Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was known for having a good sense of humor. He granted “Weird Al” Yankovic permission to parody “Smells Like Teen Spirit” after only five seconds of discussion, once tried to pitch a song to the makers of Ren & Stimpy and was reportedly a “huge” fan of Canadian sketch comedy icons The Kids in the Hall.
So when Nirvana came to Toronto in November 1993 (playing a hockey arena, fittingly), Cobain invited the troupe to “hang out backstage.” Scott Thompson and Cobain hit it off, and exchanged phone numbers, with the hope of getting together again some time in the future.
The following year, the Kids embarked on their own tour. When they arrived in Winnipeg, Thompson finally resolved to call Cobain after getting a reminder from Kevin McDonald. The group was planning on inviting Cobain to their Seattle show. “He was on our guest list,“ McDonald recalled in 2008.
When he got back to his hotel room, Thompson switched on the TV, flipping the channel to MuchMusic (the Canadian equivalent of MTV). With Cobain’s number in one hand, and the phone receiver in the other, as he was about to make the call, Thompson heard the news that “a body’s been found in Kurt Cobain’s house,” and immediately thought “he’s fucking dead.” McDonald’s reaction, on the other hand, was: “Kurt Cobain found a body in his house?! Poor Kurt!”
When the Kids in the Hall made it to Seattle a few days later, their arrival coincided with the public vigil being held in Cobain’s honor. Clearly this tragedy had a big effect on the comedians. Bruce McCulloch even recorded a spoken word song, “Vigil” all about how he didn’t attend the event, and opted to stay in his room because he wasn’t in the mood “to see beautiful 17-year-old children in dreadlocks, white hippies celebrating dark death.”
Cobain even made an appearance in the (almost) final season of The Kids in the Hall, in the form of a childhood photo of the singer. The picture was sent to Thompson by Nirvana’s management, and he opted to include it in the final Buddy Cole sketch, in which Buddy sets fire to his own bar. As Thompson later explained, “I always felt KITH were like Nirvana in terms of comedy to our generation so I wanted us to die together.”
CBC
CBC
Cobain’s fandom may have also been shared by the producer of Nirvana’s In Utero, the late Steve Albini, who later worked with Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, the Toronto group that performed the Kids in the Hall theme song. The unlikely pairing came about after Albini sent the band a fan letter, and even told a music journalist during an interview, “I’d charge Depeche Mode $1 million, but I’d do Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet for free.”
Despite all of this love for The Kids in the Hall, we sadly never got a Nirvana cover of “The Daves I know.”
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