Vendetagainst
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| "Vendetagainst" | ||
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| Song by Nirvana | ||
| from the album 'With the Lights Out' | ||
| Released | November 23, 2004 | |
| Recorded | April 17 1987, KAOS Olympia Community Radio, Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA | |
| Genre | Grunge | |
| Length | 2:41 | |
| Label | Geffen | |
"Vendetagainst" is a song by the American alternative rock/grunge band Nirvana. The song is also known under titles like "Help", "Help Me" and "Help Me, I'm Hungry", and was officially released at the 2004 box set With the Lights Out under the latter title. It is, however, extremely likely that the song's correct name should be "Vendetagainst". The other titles are believed to be invented by bootleggers.
[edit] Song history
"Vendetagainst" was written in early 1987 by Nirvana singer, guitarist and frontman Kurt Cobain. The song was first performed on April 17 the same year at the KAOS Olympia Community Radio at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The show also marked Nirvana's first professional recording, which served as a demo tape for the band for the following months. A setlist of this show was published in the book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (ISBN 0-385-47199-8). A transcription of it can be found here.
The show later became available on several trading circle tapes. For reasons unclear however, all of them missed the very last song, which was, according to the setlist, named "Vendetagainst".
Nirvana continued to play the song live at concerts the following years. There are three known recordings of this:
- November 5 1989, Amsterdam, Holland
- November 8 1989, Köln, Germany
- November 22 1989, Vienna, Austria
There is also one jam known about this song, which was played during a concert in New York on 28 September 1991. This song is widly known as "Come on Death"
[edit] Bootlegging and eventual surface
All of the above mentioned recordings appeared on several bootlegs. As bootleggers were unaware of the actual title of the song, they invented a name for it on their own, most of them beginning with the word "Help". The jam became best known under the name "Help Me - Dead Jam", although it is also known under the names "Come On Death" and "Improvisation". For years, "Help Me" and "Vendetagainst" were thought to be two completely different songs, with "Vendetagainst" being a mysterious and yet unsurfaced song. A song which was known to have been played during the KAOS Olympia Community Radio show on April 17 1987 and to have been mentioned by Cobain in the book Journals on page 78 (ISBN 1-57322-232-1).
It was therefore a big surpise that the last song of the April 17 1987 show eventually surfaced (and was officially released) on the 2004 box set With the Lights Out. A song which was thus titled "Vendetagainst" according to the mentioned setlist. Strangely, the box set listed the song as "Help Me, I'm Hungry", causing confusion among fans. It should be noted however that, like many other posthumous Nirvana releases, With the Lights Out contains several inaccuracies and 'wild guesses' in its liner notes. In the lyrics for the officially released version, Cobain can be heard singing "Mommy has a vendetta 'gainst Daddy." Taking this into account, it is more than likely that the original title of this song should, in fact, be Vendetagainst.
