As far as I know, Nirvana only came to Toronto for three gigs. The first was a club date at Lee's Palace in support of the "Bleach" album before Dave Grohl joined the band, and history and legend have conspired together to make that show kind of notorious, with bottles thrown and glass on the floor. I wasn't there but by all accounts it was pretty epic. The second show was at the Opera House around the release of "Nevermind" during that sweet spot in their career where people knew who they were but they hadn't quite exploded yet. My friend Brooke asked me if I wanted to go and foolishly I said no, but since then whatever excuse I might have had at the time is long forgotten to me and I've kicked myself repeatedly for having missed it. Brooke could tell you better, but I've heard that it was a pretty wicked gig.
But I did see them at Maple Leaf Gardens in support of "In Utero". Having missed the Opera House show I was determined to see them this time around, and they were every bit as awesome as their reputation would suggest. It was a short show, I don't remember it being any more than maybe an hour and a half with encores, but that hour and a half was packed with an impressive energy and passion. They played a dark and ominously heavy run through Heart Shaped Box that built on all of the menace and paranoia of the album version, and All Apologies was a great song to end the set before the encores. The night was pretty evenly divided between tracks from "In Utero" and "Nevermind", with a couple of covers and one or two songs from "Bleach", a pretty solid overview of their career to that point. They didn't play Smells Like Teen Spirit, and more than a few people were grumbling about that after the show, but in hindsight it makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't have. Nirvana were so much more than just that one song, and the fact that they could play a great show without playing their biggest hit is an impressive testimony to the quality of their work and to their strength as a band...
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