At this point, it would seem like every Nirvana artifact has been uncovered, but leave it to a teenage girl to send fans into a tizzy after sharing never before seen photos from the band’s very first gig.
Maggie Poukkula is the daughter of Tony Poukkula, a Seattle musician whose house was the site of the March 1987 concert in Raymond, Washington. Last week, Maggie casually tweeted a photo strip taken from that fateful night, seemingly unaware of its significance.
“I’m not sure. I have to ask my dad,” Poukkula said in response to a tweet asking if the photos were from Nirvana’s first-ever concert. She later explained that her father and Kurt Cobain went to the same high school and would occasionally jam together. Based on confirmed pictures from the show, these new images are indeed from the band’s very first gig.
As legend has it, the concert saw Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic performing early Nirvana song like “Downer” and “Hairspray Queen”, as well as well as a trio of Led Zeppelin covers featuring Poukkula himself on guitar. The band received, at best, a lukewarm reaction from those in attendance (it was a drunken house party, after all), but Cobain was satisfied enough to continue onward with his fledgling project.
Below, listen to a rough recording of Nirvana performing “If You Must” during this very concert.
