On June 22, 1989, three weeks after the release of their debut album Bleach on Sub Pop records, Nirvana kicked off their first ever national tour at a venue called the Covered Wagon Saloon in San Francisco. Kurt Cobain's band were playing in support to labelmates Tad, but by the time the tour hit America's east coast, a strong word-of-mouth buzz was building around the Aberdeen, Washington group, then composed of vocalist/guitarist Cobain (or Kurdt Kobain as he self-indentified at the time), lead guitarist Jason Everman, bassist Krist (Chris) Novoselic, and drummer Chad Channing.
Sonic Youth duo Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, and Dinosaur Jr frontman J. Mascis attended the quartet's show at Mawell's in Hoboken, New Jersey on July 13 at the invitation of a mutual friend who'd been tasked by Sub Pop co-owner Bruce Pavitt to "round up troops to go and support the guys", Thurston Moore recalled in his autobiography Sonic Life.
By the end of the evening, all three underground rock icons were fully convinced of Nirvana's brilliance.
"It took all of an electric flash of a second to see how incredibly beautiful they were and how soul-shredding the music was," Thurston Moore remembered, as a mutual love affair was born. "It would soon be clear that Nirvana was articulating something that connected not just with the punks but with the nerds, the freaks, the geeks, the losers, and the weirdos. That first gig at Maxwell's was high-octane proof. in it, I saw the seeds of the coming decade. It was going to be more than just cheap thrills, offering instead a radical reconsideration of musical expression at large."
