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Nirvana

"With the Lights Out" box set (3 CDs + DVD)

Available at All That Jazz for $54.99 (on sale)

The liner notes of the Nirvana box set begin with music critic Neil Strauss wandering around a Los Angeles Tower Records shop asking teenagers if they had ever heard of Nirvana. According to the survey, only 11 of 30 teenage music shoppers had heard of Seattle's most famous grunge rockers.

If his pseudo-scientific poll results are true, then the perfect audience for the recently released Nirvana box set, "With the Lights Out," may miss its moment.

Beyond hard-core Nirvana fans, this box set belongs in the hands of adolescents who are just picking up guitars and drumsticks. It's a perfect afternoon of inspiration for members of a teenage band who may have a hard time finding the motivation to keep playing in a town where teen venues are ... well, aren't.

"With the Lights Out" includes three CDs of previously unreleased recordings -- mostly bad bootleg recordings of rehearsals and live shows -- and a DVD full of home movies and obscure live show footage taken in small Seattle clubs.

Without commentary or editing, the DVD opens with the band playing in the basement of some parent's house. A set list is taped to the fake-wood-paneled wall. People are sitting on the floor drinking Rainier, watching a very young Kurt Cobain sing into a microphone.

The collected footage is arranged chronologically and tells a better story than any documentary. The crowds get bigger. The band gets better, and Kurt switches from a flannel shirt to the famous green sweater.

Writers who knew him say that Cobain hated the fame and the machine that his music led him into. He always felt guilty for leaving behind his underground roots.

Cobain opens one of the final shows on the DVD by saying, "Do you know how much money we have?"

It's not a greatest hits collection, but a story of a band, complete with photographs and quotes and photocopies of scribbled lyrics.

It feels amateur. It feels insider. And the last clip of the DVD with Cobain at the drums and Dave Grohl on bass playing a cover of "Seasons in the Sun" feels ominous, because we all know how the story ends.

"We had joy we had fun/We had seasons in the sun/But the wine and the song like the seasons/Have all gone."

Rated: Buy it. Courtney Love needs the money.

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet

"Dim the lights, chill the ham"

Can be ordered at All That Jazz for $13.98

If I were a guy, I would use this album to get girls. That was my first thought as the title track, "Dim the lights, chill the ham," opened the album. But soon the sultry opener folded into high-energy surf guitar, and I realized that I could still get girls with this album but they would have to be groovy girls -- the kind of girls who wear mini skirts and dark-rimmed glasses. Rockabilly girls who carry their cigarettes in vintage metal cases. The kind of girls who are too cool for James Bond, but like his music.

This instrumental album by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet made me miss a college radio show called "My Vinyl Recliner" that played all kinds of obscure lounge and lounge-era music.

Rated: Try the tracks "Exit from Vince Lombardi High School" and the not-so-sad instrumental remake of Beach Boys' "In My Room."