Could A NIRVANA Live Album Be Next?

In a recent interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Jack Endino, NIRVANA's original producer in the early days and the project consultant for the just-isued "With the Lights Out" box set, speculated that a NIRVANA live album could be next collection to come out. He also talked about how he helped track down recordings for the new NIRVANA box. "There could have been a CD of live stuff," he said. "There could have been a CD of acoustic stuff. There could have been a CD of demos and outtakes. There could have been a CD of B-sides. Just B-sides alone, you can make a full CD of that."

While the band has been heavily bootlegged, the box set pulls things out of the vault that no one has ever heard before. "There's a fair bit of this stuff that has been bootlegged, but a hell of a lot of it hasn't," Endino said. "Stuff turned up when we really started digging that had been closely held by various people who didn't want it bootlegged. Once the word got out we were doing the official box set, people became a little more open about sharing stuff — 'Oh, this isn't going to a bootleg. This is the real thing. The family is involved. Courtney (Love) has given it the OK. Krist (Novoselic) is involved.' That's a different story."

He first discussed the box with NIRVANA bassist Novoselic back in 1998.

"Basically it was a lot of detective work," Endino said. "I kinda knew where a lot of this stuff was in the course of my work and being at the epicenter of things here for years." He told Novoselic that "I have copies of a lot of this stuff on cassette that nobody has heard that I've been hoarding because I didn't want it to get out."

"I basically said 'Let me make you a tape of some of this stuff so you can start thinking about what might be on the box.' Of course, Krist didn't have any tapes. He lost everything. A lot of this stuff he knew existed, he didn't have copies of."

Thus began a six-year process of tracking down rumors and weeding out tapes. Sometimes they had to turn to cassettes and VHS because the songs existed nowhere else.

"You live in Seattle and you run into people who say 'Oh yeah, my wife's brother-in-law did a video for them at Evergreen State College once a long time ago.' You just run into people who say things like that and you're just like 'What?' and they go 'Yeah, but he hasn't let anyone see the tapes in 10 years.' Stuff like that would go on. There are still people out there with footage they took of this show or that show." Read more.