"1991" Documentary Featuring Nirvana, Sonic Youth Revisited

“1991” Documentary Featuring Nirvana, Sonic Youth Revisited

Thanks to Slicing Up Eyeballs for this neat tip over the weekend: 1991: The Year Punk Broke is making its debut on DVD later this year.

This documentary of Sonic Youth and Nirvana’s European tour of 1991 – a precursor to the breakthrough Nirvana would experience with Nevermind some 20 years ago – was released on VHS and laserdisc many years ago, and featured performances by both bands as well as other luminaries of the age including Dinosaur Jr., The Ramones and more. The DVD will feature a host of new and unseen bonus material, including commentary by director Kim Markey and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, a 2003 panel discussion held at Hollywood’s Arclight with Markey, Moore and bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley as well as Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis and – perhaps most exciting of all – a 42-minute bonus film, (This is Known As) The Blues Scale, with unseen performances and footage cut from the original film.

There’s no release date set for the DVD, but this link features both previews of Blues Scale as well as Markey’s road journals from the year of shooting the documentary. It looks to be a neat commemoration of an influential era in rock history. Keep it here for news on this release as it develops!

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Nirvana, Sonic Youth

Mike Duquette

Mike Duquette (Founder) was fascinated with catalog music ever since he was a teenager. A 2009 graduate of Seton Hall University with a B.A. in journalism, Mike paired his profession with his passion through The Second Disc, one of the first sites to focus on all reissue labels great and small. His passion for reissues turned into a career, having written at and worked for all three major catalogue music labels and contributing to Allmusic, Billboard, Discogs, City Pages and Ultimate Classic Rock. He's penned liner notes for Verve, Chess, Mondo and Soul Music Records.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Mike lives in Astoria, Queens with his wife, a cat named Ravioli, twin daughters and a large yet tasteful collection of music.