Next month, on what would have been Kurt Cobain’s 55th birthday, a collection of never-before-seen photos from a Nirvana concert in 1991 will go on sale as NFTs.
As Loudwire reports, the images were taken by photographer Faith West on October 1, 1991, when the grunge legends played J.C. Dobbs in Philadelphia, less than a week before releasing their seminal second studio album Nevermind.
Now, three decades later, 28 live photos will go on sale as non-fungible tokens through “collectible music NFT” platform Pop Legendz on Sunday, 20th February.
They range from $99 to nearly a quarter of a million dollars. There are four “one-of-a-kind” NFTs made from 10 previously-unreleased images being auctioned, that the “owners” will receive as a GIF alongside a framed print of one image signed by West.
Bidding starts at 67 Ethereum, which works out to be around $230,000 AUD. The 10 images themselves will also be auctioned off individually as NFTs. 10 more artworks have been developed from three images which will go for $499 a pop, with 100 copies of those still images available for $99 each. Proceeds will be split between the Trevor Project and Grid Alternatives.
Given he’s not available to ask, it’s hard to say how the late Cobain, who was famously uncomfortable about the commodification of his music, would have felt about his name and image being sold as part of an environmentally-unfriendly Ponzi scheme for crypto bros. As you might expect, some have taken to social media to express their dismay at the concept. See those reactions below.
i don’t know much but i know kurt cobain would fucking loathe financialized cell phone cartoons
— eve6 (@Eve6) January 21, 2022
kurt cobain not spending more than $10 on his outfits vs people selling pictures of him and his personal belongings for hundreds of thousands of dollars
— kat (@par1stexas) January 22, 2022
do you think they'll do an NFT of the page in Kurt Cobain's journal where he literally wrote: "Television is the most evil thing on our planet. Go right now to your TV and toss it out the window."
— mega them (@AmITooRemoved) January 22, 2022
https://twitter.com/watercoloreyed/status/1484991038183911426
You literally only need a surface level understanding of Kurt Cobain and his opinions to know he'd fucking hate this https://t.co/bmMs3ICBiI
— ?️emo time?️ (@ellnlvll) January 22, 2022
