Newcastle Drummer Given Shout Out By Official Nirvana Page

Local drummer Kye Smith’s star is well and truly on the rise. After being booked to perform his Beatles 5 Minute Drum Chronology during the halftime at a New York Knicks game, the Newcastle metronome’s 5-minute drum chronology of songs from the Nirvana catalogue has been shared on Nirvana’s own official Facebook page.

If reaching a potential 28 million fans isn’t enough, the article has already been liked by over 11,000 people and shared by over 2,000 so far (correct at the time of writing), not to mention the honour of receiving recognition from, um, just a band called Nirvana (you might have head of them).

Smith is the drummer for NSW punk rock band Local Resident Failure and started drawing global attention to himself when he released punk drum covers online. The chronology video series, which the Nirvana covers are a part of, have gained him fans in the likes NOFX and Lagwagon according to The Music, and a gig standing in for drummer Gordy Forman in Frenzal Rhomb for a few months after Forman broke his arm stage-diving at a gig in Perth. Not bad.

With over 40,000 subscribers to his Youtube channel, Smith has his own clout in the social space, but is no doubt delighted nonetheless to have been singled out by his idols.

“Nirvana paved the way for a lot of punk bands to be able to gain commercial success and become more accessible,” he wrote when he originally posted the video. “Without them I may not have found this music and probably wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today.”

Watch: Kye Smith performs a 5 Minute Drum Chronology of Nirvana songs