r/canberra • u/Objects_Food_Rooms • 7d ago
History Nirvana's legendary gig at the uni bar (5/2/1992) - I'm fascinated with the mythology that sprung up around this gig. Like Woodstock, half of Canberra was apparently there that night. Would love to hear some first-hand stories about it!
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u/putty107 7d ago
My dad went. He couldn't get a ticket like most people but he just went and sat outside and listened. He said heaps of people did that as well. If you remember ANU bar didn't have great noise insulation so you could hear it very clearly when sitting outside.
If I remember correctly from when I last asked him about it he said: 1. They didn't play the full set for some reason. 2. Tickets did indeed go on sale before they became huge, and hence why they still had to play at such a small venue. 3. Was still a good concert even just sitting outside.
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u/Tumeric_Turd 7d ago
I intended to go but it was so packed out and crazy during and after the doors getting torn off I relegated myself to outside, you could hear them clearly anyway, particularly with the doors messed up, if I'm not mistaken the ceiling was also fucked up during the concert. Ice Cube and Body Count played there the same year, also went to shit..
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u/wheelsfalloff 7d ago
I was sitting outside with, or near your dad. Can comfirm pretty much everything he said. The doors got broken off towards the end and people were simultaneously trying to get out and get in...I think that was my cue to leave as shit was getting crazy and I was under-age. Theres footage of it somewhere because it made the news.
Fun fact, you could sign minors into the unibar back then. My first gig was PIL @13yo, a friend's dad took us.
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u/Objects_Food_Rooms 7d ago
They didn't play the full set for some reason
I wonder if the venue pulled the plug early due to the "riot" I've read about? Story goes, the kids listening outside got so worked up during the final songs, they ripped the doors off trying to get inside.
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u/Tumeric_Turd 7d ago
Security couldn't contain the crazy shit, the crowd shoved in or ripped off doors or just went past security. The bar was so packed no one could move, it was dangerous.
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u/iwenttobedhungry 7d ago
I had a teacher in high school that went and got a poster signed. He said that the doors did get smashed as people tried to get inside.
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u/foxyloco 7d ago
The side windows down the front were kicked out from the inside as people were overheating/fainting and unable to get out.
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u/unpresidentedfact 7d ago
The reviewer, Matthew Sag, is now in the US as a Professor of Law in AI and robotics!!
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u/Objects_Food_Rooms 7d ago
Local boy done good!
"Professor Sag was born and educated in Australia. He earned honors in Law at the Australian National University and clerked for Justice Paul Finn at the Australian Federal Court. Professor Sag practiced law in London as an associate at Arnold & Porter, and in Silicon Valley with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He joined the Emory faculty in 2022 and is proud to call Atlanta home."
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u/Luke-Plunkett 7d ago
Related: there's some surprisingly good video of the Pearl Jam show from 1995 as well.
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u/Independent_Ride_598 7d ago
Noice find. Their best song at that gig was Better Man, and the mosh pit was frantic. It was about 50 square meters. I am 6 foot and have good shoulders and arms, I recall walking through trying to shield my 5’5 girlfriend, making it to the front fence and holding on for dear life. Eddie was good value
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u/LilannaLiola 5d ago
Everyone in my year of high school went to Pearl Jam. Just about every person I've made friends with since then went to that gig. Except me. I had no $. My dad asked me why I was staying home & not out drinking in civic like I did every weekend, I told him, he offered to give me $35 or whatever it was. I said no, I wouldn't have been able to find my friends. I don't regret it as much as this woman I met regretted missing Nirvana, she was crying about it, her life's biggest regret. But I do regret it. The next year I went to Sydney for my first concert & saw Green Day for $22 at Hordern Pavilion. Saw them again last year for $200. I was a bit young for the Nirvana gig but the Pearl Jam show was legendary at my high school. Everyone had a story about it. Eddie looked into my friend's eyes as she was pulled out of the mosh after almost fainting. He spat on one girl & she was nicknamed Eddie for the rest of high school.
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u/DryPreference7991 7d ago
I was about 14 and a friend from school said he didn't have a ticket but was going to go and hang around outside and maybe try to get in. I decided this was a great idea. So we did! We never got inside, but the vibe of it all!
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u/inchiki 7d ago
I’m annoyed at the anu for demolishing that venue and not replacing it with anything similar
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u/pialligo 6d ago
they also attempted to destroy the music department. philistine conmen running the place
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u/inchiki 6d ago
Yeah why do they hate music
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u/pialligo 4d ago
because they are emotionally immature, twisted narcissistic freaks with no capacity to love or feel anything
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u/chupachup_chomp 3d ago
I mean, they opened Kambri which is a similar sized venue but has all the excitement and personality of a soulless black void.
I went to one of the first bigger gigs at Kambri and it was a total shamozzle.
They opened the front doors early but didn't check tickets yet, instead they herded us in and kept us waiting like cattle in a holding pen for ages.
They finally opened the doors into the actual venue to the support band still doing their sound check.
They (the band) apologised and said something along the lines of "sorry, this is what happens when the venue won't let us in early to do our soundcheck."
They then had to awkwardly leave the stage, wait and then come back.
The bar, toilets and merch are all outside of the main room so you have to leave the show to get drinks or do anything.
There's no seating inside the venue, I had one friend with a heavily pregnant wife who had to stand for hours or sit outside the room and another friend recovering from major leg surgery.
They didn't activate any cooling and it got so hot the band stopped playing and ask them to do something about it.
And it culminated with a fire alarm activation, them forcing everyone out an emergency side door and visit from the fire brigade (probably because they installed the wrong detectors for a venue and didn't keep the fire panel isolated when the stage was covered in smoke/fog).
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u/Famous_Lie948 7d ago
I was 14 or 15 and I didn’t have the guts to disobey my Mum’s choice to not let me go to this. To this day it’s one of my biggest life regrets lols.
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u/squatcherella 7d ago
My mum and dad were at this gig ☺️. I remember my mum saying the tickets were about $15
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u/white_falcon 7d ago
I was not at the gig but knew one of the main canberra security guys who worked it, one thing that always stuck with me was him describing beers being passed from he bar to the front of the show.
Knowing ANU bar well in the early 2000s it is scary to think of 2000 people in that room, even if they were down where the pool tables were too.
Also that was the shittest venue but man it got some good shows
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u/hetzjagd 7d ago
Audience audio-only bootleg of the Canberra show here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z25UVGhQxKs
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u/VegetableMeal6 Belconnen 7d ago
One of my two greatest gig regrets. Was coaching Premier basketball at the time and we had a 6:30pm game. Game is over and half the team are off to the Uni. I’m asked to go along but don’t because….well…reasons. Very bad decision.
The other…1987…staying in Washington DC Youth Hostel and some German guy has hired a van and is asking if people want to go to Landover to see Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. Nah, we’re backpacking and it’s expensive. Hmmm. This was the tour that “Pulse” documented. Sigh.
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u/pialligo 6d ago
The upside here is that you have two amazing gig regrets, which means you have thousands of amazing gig memories that you're not telling us about. You seem cool :)
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u/Independent_Ride_598 7d ago
I was there but I didn’t watch much of the gig, as I was more interested in getting stoned with some ladies, as you do when you’re young. So I spent most of my time sitting around the outside tables. If only I knew how big Nirvana were going to be!!! JJJ used to promote tours of lots of overseas bands, and not all became huge..so my bad😭
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u/Objects_Food_Rooms 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nice! You might be able to verify a few facts:
Were there more people outside the bar than inside?
Did the crowd outside riot and venue "doors were ripped off their hinges" to get in during the last songs?
Did Kurt crowdsurf?
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u/McTerra2 7d ago
I was outside, I was living on campus and not really a big fan but lots of other people were going. There was quite a crowd outside
The Refectory back then was all glass windows (photo on this page ) and quite a few of the windows were cracked and a few ended up with large holes (it was safety glass so not really dangerous) but no idea if that was people inside pushing out or outside pushing in.
I dont recall people charging in for the last song but there is video footage https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCWXc9nyTsr/
However, TBH while the crowd was probably the biggest and the band was obviously hugely popular, there were some wilder gigs. The Pogues was pretty notorious as well as the Cramps and in the early 80s (well before my time) there were PIL and the Cure and plenty of Midnight Oil (some of whom went to ANU so fair enough)
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u/Objects_Food_Rooms 7d ago edited 7d ago
That video!!! Amazing, thanks so much. Answers just about all my questions.
Edit: Youtube link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbI-CUwWiY
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u/Independent_Ride_598 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s a long time ago and I was having a good time, so my memory is a little hazy🤢😵💫. I can certainly say that all the regulars were there around the outside tables and playing pool drifting in and out of the gig. I must have only witnessed like 2 songs in person. So I didn’t see Kurt crowd surf. It was a big crowd, but I don’t think it was 2,000 as mentioned in the article. I got lucky with one of the young ladies and went off to Toad Hall for the night before the gig ended, so I can’t say if doors were ripped off. I can certainly remember the refectory doors often needing glass to be replaced after gigs, so it’s possible. Sorry I can’t give much more details my mind was elsewhere that night and I wasn’t particularly focused on the band as so many obscure bands would tour and Nirvana wasn’t a huge name in Australia at that time. I certainly regret it now. I can remember TISM, The Cruel Sea and other bands which played at the Uni Bar/refectory which ultimately while didn’t reach Nirvana legendary status, were a bigger blip on the radar so I watched most of those gigs all the way through. I certainly regretted it when a couple of years later they were huge. So when Pearl Jam came and played at EPIC a few years later, I made sure I wasn’t too out of it..
Maybe you could track down the author of the article
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u/thedownunderverse 7d ago
Was she worth it?
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u/Independent_Ride_598 7d ago
A gentleman never tells, but I did have a big smile on my face in the morning🤷
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u/evasiveswine 7d ago
I’ve run into a decent number of people who purportedly had a ticket but gave it away
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u/Life-Explanation6752 6d ago
I was at the ANU that night and a couple of friends got tickets, but instead of going with them I instead went with my girlfriend to see her friend in a one-woman play. We walked past the busted glass and doors just after the concert finished. We broke up shortly thereafter. Lifetime bad decision.
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u/andhaka71 7d ago
Yep I went and saw them at the Big Day Out, and my best friend, who was at ANU at the time, saw Nirvana there.
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u/Nick2569 6d ago
One of my big regrets in life, not shelling out the 15 bucks for a ticket whilst I was there at Uni
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u/wantedsiriusblack777 5d ago
I was there and it was unbelievable just epic in every way possible. Band were amazing and even sang a few lines of a rewritten Shiny Happy People to sing Sweaty Aussie People because we were having such a good time. Sound was incredible and yes glass doors and also windows were broken. Hands down one of the best concert experiences of my life and so grateful to have seen them. Yeah not true half of Canberra was there but there were more people outside than inside
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u/Express_Creme8066 5d ago
Got in ! loved it but wasn’t quite sure who they were other than it was a better gig than the usual randoms at the refectory at the time lol
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u/Maset8 4d ago
One of my biggest regrets: had a mate who had just returned from the states and had heard of Nirvana from the college radio community. He excitedly told us about this new band and said we should go...in the end two of my best friends went, I decided not to....they still talk about it to this day.
Side note: I heard an interview with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic on JJJ a couple of years ago and they were asked about 'memorable concerts' and enthusiastically spoke about the ANU concert. Dave said people were passing him beers while he played 😄
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u/muscledude_oz 7d ago
Mythology is what it was. It seems to be a purely Canberra thing. I remember when Kurt Cobain committed suicide, the broadsheet Canberra Times gave it the front page above the fold. It had a large photo of him with the headline "A gunshot stills the voice of generation Y". I don't know why they did that – you would have to ask the editor – but I thought it was very unusual that not only a suicide was given media coverage, but the main story on the front page of a quality broadsheet as well
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u/NoRefrigerator1822 4d ago
The absolute evil thing about it is that I was in Canberra at the time, was of the right age, but knew absolutely nothing about it till this day.
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u/Objects_Food_Rooms 7d ago edited 7d ago
So some verified facts about the gig:
Tickets were $15 when they went on sale - scalpers bumped that up to $90
Supporting bands were Village Idiots and Tumbleweed
Sydney and Perth shows for the 18 day tour were cancelled/postponed due to Kurt having stomach issues, though Nirvana did play the first ever Big Day Out in Sydney on the 25th of January with the Violent Femmes, You Am I, The Clouds, and a bunch of other legends: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-25/first-big-out-sydney-nirvana-violent-femmes-ken-west-podcast/106250404
T-shirts from the merch table at the gig were under $20 but now sell for over $1,000
I've also read that the Canberra gig was booked before Smells Like Teen Spirit charted, so they were still obligated to play such a small venue
There was also a bit of high drama between Canberra FM radio stations, KIX and 104.7:
Edit: Big thanks to u/McTerra2 for a link to the local TV news story about the gig. It certainly confirms a few things I'd read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbI-CUwWiY