Best Coast played Brussels on Sunday night where they delivered an unexpected gem. “We’ll play a Nirvana cover now. Feel free to film it,” declared singer Bethany Cosentino before launching into “About a Girl.” Film it someone did, of course, and now the world can see Bobb Bruno shredding to some vintage grunge revisited, via Pigeons and Planes.
The cover was a few days early — and culled from the wrong Nirvana album — to have been a deliberate tribute to Nevermind, which turns 21 today, but that’s one reason why we’re posting it now. (We could trot it out again in exactly one month: the version of “About a Girl” the band made famous on 1994’s MTV Unplugged celebrates its 18th birthday on October 24; the original, of course, appeared on 1989’s Bleach.) The song’s hooky fuzz seems to fit the So Cal surf-poppers’ dirty fizz just about perfectly. Assuming Green Day’s arena tour is still on, Best Coast will be covering a lot of ground come January.
Before you get to the clip, how about some Nevermind-ersary links:
• What Nevermind Means to Me: Eddie Vedder, Wayne Coyne, Dave Grohl and more share their personal histories with Nirvana’s landmark album.
• Kurt Cobain Scrapbook: Images of Kurt through the years, as we ran them in the pages of SPIN.
• Eight Myths About Nevermind: Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross answers two decades of burning questions.
• How the Nevermind Boy Was Almost a Girl: The Story Behind the Album Cover
• The Rap on Kurt: Hood Pass for Life: Cobain’s relationship to rap.
