Smells like teen tribute; Ten years after Nevermind, Nirvana's

IT was perfect. One Friday night 10 years ago, Nirvana appeared on Tonight With Jonathan Ross - an early evening Letterman knock-off that went out three times a week on Channel 4. Introduced as "pwobably the biggest band in the world wight now", they were supposed to play Lithium, a song that blended their own brand of industrial strength Black Sabbath riffs with a Beatles-esque "yeah/ yeah/yeah" chorus making it the most gloriously accessible track from the equally glorious Nevermind album. Instead they played Territorial Pissings, a blistering two-and-a-half minute three-chord noise-fest. Kurt Cobain's cryptic, feminist-tinged lyrics were barely comprehensible over guitars that were so loud they drowned out Dave Grohl's drum kit. The song ended in a caterwaul of feedback as they stumbled off stage, leaving in their wake trashed guitars, a toppled Mesa-Boogie amp stack and a bemused Jonathan Ross.

It was a moment that summed up Nirvana: a band fiercely committed to railing against the mediocrity of their surroundings and who really didn't care about what was good for their career. Their performance on the Jonathan Ross show was only their second ever TV appearance and they didn't even consider playing Smells Like Teen Spirit, their breakthrough song released earlier that week.

For a generation of teenagers force-fed pre-packaged soap-star pop or poodle-haired cock rock for most of the 1980s (and who'd had to endure parental lies about how music was so much better in the 1960s), Nirvana wiped the slate clean. 1991 was - as Sonic Youth justly claimed - the Year Punk Rock Broke. It was perfect.

Just more than two years later however, in April 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide and it all ended. In the UK, Cobain's death barely registered on the mainstream media and when Oasis released their first single later that month it seemed to erase grunge from the cultural memory.

Except of course it didn't and now, a decade on from the release of Nevermind, interest in Cobain and Nirvana is still intense. Scottish artist Douglas Gordon tapped into this when he had himself photographed as Cobain in his tribute to suicide (bottle) blondes and if you check the internet you'll find among the thousands of Nirvana sites shrines to the dead singer and even a clutch that deal with that great American pastime, the conspiracy theory. Was Cobain murdered? Probably not, but that didn't stop stoner mag High Times publishing a lengthy analysis of the work of Los Angeles private investigator Tom Grant, who spent nine months amassing evidence pointing to that possibility.

And it isn't just thirtysomething fans such as Douglas Gordon who are keeping the flame burning: a recent caller to a rock quiz on Steve Lamacq's Radio One show had as her specialist subject Nirvana. She was 16.

Then there's this Friday's Nirvana tribute night at Glasgow's King Tut's when a clutch of local bands - including Closer, Sound Buggy, Flu-Jag and Kato - will clamber on to that famous stage to play their favourite Nirvana tracks. Many of the kids fronting these bands weren't even in their teens when Nevermind was released, but the souped up distortion of Teen Spirit sticks in their heads. David Wasson, a 22-year-old guitarist with Kilmarnock-based grungers Closer, remembers taping that song off the radio when he was 13 and deciding there and then to grow his hair long and learn to play guitar. It was a life-changing experience and, more to the point, he adds: "Nirvana was the first thing that was easy to play."

But while Nirvana have never really gone away, today there are now more parallels than ever with the circumstances that bred them in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ed Beggen, singer/guitarist with power trio Sound Buggy reckons that Limp Bizkit's recent number one is a sign that the level of pre-packaged kiddie-oriented pop that dominates the charts has reached its saturation point in the same way it did when Nirvana cracked the mainstream a decade ago.

"It always happens," he says. "It's in a constant cycle and right now there are four or five guitar bands that are making an impact on the charts. But I think most guitar bands like us don't really care about the top 10 and that was Nirvana's whole philosophy. They claimed they didn't want to make it, but they did because they were so good."

Wasson agrees and is happy that there are more Nirvana-influenced bands emerging in the Glasgow area. "When Brit-pop was going on, nine out of 10 bands we played with wanted to be Oasis," he recalls with a note of contempt in his voice. "Now there are more bands who have an affinity with us - Nu Metal or grunge or whatever you want to call it. And the very fact that this gig is happening at all, and that it will be popular says something, you know?"

He could be right. It could be another perfect Friday night.

The Nirvana Tribute Night is at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, on February 9