Today on TDWS, we sat down with Nabil Ayers — president of Beggars Records, co-founder of Sonic Boom, author of My Life in the Sunshine, podcaster, and proud GenX multi-hyphenate — to dig into his Substack story about his favorite live shows ever:
We started where we had to: Nabil was at the OK Hotel the night Nirvana played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time. He was 19, had only ended up there because he’d been turned away from a Cameron Crowe casting call for Singles. He knew something had happened. He just didn’t know yet what.
From there, the conversation wound through the Seattle scene we both lived — the Crocodile, Sonic Boom, the Three Imaginary Girls-era bands — and out to the bigger stages: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour as a Broadway production that the audience had memorized, arena rock roots neither of us is ashamed of, the Bryan Adams/Survivor show that was, weirdly, very loud and very good.
His pick for most GenX song of all time? “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” of course.
Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Caro Henry, Char Sundust, Polly Walker Blakemore, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning in. We love you, mean it!
