"I was talking with Kurt, and he said, You should join my band." The night that Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, and DinosaurJr's J. Mascis realised that newcomers Nirvana were going to change alternative rock forever

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."

"J. Mascis appeared next to me in front of the stage, similarly enthralled by what he was hearing. Of course J. got it; thr same lexicon of punk and hardcore that had inspired me had fueled his own music."

"I was a big fan," Mascis recalled in a 2021 interview with Stereogum. "I remember buying the first single in Hoboken, then going to a party in Staten Island, and leaving it there. Still pretty annoyed about that."

After the show, Mascis got chatting to Kurt Cobain, who made him a surprising offer.

He said, 'You should join my band'," Mascis recalled in a 2021 Uncut interview. "I think he was kind of sick of the guitar player at the time, Jason. I was like, Oh, yeah. That was kind of it."

"He definitely didn’t seem like some tortured, depressed guy that he’s been made out to be. He just seemed like a regular guy at the time. He was funny and cool to hang out with."

In an interview with Rolling Stone, last year, Kim Gordon too shared happy memories of Cobain, who she and Moore took under her wing from that night forward. When Nirvana released their second record Nevermind, it was on Geffen Records' DGC imprint, the same label Sonic Youth were signed to.

"I still have very vivid images of him laughing, smiling, and goofing around backstage," Gordon said. "And doing these amazing shows, throwing himself into his drum kit. Really just going for it in a way I’d never seen anyone quite do."

Watch footage of the Nirvana show that so excited the trio below:

Nirvana - 7/13/89 - Maxwell's - Hoboken, NJ - [AMT1 + Taper Audio Sync] - YouTube

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