Smells like teen spirit: the Powerhouse takes us on a grungy trip back to the ’90s

In late 1991 and early 1992 in Perth, Western Australia, you couldn’t walk into a pub, club, bar, or record shop without coming across a photocopied petition that demanded Nirvana, who would play their first Australian gig at Sydney’s Phoenician Club on January 24, 1992, add the city to their inaugural (and, as it turned out, only) Australian tour. The Perth show had been cancelled due to Kurt Cobain’s ill-health, and the sandgropers were incensed. I know – I was one of them.

Pages from that petition are now on display in the Powerhouse Museum as part of the new exhibition, Unpopular, which charts the exploits of music promoter Steve “Pav” Pavlovic. The names have been carefully covered to anonymise the angry Westies, which is a shame; if my name isn’t on there, the names of people I know certainly are. It’s not the biggest ticket item on display – that’d be the 1959 Martin D-18E guitar Cobain played on MTV Unplugged, on loan from Rode Microphones founder Peter Freedman – but it’s personal, tactile, and evidence of the hands-on, grassroots approach that Pav took when he has bringing over the likes of Mudhoney, Hole, and Fugazi back in the day.

“I was doing things that I love,” Pav explains of his fan-first philosophy. “And at that point in time I loved those bands and it was exciting to me and I had the opportunity to do it, so I did it.”

_{Photograph: Powerhouse/Zan Wimberley}

Pav was only 25 years old when he toured Nirvana, and by sheer luck the Australian tour coincided with Nevermind smashing the US Billboard charts, changing the young music fan’s life completely. Overnight he went from booking bands for the Lansdowne Hotel in Chippendale (a pub with an ongoing legacy of great live music) to being an international player, going on to found the Summersault festival and, later, Modular Recordings, the home of Tame Impala, the Avalanches, the Presets and more.

But Unpopular keeps the focus on his ‘90s work, with his later achievements slated for a second exhibition and a book he’s authoring (he jokes he wants to do three exhibitions: “Unpopular, then Really Unpopular, then Fucking Unpopular!”). Over 200 items are on display, including candid polaroids, tour diaries, postcards, and archival footage of the Summersault tour – soundtracked by no less a luminary than the Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis – and that fabled Nirvana gig at the Phoenician, a former Ultimo venue with a legendary rock concert history. Handwritten setlists sit under glass alongside photocopied fanzines. It’s like a pharaoh’s tomb fitted out with grunge memorabilia instead of gold statuary.

It’s like a pharaoh’s tomb fitted out with grunge memorabilia instead of gold statuary

Curating the exhibition, which is mostly drawn from Pavlovic’s personal collection of artifacts, proved challenging for a man with his eyes fixed firmly on the future. “You know, I'm an incredibly in-the-moment kind of person,” he says. “I don't often reflect or look back. So, the fact that I spent two and a half years going through the past was insanely fucking weird.”

For ageing Gen-Xers, Unpopular is a near-lethal dose of nostalgia, harkening back to a time when the Seattle Sound dominated popular music – a phenomenon Pavlovic cops to sharing some responsibility for. “I brought all those things to Australia, which then kind of dumbed down our scene in its own way. Suddenly everyone goes, ‘I wanna sound like Nirvana, I wanna sound like Mudhoney’ and those bands had a big impact on the local scene. People would start trying to mimic or copy… well, let's just say they were ‘inspired’ by those people, so they took their inspiration and sometimes wore it too hard on the sleeve.”

_{Photograph: Powerhouse/Zan Wimberley}

But Unpopular is here not to bury grunge, but to praise it. As a cultural snapshot of the ‘90s music scene, it’s invaluable – brilliantly evoking the tough attitude and DIY ethos of bands like Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth and the Foo Fighters. There’s even rare footage of a baby-faced Ben Lee interviewing some of his favourite bands backstage at Summersault ‘95. Those who came after the age of flannel will find it a fantastic history lesson, and as for those of us who were there at the time – well, you’ve got a fair chance of spotting yourself in the crowd shots.

Unpopular is free to visit at the Powerhouse Museum, Ultimo, until June 3, 2023. There is also a series of ticketed film screenings, art and photography workshops. Find out more here.

Want more? Check out the best art exhibitions to see in Sydney this month.