On July 8, 1989, a young music fan named Aadam Jacobs, with a compact Sony cassette recorder in his pocket, went to see an up-and-coming rock band from Washington for their debut show in Chicago. After a blast of guitar feedback, 20-year-old Kurt Cobain politely announced to the crowd at the small club called Dreamerz: “Hello, we're Nirvana. We're from Seattle. ” With that, the band, then a quartet, launched into the riff-heavy first song, “School. ”Jacobs surreptitiously recorded the...