All kidding aside, Nevermind was and still is a great album that marked a shift in music and culture. It was often emulated, but never really matched. Kurt Cobain and crew had a profound influence on the youth of the day and the music still continues to hold a special place in a lot of people’s hearts.

We will forgive them for giving birth to the mid-90s.

In honor of Nevermind‘s birthday, VEVO is streaming a never-before-seen 1991 concert. “Live at the Paramount” features classics like “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Polly,” “Breed,” “Lithium” and a cover of the Vaselines’ “Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam.”

The concert will be available on-demand for 24 hours, and it started at 12 pm EST Tuesday. That mean’s you’ve got until Noon EST Wednesday to watch it. From VEVO’s blog on Monday:

It’s been two decades since bleached blonde hair, flannel and teen spirit were paired in such a way that they’ll forever remain symbols of Nirvana‘s slice in time. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band’s ground-breaking album Nevermind, we’re bringing you an exclusive commercial-free, on-demand airing of the band’s 1991 concert, Live at Paramount. Beginning tomorrow at 12 pm ET/5pm GMT, you can watch Kurt, Krist and Dave rock out in high-definition from your laptop, TV, iPad, or even from the VEVO app, right on your phone, for 24 straight hours.

Since it was originally a Halloween concert, VEVO will stream it again on Halloween for another 24 hours.

Watch the concert in its entirety here -

The streaming actually started yesterday, with bands like: Coldplay, The Kills, Bright Eyes, Mountain Goats, Two Door Cinema Club, White Lies, and others. Today’s schedule looks like this (times are Central):

1:45 – J. Roddy Walston and the Business

2:15 – Walk the Moon

2:30 – Fitz and the Tantrums

3:00 – Black Lips

3:30 – Mayer Hawthorne and the County

4:00 – Death From Above 1979

4:30 – Big Audio Dynamite

5:30 – Local Natives

6:00 – Ween

7:30 – Beats Antique

8:00 – My Morning Jacket

I’ve seen Local Natives (at SXSW in Austin) and My Morning Jacket (here in Lexington) this year, and I can vouch for both being performances you don’t want to miss.

This won’t be the first time YouTube has streamed a My Morning Jacket Performance. When the band’s latest album Circuital came out, YouTube also streamed a live concert.

MySpace, Say Anything But That

So, my future stepson’s fourteen. Big YouTube fan. Likes his music irreverent, edgy, antiestablishment. I think that’s healthy and normal. His mother’s taught him right. He calls me over to the computer and says, "Have you heard of ‘Say Anything?’"

And I’m like, "Duh!" John Cusack with that stupid boombox over his head. And he’s like, "What’s a boombox?"

He says, "No, old dude," (I’m 30), and he brings up a YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because I’m sure it will be DMCA’d as soon as I do. It’s a tribute video, not the studio production of the band Say Anything’s song "Little Girls," with the lyrics appearing in sync with the audio, a Web 2.0 version of the old red bouncing ball, of which he probably also knows nothing.

The lyrics go:

I kill, kill, kill little girls.
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
It’s such a thrill, thrill, thrill to the world
when I kill, kill, kill little girls. 

The video cycles through pictures of little girls at birthday parties and such.

As my stomach turns, he’s laughing his head off and looking at me like I should be laughing with him. If the teenagers in the comments section beneath the video were standing in the room with us, they’d all be lmaoing and wondering why I wasn’t too.

I’m not laughing because I’m at once disgusted and conflicted. I think of Columbine and Virginia Tech, of child predators, of all the sickos out there that these teenagers probably haven’t thought much about between Biology and English. They’re not having the visceral, sad, sickening feelings I am when I think of it – it’s just a bunch of nonsense to them. They don’t watch the news.

But I’m also a defender of the arts, of free speech, and I remember how unjust and crazy and un-American I thought it was that Dee Snider was yanked in front of Congress to talk about some stupid song lyrics that the kids seem to get but the adults were outraged by.

And here I am, with only a few white hairs parked amid my dark chocolate waves, just one foot into full-on adulthood and still breaking in a 401(k), thinking the world is about to end because of a rock band. I could stomach Ozzie, Marilyn Manson and Mudvayne, but not this?

To be fair, judging from other lyrics it does seem to be some sort of shock rock attack on prettiness – you know, all the glossy lipstick DUI insanity inflicted on us from the Lindsay Lohan absurdities out there.

Other Say Anything titles include "It’s a Metaphor, Fool" (okay, fine, you don’t really want to put sixteen bullets in my head) and "I Will Never Write An Obligatory Song About Being On The Road And Missing Someone" which is just hysterical. 

With over 238,000 friends, the band is quite popular on MySpace, which is why I bring it up here. That, and by sheer coincidence, the day after I first heard their song about killing little girls, MySpace announced their first concert tour.

Guess who was headlining.

Weird, huh?

I tried to contact the band to ask them to explain the lyrics to me, but they have not responded.

I wanted to ask MySpace how promoting a band that sings songs about killing little girls fits into their aggressive campaign against child predation on their website, but neither MySpace nor Fox Interactive Media returned requests for comment. 

Live Earth’s goal was to rally the troops against global warming, and was seen by a reported 2 billion people worldwide. Musicians and bands performed in Washington, D.C., New Jersey, London, Sydney, Tokyo, and Brazil.

"Millions of people around the world have joined together to fight the climate crisis," said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer of MSN.  The more than 10 million streams MSN has delivered so far today represent a milestone in live Internet broadcasting.

"We expect to see an even greater number of streams after the concerts are over as people return to watch their favorite performances or enjoy them for the first time if they missed the concerts live."

The performances are currently available at MSN’s Live Earth Site.  

Popular Concerts Coming Soon To The Web

Hey Dave?

Yes?

I want to go see Coachella. It’s on the 29th and 30th.

Have a nice time.

Lend me money for tickets?

I didn’t quite catch that.

I’m sorry, I said, “how much are tickets going for at Coachella?”

Two-day pass runs $165 plus fees.

Fees?

Ticketmaster.

Ah. Maybe I’ll head to New Orleans for the Jazz Festival, it’s a shorter drive.

Big Chief VIP passes sold out for the first weekend. Second weekend is $500.

That’s in yen, right?

Wrong. Single day passes are $30. You could just save yourself the money you don’t have anyway and watch the feeds online?

But I want to go. One of the Jazz Fest producers said in the Wall Street Journal, “there are sights and smells, the things you can’t get online.”

That is true. The computer doesn’t have Smell-o-vision, so one would miss out on that fabulous, sweaty crowd in the Sun, aroma. Both shows will be online. AT&T and Yahoo are handling the Coachella feeds, while MSN is running live from New Orleans on April 30 and May 7.

Online feeds really took off last July. AOL ran live coverage of the Live 8 shows over broadband, and basically made MTV look really bad in comparison. If MSN or AT&T has learned from AOL’s example, which we hope they have, we should have some solid coverage of performances from both events.

As providers and promoters find better ways to deliver shows while managing to fit in advertiser spots without interrupting the flow of the broadcast, music fans should begin to see even more options for live feeds than what are available today.

Ideally this would give exposure to smaller independent acts that have built up a following. Considering the cost of bandwidth and the expense of covering a show (there is a people cost as well as an equipment cost), most of those acts will have to rely on being part of festivals that do draw that coverage.

Speedier PC platforms and better cameras in lower price ranges may someday do even greater promotional wonders for an act that MySpace and fans have done for British performers The Arctic Monkeys.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

It looks like everyone’s chance at winning the AIM e-mail promotion and its MINI Cooper grand prize will be at least one in a million. According to AOL, a million of its AIM users have activated their free e-mail accounts.

AOL has quietly moved from being a self-contained, subscription-driven Internet service provider, to a portal company offering advertiser-supported, search engine indexable, freely available content.

And AOL was lauded for its coverage of the recent Live 8 concerts around the world. While other outlets like Viacom’s MTV fumbled their coverage with poorly placed commercial breaks and too-hip VJs stealing time from the performers, AOL delivered a lot of great moments.

The company now will take another step at increasing the usefulness of its AIM and AOL-branded e-mail accounts. Working with Mountain View-based Plaxo, AOL hopes to better position itself against other free e-mail providers like Google’s Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

Plaxo’s services will allow AOL and AIM members to sync Outlook, Outlook Express, and third party e-mail address books with their existing accounts. Within Outlook and Outlook Express, Plaxo users will be able to tell from their contact lists if a contact is available for IM chat.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.