"Breed" - Live in Edmonton

Being real for a moment, while I was raised on all kinds of music, I was definitely a Kurt Cobain teenager. Huge posters on my wall. Long hair and stubble. Endless strumming along to the songs on the guitar. And as a very unattentive, uninformed 13 year-old, I introduced the first song I ever played in public as “Nirvana’s Man Who Sold The World”. Oof.

And as I’ve said before here, nothing made me want to be a live musician more than watching the Live! Tonight! Sold Out! video.

A recent show in Edmonton was kind of pissing me off; things just weren’t clicking on stage in spite of all our efforts, the crowd seemed kind of listless, and the stage was so high and security-barriered that I couldn’t interact with the crowd very well. The band was out of sync, and my son was going to play a hockey game in New York City the following day that I was going to miss because I had to play in Edmonton. (If I had to choose between headlining Glastonbury and watching my kid score a goal in a game, let me tell you, I’d pick the goal, and it’s not even close).

So at the end, instead of doing our usual outro song, Seamus just turned to me and shouted: “BREED!”

And I gotta say, despite the fact that the tempo goes from 178bpm to 194 bpm—thanks SSB!— this version of “Breed” is actually pretty cool. Not to be too egotistical, but I seem to have almost nailed the Cobain vocal delivery and guitar tone. You could almost think this was the fella himself.