News 12/2002
In the December 14 issue of Kerrang! Magazine they had a list of the 100 Best Singles of all time as voted
for by the readers. Nirvana were #1 on the chart with Smells Like Teen Spirit. They also appeared on
spot #28 with Come As You Are, #32 with Heart-Shaped Box and #42 with Lithium. The Foo
Fighters also appeared twice on the list (with Monkey Wrench at #26 and Everlong at #39). A
big thanks to CR for this story. In other chart news, MTV2 recently compiled a Top 100 videos of 2002. The
Top 5 was as follows: 5) Foo Fighters - All My Life. 4) Nirvana - You Know You're Right. 3) Tenacious D -
Tribute. 2) Weezer - Keep Fishin' 1) Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows. Remarkably, Dave Grohl appears
in FOUR out of these five videos! Thanks to WD. On a different MTV2 Rock Countdown, Nirvana's You Know
You're Right video was #16 for 2002.
With the end of 2002 approaching quickly I thought it was time to take a look at the events of this year
and make a summary of everything that's happened in the Nirvana community. It's been an interesting year for
Nirvana fans, to say the least. With the first official album release in six years, a Nirvana best-of saw
the light of day in October. It features the last song the band ever recorded, You Know You're Right.
2002 was also the year where a controversial book, offering a selection of Kurt Cobain's private journals,
got published. Those are just small examples of the many events happening though. The following goes over
what I think are the most important Nirvana-related events in 2002:
January: The year started slowly for Nirvana fans, still trying to digest December 2001's
shocking statements from Krist and Dave on one side, and Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's mother Wendy O'
Connor on the other. Among other things she stated that she was "disgusted at the
behaviour of Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl". And, Krist and Dave were "sick of
Courtney [Love] trying to paste herself into Nirvana's legacy". At the time the parties were still
involved in a bitter legal dispute that would get settled shortly before the case was scheduled to go to court.
In January 2002, Eyes Adrift (Krist Novoselic's new band) surfaced and went on their first US tour.
February: Not much happened in February. Rumors of a Kurt Cobain 'Journals' book started
to appear - most notably in the form of a Page Six mention in The New York Post. Later it was reported
that Riverhead Books had gotten (read: paid a shitload of cash for) the rights to publish the book.
March: March was also fairly quiet and only saw the VHS/DVD release of the
controversial movie Highway. The movie, initially entitled A Leonard Cohen Afterworld, involved
a scene from the April 10 vigil for Kurt Cobain. Obviously, the actors and film crew weren't present at the
real vigil, so it had to be re-created. Of course. This event was documented in early NFC Newsletters. It
resulted in an interesting scene for the film where the stars (Jared Leto and Selma Blair) are trying to
hide from some bad guys chasing them. The otherwise horrible movie was released on video on March 26 in the US.
April: This month was more eventful but unfortunately filled with tragedy, as it marked the
definitive end of Seattle rockers Alice in Chains. On April 5 (exactly 8 years after Cobain's death),
their frontman Layne Staley passed away.
Also in April, Courtney Love was asked by Krist and Dave's team of
lawyers to undergo psychiatrical evaluation. The judge in the case dismissed the motion. As usual MTV, MTV2,
VH-1, MuchMusic and others aired various Nirvana and Kurt Cobain specials this month to mark the anniversary
of Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994.
May: One event from this month overshadows everything else. Around May 10, a person from the
LiveNIRVANA discussion board posted clips of what turned out to be the elusive studio version of Nirvana's fabled
You Know You're Right. The song was unreleased at the time and the only thing most people had heard of it was
a few seconds.
The clips (comprising about 47 seconds of the song) sparked a huge debate in the community, and many Nirvana webmasters were promptly contacted by Courtney Love manager James Barber who demanded the clips removed from the net. The media also picked up on the hype and some radio stations even went as far as to play the clips on the air. It turned out to be one of the most exciting couple of days the Nirvana fan community had seen in years, and the complete song was eagerly anticipated.
Also in May, Chris Heath published a story in Rolling Stone about the many unreleased Kurt Cobain recordings that Courtney supposedly has in her possession. Heath also talked with Krist Novoselic about what kind of material he had intended for the Nirvana boxed set that was delayed because of the lawsuits. Finally, also in May, Courtney Love's band Hole broke up officially.
June and July: These two months were relatively uneventful in terms of Nirvana events and news. In June the brand new NFC Picture Gallery was unveiled, offering a new layout with an easy-to-use navigation of the many pictures. Also in June, MTV's Kurt Loder spoke to Dave Grohl and among other things, the You Know You're Right clips came up in the talk. It was rumored that the clips came from an advance CD of Dave's side project "Probot" but he denied any involvement. Exactly how the person who spread the clips got hold of the song is still not known for sure.
August: To most people's great surprise, this month saw the Internet leak of an obscure demo that Nirvana recorded in Rio, Brazil on January 22, 1993. The complete demo (about 38 minutes) turned up this month in the form of MP3 files and was quickly shared amongst the cheering Nirvana fans online. The session consists mostly of early demos of songs that would eventually land on the In Utero album. There are also a couple of unknown songs and a nice cover of Seasons in the Sun. In December, the full demo was made available for download as part of this year's NFC Christmas Present. Also in August, a number of auctions for Pat Smear's legendary guitars started. Over the following months, Pat auctioned off more than 10 of the guitars that he used while playing for Nirvana and The Foo Fighters.
September: The much-anticipated debut
album by Krist Novoselic's new band Eyes Adrift was released this month. Later followed a lengthy US tour. As one
of the first sites on the net, NFC presented clips of several of the songs from the album a couple of weeks before
it's official release. A full version of the first single Alaska was also put online.A new NFC Sound Gallery was opened with a new design and mostly new content. Today it's been visited more than 385,000 times. Also in September, I published an interesting interview with Nirvana's guitar tech Earnie Bailey.
The event causing most hype & attention this month, however, was of course the Internet leak of the complete studio vers of You Know You're Right.
An MP3 file of the song turned up more or less out of the blue on the various Nirvana discussion boards and quickly spread like wildfire. It didn't take long before many radio stations around the world began playing the song - not giving a damn about legal consequences. KROQ in L.A. and KROCK in New York played it - as well as many other big stations. Nirvana's record label tried to respond with cease and desist orders but would quickly have to give up, and release the song officially in the form of a promo for radio stations.
The song immediately shot to the top of the charts, most notably Billboard's Modern Rock Chart where it debuted at #1 before it was even released officially. The demand was huge and this website experienced that the number of visitors literally doubled (from about 6,000 unique visitors per day to 12,000). Around the same time all this happened, Q Magazine in the UK published a Nirvana cover-story - hailing them as the "Most Important Band In The World". Inside was a 22-page article about the band.
Finally, September was the month where the Nirvana camp finally released an official statement confirming not only that the lawsuits had been settled, but also that several Nirvana releases were planned for the future. The first would be a Nirvana Best-Of including You Know You're Right. Courtney Love also settled her lawsuits with Geffen Records over breach of contract in relation to her former band Hole.
October: October 2002 turned out to be the busiest month in this website's history. No other month has had as many news updates as this one. Early in the month I presented a rare interview I had done with Nirvana's former guitarist Pat Smear. Other interesting additions to NFC included some unique photos of documents related to Nirvana's Unplugged session, concerning what songs had been planned and more.
A tracklisting for the Best-Of album turned up around October 8 and received a detailed (not to mention critical) analysis from me. Shortly after the Internet appearance of the tracklisting, NME got hold of James Barber (Courtney's manager) who claimed it was "incorrect". Even so, the album (released on October 28/29) turned out to have the exact same list of songs as had been published on the Internet (most notably by Internet store amazon.com who removed it from their site after the comments from Barber).
Later in October, Nirvana's first official music video in almost 10 years was released. A collage of footage from concerts, interviews, TV shows and more had been thrown together to mark the release of You Know You're Right. It was played regularly on MTV and VH-1 for a week or two and received mixed reactions from Nirvana's fans.
On October 21/22 the 4th Foo Fighters album One by One was released, followed by NIRVANA (Best-Of) on October 28/29. This unnecessary moneymachine received much criticism from fans who didn't benefit much from getting a CD of songs they'd already listened to a million times. One of the few attractions it had was the fact that all songs had been re-mastered. In addition, semi-rare versions of Been A Son (a song that had no place on such an album in the first place) and Pennyroyal Tea were used. Dave and Krist - who both expressed positive comments about You Know You're Right leaking about a month prior to the official release - have not promoted the Best-Of and seem reluctant to discuss it.
The day the album was released in Europe I was invited to appear on a 3-hour Nirvana show by the biggest radio station in Denmark. I was interviewed about this website and got the opportunity to answer Nirvana questions from the listeners, both on the air and per e-mail. In addition, they were kind enough to play my favorite Nirvana song "Sappy" - a rare guest on the Danish airwaves. Thanks to Christina for everything!
The month proved, as mentioned, to be one of the busiest in this website's history and ultimately forced me to move the site to a so-called dedicated server. Virtual (sharing) hosting had eventually proved to be impossible because of the amount of visitors and the high rate of data being transferred. The only solution (which was already suggested to me by a number of hosts as far back as 2-3 years) was to obtain a dedicated server for NFC - meaning that one machine would host this website alone. The transfer was completed in late October and early November, leaving a few days where the site was down entirely. Today all aspects of NFC (hereunder the five domains nirvanaclub.com, .net., .org., nirvana2.com and nirvanafanclub.com) are hosted by the dedicated server. For those interested in numbers, it should be pointed out that NFC currently serves about 200 GB in data transfer per month to around half a million people.
November: This was a more quiet month after all the activity in September and especially October. It started off with the Dutch radio station VPRO releasing an interesting Nirvana session from November 1991 on their website. The songs from this session were already available in bootleg format, but lacking certain jams and in-between-song talking. BBC in the UK also put up their Nirvana sessions on the BBC website. The most dominating Nirvana-related event this month was of course the release of the book comprising some of Kurt Cobain's Journals. Containing samples of Nirvana song lyric sheets and plans for the band's videos and albums, the book focused less on Kurt's troubled personal life. And I don't have much more to say about it :o)
December: December has been an unusually slow month, providing a sort of anti-climax to an otherwise exciting year in the Nirvana community. Only a handful of updates have been made this month and there hasn't been any noteworthy news. In December the result of this year's dotmusic People's Choice Awards were announced and resulted in a very flattering 11th place for nirvanaclub.com out of the some 3,000 websites participating. Also in this month I did a mini interview with Bob Ludwig who mastered the new Nirvana album.
That just about wraps up this summary of 2002 - seen through a Nirvana fan's eyes. Happy New Year!
The Seattle Weekly published a lengthy story about the Kurt Cobain 'Journals' book in their December 25-31 issue:
" 'Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second rate freudian evaluation on my lyrics
when 90% of the time they've transcribed the lyrics incorrectly?' rails Kurt Cobain in Kurt Cobain's Journals.
The answer is obvious: Because even an FBI audio sleuth would have trouble figuring out what the hell he's
bellowing on those songs, and because his lyrics absolutely demand psychological interpretation. He wrote
cunningly encoded autobiographical statements in intentionally ambiguous and fragmentary lyrics, mumbled them,
buried them in artful noise, then complained when critics got it wrong. Only now, with the publication of the
journals (and the help of Charles Cross's biography, Heavier Than Heaven, which won the Timothy White Book
Award last week), can we fathom his mind and tease out the multiple meanings of some of those shadowy,
ever-shifting, multivalent lyrics." Read the full story here,
courtesy of Tim Appelo and The Seattle Weekly. Thanks to Caren for the link.
As noted above, the Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven recently won the Timothy White
Book Award for 'Outstanding Musical Biography' as part of the 35th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards:
"The awards are presented annually by the American Society of Composers, Authors &
Publishers to honor outstanding print, broadcast and new media coverage of music. The ceremonies were
held in New York in December at Lincoln Center, and hosted by ASCAP President and Chairman Marilyn Bergman.
A newly established ASCAP Deems Taylor honor, 'The Timothy White Award for Outstanding Musical Biography'
cites Charles R. Cross for his book, Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, published by Hyperion.
The award honors the memory of Billboard Magazine editor Timothy White, who passed away earlier this year.
Mr. White was himself a former Deems Taylor recipient, and was the writer of acclaimed biographies of Bob
Marley, Brian Wilson and James Taylor." Thanks to Hyperion Publicity for this one.
The Winston-Salem Journal also published a really good story about this year's Nirvana-related releases:
"Cobain is gone, dead at 27, eight years in the grave. He continues to make big money
for those he left behind, courtesy of a largely unnecessary new greatest-hits album, Nirvana, and the publishing
of his private diaries as Kurt Cobain: Journals. Millions of dollars will again be made by exploiting the
name of Cobain." - "The argument behind the greatest-hits disc is twofold. First, it can act as a one-stop
learning experience for a new generation of music fans who did not experience Nirvana firsthand. This might
wash if not for the fact that all of Nirvana's albums are in print, and the majority of the songs offered
on the disc remain omnipresent on mainstream rock radio and, in a twist that would not sit well with Cobain,
classic-rock radio." Read the piece here,
courtesy of Ed Bumgardner and The Winston-Salem Journal. Thanks to Fardeen for the link.
In the January 2003 issue of the British Mojo magazine there is a 7-page article about Nirvana. The article
begins by documenting Nirvana's performances in Seattle on October 31 1991 and December 3 1989. It also goes
over the problem with Nirvana's drummers and includes fresh interviews with people such as Mark Arm (Mudhoney
frontman), Dan Peters (who briefly drummed for Nirvana), Charles Cross and Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop Records.
Thanks to Bob and James Moore for the news. Note that the January 2003 issues of Circus Magazine and Total Guitar
also feature Nirvana specials. The Total Guitar issue features an article on the making of Nirvana and 7 posters
of Kurt Cobain. Thanks to Luke.
"Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was #1 in the 2FM (Irish Radio Station) 'Fab 50'
countdown." Thanks to Adam. More chart news: Nirvana has again managed to get the
top spot on Belgian's Most famous rock station's program 'Studio Brussel tijdloze Top 100' (timeless Top 100).
It's a program that airs every year around christmas time. Listeners send in their lists a couple of months
before and the list is compiled from that." Nirvana topped the chart with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
and also appeared on spot #43 with 'Lithium'. Thanks to Jack for passing this news on.
On January 8th at 10:30 PM, The Swedish TV show 'Musikbyrån' on SVT2 will air a Nirvana special. Thanks
to C-J Andersson and David for that one.
"Saturday night on the French TV channel France 2, there will be a
Nirvana special in the show 'Traffic Musique'. The girl who did the French translation
of the Cobain Journals will be there. It also says that there will be an excerpt of a Nirvana
concert, but I don't know which one." Thanks to Ben for passing this news on.
MTV2 in the UK will be having a Kurt and Courtney weekend on December 21 and 22. On Dec. 21
they are airing the Bare Witness special first at 2 PM and then again at 7.30 PM. 8 PM follows
the "No Apologies: Nirvana's MTV History" feature. Two Courtney Love shows (highlights of her
MTV2 US VJ'ing at 9 PM and Courtney's video picks at 10.30 PM) close the night. "Bare Witness"
is repeated the day after at 4.30 PM & 8.30 PM, and "No Apologies: Nirvana's MTV History" airs
7.30 PM. The two Courtney Love shows also air this day (Dec. 22), again at 9 PM and 10.30 PM.
Thanks to Mat and Nick.
"Nevermind took the #1 spot in Q Magazine's reader poll of the '100 Greatest
Albums Ever' (Jan 2003), edging out Radiohead. In Utero hit #11. There's also a review of the
Journals that gives it five stars but doesn't say anything substantive at all." Thanks to Randall.
At VH-1's recent "Big in 2002" awards, Nirvana were nominated in two categories: for the album "Nirvana"
(Best-Of) and for the biggest court case (with Courtney Love vs. Nirvana). They didn't win either of them.
This year's NFC Christmas Present is now available. Every year I put up some rarities or uncommon
songs for download (for a limited period) over christmas. This year marks the 6th NFC Christmas Present,
although last year it was a bit different, as it came in the form of a new permanent sound gallery. The
present consists of the complete demo that Nirvana recorded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 22, 1993.
Only one song from the session (Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip) has been mastered
and released officially. The whole thing turned up on the 'net a few months ago and includes two unknown songs
as well as a rare cover of Seasons in the Sun. As a little bonus I have also put up a rare live version
of the B-side Curmudgeon. Check it all out right here.
Heavy-metal legends METALLICA have been announced for this year's Roskilde Festival in Denmark.
There are rumors of the band going on a 6-week European tour next summer and they will quite possibly
headline other festivals as well. Currently the band is in the studio working on their 8th album. Earlier,
Iron Maiden were named as the first headliner for Roskilde so it's shaping up to be quite a festival,
with two of heavy metal's finest and most influential bands on the bill. Thanks to the Roskilde newsletter for the story.
The winner of this year's dotmusic People Choice Award in their Interactive Music Awards was once
again the official Westlife website. It is believed that more than 3,000 music websites competeted
for the award and now the Top 1000 sites have been listed on the dotmusic site. As it turns out, The
Internet Nirvana Fan Club landed on spot #11 in the Top 1000! We thereby got more votes than the
official sites for artists such as Duran Duran, George Michael, Pete Townshend, Sting, Coldplay
and thousands of others. Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for NFC! You can view the
full Top 1000 here.
I recently did a mini-interview with Bob Ludwig who mastered the new "NIRVANA" (Best-Of) album.
Mr. Ludwig is the president of Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, a company that has over the past 10
years mastered albums for an endless list of high profile artists and record labels. Some of
the clients they have worked with include David Bowie, Mariah Carey, Eric Clapton, The Cure,
Bob Dylan, R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen and many many others. Bob Ludwig also mastered Nirvana's
In Utero album and most recently the Best-Of compilation.
"Mastering
is the technical and creative act of balancing, equalizing and enhancing, analog or digital tapes
so that the finished product will have attained the maximum musicality and competitiveness in
the open market. A mastering studio must be both extremely creative and technically perfect,
since the master that is made there will be the template for thousands of compact discs, DVDs,
cassettes and records produced for commercial release." (quote: Gateway Mastering Studios).
Mastering is thus the final step (after the album is mixed) before the replication process begins.
NFC: Can you describe the process you went through when mastering the 'NIRVANA' album?
Bob Ludwig: All of the original master tapes were gathered up and sent to our studios in Portland, Maine.
I put the tapes up on the machine and decided how they should sound if they were being mastered for the first
time in 2002. After hearing inside my head what I thought they should sound like, I got all the right gear and
turned all the right knobs so it did sound as I heard it inside. Then I got the old CDs and listened to how they
were originally done and I was very satisfied with my result. I sent reference CDs to the parties involved for
approval and just a few very minor suggestions were made, which I did, and that next version was approved.
The masters I had [to work with] were mostly analog and they were from the mix rooms, NOT the previously
mastered sounds.
NFC: About 9 years have passed since you first mastered Nirvana's 'In Utero' album in 1993. Now you
have mastered some of the songs from that album again. What are some of the most important techniques and
technical options you have available now that you didn't have back then (some nine years ago) ?
Bob Ludwig: The biggest invention is the digital domain compressor which has, in my opinion, created
a situation where human beings are now listening to music more highly compressed than at any other time in history.
This competition to make everything so loud is a shame. Thank goodness these did not exist when the Beatles were making
their music. It tires the ear out and it would make one not want to have so many repeated listenings.
Fortunately, in this case, the raw energy of Nirvana's music makes use of this gear highly appropriate. It is fine
for Nirvana to be loud, it isn't fine for everything else to be loud. While I had my great room 9 years ago, I did
not have my present monitors, the Eggleston Works "Ivy" speakers.
They help hear everything on the tapes!
NFC: Wasn't it strange for you to essentially master the same songs twice and, sort of, correct your
own mistakes and/or omissions?
Bob Ludwig: No, there were no mistakes or omissions. All the original masterings were approved by the group
and/or producers and met their expectations.
The new versions are done with 2002 in mind and the level of competition that
now exists between all commercial CDs that did not exist even 9 years ago as much. In some cases, after living with the
final recordings the group, in hind-sight, had some different visions for the songs which the new mastering addresses.
NFC: Do YOU think it was even necessary to master these songs again? [Note: What I meant to address here was the
fact that the songs from Nevermind, In Utero and Unplugged were already available in high quality,
and had already been professionally mastered, prior to their respective releases in the early 90's]
Bob Ludwig: Of course it was necessary to master the songs again. The purpose of mastering a record is to make it a
unified whole as much as possible and creating a playback that does not require the listener to change the playback volume
from song to song. If even the original albums were suddenly in a new sequence, some mastering would need to be done to unify
the sound once more. Everyone who was responsible for signing off on the new project seemed very excited about the new detail and energy.
NFC: Do you think this album would have improved significantly, had it been released on DVD Audio instead? After all,
the capacity of a DVD is far greater than that of a regular music CD, and allows for Advanced Resolution.
Bob Ludwig: It would be improved in my opinion. I mastered it all in high resolution digital in case it does get put
out as a DVD-Audio or SACD [Super Audio CD] someday.
The 24 bit resolution, or the SACD would yield more true soundstage and reverberation and less low level distortion. The higher
sampling rates will yield a smoother top end with the anti-aliasing filters moved up an octave.
NFC: Finally, how do you value The Internet in relation to your work?
Bob Ludwig: Portland, Maine was one of the 2 beta sites for cable modems, I think, because there is a lot of fiber
optic cable installed here. We were a beta site in one of the beta cities, so we have had cable modems as long as anyone in
the world. We have a special extra high speed business cable modem which has a direct secure connection with the IP as contrasted
with the local "hub" that most consumers use and is not so secure. We create and host our own web site and we have our own FTP
site as well. While we still do a lot of work from analog sources (which I generally prefer) we work with a lot of PCM digital
[sources] that is sent to us over our FTP site. We recently did an entire major album that was completely sent to us over the
FTP site and all references were sent out on the secure FTP site. [Note: FTP (File Transfer Protocol) enable users to send (upload) and receive (download) data].
The Onion did an interview with Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam where they, among other things, talk
about the new Kurt Cobain 'Journals' book. When asked "What do you think of the
idea of their publication in general, and specifically the bits that slam Pearl Jam?", Vedder
answered: "We were the corporate representative of Seattle, or something like that?
I think that with whatever information he had at the time, however he and some of his peers were viewing
our group at the time, I think we've probably made any of those arguments or criticisms a moot point at
this stage of the game. I probably could relate to suspicion coming out of his brain at that time. It was
a weird time, and there was a lot of opportunism going on around the record industry, and what they could
suck out of Seattle. We were all very sensitive to that stuff at the time, and if it manifested itself for
him being directed at us, I kind of understand it."
Eddie Vedder further comments in general
on the publication of this book: "I've gotten to spend time with Krist Novoselic and
Dave Grohl, and I've listened to their bands since, but as far as the Nirvana records, I've had a hard time
even listening to them, because it still reminds me of a very traumatic episode. I'm still not comfortable
with the reality of how that all went down. I hate to even comment on it, because Krist and Dave and his
other close friends probably have more to say about it. But just me personally, I've just had a hard time
with it. It always comes back to just, 'What a shame.' At the same time, I've only felt in the past few
years that there's no blame in those kind of situations. I used to kind of blame someone for not being able
to get through that—I'm talking about the addiction part—but I've had a few experiences recently where you
don't blame the person anymore. It could happen to anybody." Courtesy of The Onion. Thanks to Jon
for the link. Read the full Eddie Vedder interview here.
Kaz sent in this info: "We will be holding a Limited Edition Photographs auction on the 12th
December which contains lots of Nirvana photographs. Please see lots 19-47 or click here
for further information and images. Commission bids can be placed online now here and
the auction will culminate with a live event at Proud Camden on the 12th December at 6.30pm GMT." Most of the photos
were shot by Steve Gullick at the Reading '91 festival. Thanks to Kaz and Cooper Owen auctions.
This Sunday (December 8th) is 'Nirvana Day' on MuchMusic in Canada (thanks to Randy for the info):
On Friday Jan 3 at 7 PM AEDST, MTV on Foxtel & Optus cable in Australia will air: "No Apologies: Nirvana's
MTV History - Don't miss this new special that takes a look at the short and brilliant career of a band
that changed the face of music. Tapping into MTV archival footage, this special will chronicle the band's rise to the top."