“I'll arrest myself, I'll wear a shield” sang Kurt on Lounge Act, referring to the tattoo on his right arm. Said tattoo is the logo for Kurt’s favourite record label, K Records. An often overlooked fact in Kurt and Nirvana’s musical journey is entering the world of Olympia. A lot has been said about marrying punk rock with the hard rock riffage of Black Sabbath et al... Yet the cross over between punk and hard rock/metal has been there all along, see Motorhead ect... The one thing that Nirvana did that was truly original was the marrying of metal/hard rock with indie. ‘The shield around the K’ is an revealing documentary looking at the K Records and the Olympia music scene with a specific focus on leading light and chief strategist Calvin Johnson. It’s probably saying too much to say it was Olympia that planted the pop seed within Kurt’s/Nirvana’s song writing but living amongst this scene certainly watered and natured it, especially from a lo-fi perspective. If you listen to the majority of the live/demo versions of ‘Come As You Are’ they are played with the amateurish I don’t care attitude of K records. We can probably thank Butch Vig for pulling rank and turning into the radio hit we all know and love. One thing strangely omitted from this documentary is the inclusion of Beck. Not a single word of him despite him having K’s biggest selling album ‘One Foot in the Grave’. Oh well…