Funny / Nirvana

• The intro to "Territorial Pissings" from Nevermind, a quote from the Youngbloods' "Get Together":
  C'mon, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another RIIIIGHT NAEOOOW!
• At a show in Newcastle:
  Kurt: Hi, my name is Kurt Cobain. I'm homosexual, I'm a pagan, I'm a drug abuser, and I like to fuck pot-bellied pigs!
• The video for "In Bloom" sees the band as a 50's teenybobber band that eventually goes apeshit.
• While the infamous VMA concert is in-between awkward and funny (they start playing "Rape Me" before going to "Lithium", Krist throws his bass up and gets hit by it in the head), Dave yelling "HI AXL!" is hilarious.
  • For that matter, Axl's conflict with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love was pretty funny as well. Seeing him walking by, Courtney asked Axl if he'd be the godfather to their child. Axl Rose was not pleased, and he strode up to Kurt, telling him to "shut his bitch up." Kurt turned to Courtney, jokingly saying, "Shut up, bitch!" Axl was not amused.
    • Nirvana did not like Guns N' Roses (especially Axl) very much.
  • It gets better: before Nirvana took the stage, Kurt noticed Axl Rose's piano for Guns N Roses' performance of "November Rain." Wanting to get back at Axl, Kurt spat a bunch of loogies all over the keys. Later on GNR finally took the stage...and Kurt realized he spat on Elton John's piano, who was performing a duet with GNR. Whoops.
• The song "Sliver" from Incesticide as a whole.
• The crowd at their first show requests "Heartbreaker". Kurt's response?:
  Kurt: I don't know how to play it!
• From the MTV Unplugged in New York show, when guests Meat Puppets are a little slow tuning up:
  Kurt: What are they tuning? A harp? I thought we were a big, rich rock band, we should have a whole bunch of extra guitars.
• Kurt's reaction to being asked to lip-synch on Top of the Pops? Singing the whole of "Teen Spirit" in a ridiculous Ian Curtis/Morrissey croon while miming playing his guitar with a completely flat hand and a gormless grin on his face?
  • When he starts to sing the bridge, he sticks the microphone in his mouth.
• From an early Nirvana show when Kurt's guitar breaks down for a minute playing "Scoff", Krist takes over on vocals: "Yeaaahhhhh AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
• During another early Nirvana show, as they were playing "Floyd The Barber", a drunk fan gets on the stage by popping up from behind the monitors and starts yelling on Jason Everman's microphone. Krist tries to get him offstage by gently nudging him off with his butt (to the rhythm of the music no less), but the fan escalates to stumbling around and interrupting Kurt and Krist's performances, culminating in Kurt and Jason throwing the fan off the stage and beating him up.
• Kurt's take on Sweet Home Alabama.
• Backstage, Dave Grohl gets drunk. Hilarity ensues.
• Their performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the Reading Festival. Kurt starts off by playing the main chorus riff from Boston's "More Than A Feeling", which Dave and Krist decide to play along and badly sing to. Just as they get to the next part of the song, Kurt suddenly decides to play the intro of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", throwing off Dave and Krist who thought they were committed to the Boston song.
• During a 1992 concert in Buenos Aires, the crowd had been incredibly mean to the opening band Calamity Jane. This pissed off Kurt Cobain, who felt the crowd was being sexist because said openers were an all-female rock band. His bandmates talked him out of walking away and not playing the concert. What did they do instead? They played all their lesser known songs and played bad intentionally to punish the fans along with playing their Hidden Track from Nevermind. When they did play a couple of "hits", they did things like replacing the entire first verse of "Come As You Are" with the word "hey". Also, they played the intro to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" twice, only to quickly cut to another song on both occasions. The crowd did not seem to catch on to what the band was doing at all.
  • At one point during the show, they play "Polly" with Dave Grohl sitting behind a child-sized toy drum kit - this might not have been intended as part of the trolling, as they had the toy backstage to begin with for some reason. Subsequently though, Kurt leaves the stage for a few minutes, leaving Dave and Krist to perform a repetitive, comically drawn out jam on bass and toy drums... Which the crowd still applauds.
    Kurt: Mr. Dave Grohl! Do a drum solo, this is our encore...
    (Dave stands up, haphazardly plays the toy drum set for a few seconds, and promptly knocks the whole thing over)
    Dave: Sorry, I'm not much of a drummer...
• Bobcat Goldthwait was the opening act on one of their tours, and the band happened to be performing in Chicago just as Michael Jordan was retiring from basketball due to his father's murder. Before the show, Bobcat said sarcastically to Kurt "For a $50 million contract, I'd shoot my own dad in the head." He then walked onstage and said that exact line to the audience as his first joke. Needless to say, they weren't happy and Bobcat had to be escorted out of the venue before a riot started. As he passed Kurt (who was the only one laughing by this point), he whispered to him "I can't believe you said that."
  Bobcat Goldthwait: Even Kurt was like, "Hey, that was kinda dark."
• As nightmarish as the music video for "Heart-Shaped Box" is, one can't help but simply laugh at the crow lip-synching Kurt when he says "Hey! Wait!"
• "Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip" seemingly starts out as a serious attempt at an improvised Noise Rock song, but eventually devolves into the band goofing around, starting with having Fun with Acronyms for the Guitar Institute of Technology:
  Kurt: GIT...geeks...in...town.
  Ha!...Come on, Dave, think of one...
  Dave: Girls In Trouble
  Kurt: It should be GIC, geeks with Charvels
  No, GWC
  Fuck, man, this is a waste of time
  One more solo? Yeahhh! Yeaaaahh!
• During a live concert, the band once did an abbreviated cover of "The End" by The Doors, only they didn't really remember the lyrics, so they made the monologue about a guy going to a Waffle House, making an order, and then playing music on a jukebox.
• In 1996, Nirvana's Unplugged record was nominated for a Grammy, and the remaining members of the band decided to show up to honor Kurt. The problem was that their award was presented during the non-televised portion and the hosts didn't know the band was there. So when Nirvana won, they didn't give them time to come to the stage and automatically started reading nominees for the next award.
  Dave Grohl: So Krist, who's six foot seven and a half, stands up and screams "WAIT!!!" And we awkwardly stumble on the stage and go "Thank you very much" and just scurried off.
• The title for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came when his friend Kathleen Hanna (lead singer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill) wrote "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" on his wall. Kurt interpreted it in terms of anarchism and pop rock, which they had been discussing, although Kathleen had actually meant the deodorant Teen Spirit, which she and his then-girlfriend Tobi Vail discovered during a trip to the supermarket. He was unaware of the deodorant until months after the single was released. The deodorant itself would grow and decline in market share during the same time period the song hit the charts.

---