed |
| B3 | Sliver |
| B4 | Love Buzz |
| B5 | Lithium |
| B6 | Been A Son |
| B7 | Negative Creep |
| B8 | On A Plain |
| B9 | Territorial Pissings |
