In 1992, the band Nirvana ended their Pacific Rim Tour with two nights at Pink’s Garage in Honolulu. A newly digitized recording allows listeners to hear the set for the very first time. It was at a pivotal moment for the American grunge band.
Nirvana had just catapulted to unwanted stardom with the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and lead singer Kurt Cobain had married Courtney Love on that trip to Honolulu. Ron Whitfield was an amateur bootlegger who snuck a recorder into the Pink’s Garage concert. He and Nirvana archivist Nicholas Serra worked to digitize the recordings.
The Conversation spoke with Serra and Whitfield about their collaboration.
“So these shows are the two only shows that Nirvana played in Hawaiʻi, and it came at a really interesting time for the band,” Serra said.
“They're still relatively an underground rock band. They're popular, but they're not mainstream by any means. And seemingly overnight, now they're the biggest band in the world, and they go from playing small gigs, small shows, to absolutely selling out and packing these places," Serra said. "Pink's Garage in Honolulu is a relatively small venue, so they were booked for two nights. These are the last two shows of the Pacific Rim Tour, and they just packed the place.”
Whitfield, who was there the night of the concert, told HPR that he wasn't initially into Nirvana when he got into bootlegging.
"I got to go see the concert, and so I brought my tape recorder. Things started going south, and I shoved it all in my pocket, thinking I turned it off, but everything survived. And lo and behold, here we are," he said.
"(The show) was great. You knew you were seeing something new and gonna be big, how big you don't know," Whitfield said. "But again, this was the wedding show for Courtney and Kurt. They got married in Hawaiʻi, I think, after this show and before the second, I'm not sure, but that was the wedding show."
Whitfield and Serra will be doing a YouTube Live premiere of the recordings from Pink's garage on Dec. 23.
This story aired on The Conversation on Dec. 19, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
