Nirvana - Nevermind

Like basically everyone on the planet, I own a copy of Nevermind by Nirvana. The only slightly remarkable thing about that is I didn't until April last year. As a grown man of 35-years, I bought a copy of Nevermind.

It's important to note that this wasn't my first copy of Nevermind. That album shares an interesting honour of being one of two albums I've bought and then sold (along with Back in Black by AC/DC). I think I'd bought a second hand copy from someone (but I can't remember who - I certainly hadn't bought it in a shop), but then ended up swapping it with a guy I sat next to at school called Johnny in exchange for A Perfect Circle's Mer de Noms - a good album, but let's not pretend it has anywhere near the significance of Nevermind. My spreadsheet has Mer de Noms as costing £6 (in November 2000), so I must have paid £6 for my copy of Nevermind. 

Of course, I didn't get rid of Nevermind because I didn't like it (the same can't be said for Back in Black - for some reason they never struck as a band I should really give two shits about), but somehow, at the age of 16, I already knew Nevermind well enough that I didn't need to listen to it. In the short time between getting into music and giving my copy of Nevermind to Johnny, I'd heard Nevermind for the first time and then played it to death. 

In the nearly-20 years between copies of this in my collection I'd listened to and seen live countless covers of the songs, and demos of most of them on the With the Lights Out boxset (and Kevin Devine's remarkably faithful cover of the whole album - I was definitely expecting it to not sound exactly like the Nirvana version), so it wasn't like the songs hadn't graced my ears. Plus, I've heard Smells Like Teen Spirit at basically every rock club night I've ever been to (plus as part of the seemingly essential "rock trio" of songs at the middle-of-the-road club nights at uni - Lancaster's speciality was this, The Day We Caught the Train and Seven Nation Army).

All that said, I have since found myself playing this quite a lot. It's album so closely linked to being a teenager that it's quite nostalgic, probably more-so for the fact I couldn't play it over the years. I hope Nirvana are still considered an important band when my daughters are teenagers - I like that these songs were such a staple of the life of every teenager-getting-into-rock for at least a few years around when it was for me. No matter what people say about Smells Like Teen Spirit, or how over-played it might be, it is just a very exciting song; it still makes me want to throw myself around in a mosh pit like I'm not a slightly-tired man in his mid-thirties with a perpetually sore back. I like music that reminds me I used to be youthful.

There's really not much else to say about the album itself. It's an incredible record in isolation, let alone in the bigger picture. It's not the greatest album of all time, but I can understand why it gets considered one of them (again, in isolation, but as well as the bigger picture). The only people I've ever met who have said otherwise have always found themselves endlessly singing the praises of Bleach or (more often) In Utero instead; I always felt they were being unnecessarily obtuse - even if you think In Utero is the better record, it doesn't make Nevermind a bad one. If anything, the fact that the only criticism I've ever really heard of it is that the album either side of it was better speaks to what a solid record it is.

Format: 12", picture sleeves

Tracks: 12

Cost: £11.98 new

Bought: Resident Records website

When: 04/04/20

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: download code

Nirvana - In Utero

I'm a pretty bad Nirvana fan in many ways. One such way is that I very rarely listen to them; the result is that every time I do, I remember that I do really quite like them. Same thing happened when I wrote about Bleach last year. It's nice to consciously focus on an album and be genuinely impressed by it (that's mostly why I started this blog), but it's even nicer when it's band that you don't give that much time to day-to-day.

Another reason I'm a bad Nirvana fan is that I don't own a copy of Nevermind (shocking, I know). In my life I've bought over 2000 records and cds, but only four have ever left my collection - a copy of AC/DC's Highway to Hell (swapped with Hugh for something), a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album (returned to the shop because I was clearly far too young to understand what the fuck they were doing), a copy of The Better Life by Three Doors Down (because it's crappiness outweighed the fact I was kinda enjoying Kryptonite at the time (it was very popular on nights out in Australia for some reason)). And finally, a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind.

I swapped my copy of Nevermind with my friend Johnny for his copy of Mer De Noms by A Perfect Circle (a band an ex-girlfriend once referred to as "Tool for girls"). I was 16 and I still basically stand by my choice. Even at the age of 16 I felt that I'd listened to Nevermind to a point where I didn't need it in my collection. I'd only been listening to Nirvana for a couple of years at this point, but I already knew those songs so well that I didn't need to hear them that much again. Over the years, I've thought about buying another copy of Nevermind, but I just don't need to - those songs were seared into the minds of teenagers for over a decade (and possibly still now?) to a point where I can hear practically the whole album in my mind. It's funny, really. Of course, none of this is to say that it's a bad album - quite the opposite. The other thing to note is that it is objectionably better than anything A Perfect Circle released - hands down - but I was very glad to have that album as a teenager. I'll probably buy a copy in the future and write about it on here many years from now.

Having got the obligatory mention of Nevermind out of the way, this post is about In Utero (I nearly wrote "Nirvana's final album", but I really doubt that would be news to anyone). In 2003 I found this 180 gram reissue in HMV Southampton whilst shopping with my parents. There were a couple of singles I was buying, so I figured I might as well get this too, since I was already going to the till; it wasn't the first time I'd seen it in a shop, just the first time I'd felt like buying it. In my earlier teen years I hadn't spent much time listening to In Utero - I'd heard it a few times, same as with Bleach and Incesticide, but never spent much time with it. I knew the singles, of course, but I've always enjoyed In Utero more as whole.

The charm of In Utero lies in what it's not - for the most part it isn't the polished, overly-produced album you'd expect the band to release, given they were the biggest band in the world and were following up one of the biggest albums of all-time (obligatory Steve Albini mention). Rape Me and, to a lesser-extent, Heart-Shaped Box are a little more radio-friendly than the rest, but that is a minor complaint (and, ultimately, not the work of Albini). On the other hand, not many bands would have the balls to put Scentless Apprentice or Milk It on such a hotly-anticipated album (Radio Friendly Unit Shifter counts less so because actively calling it out almost makes it ok).

Like I said, I don't listen to Nirvana much. The fact I have none of their (actual) albums on cd means I don't have the mp3s, and I rarely look through the sleeves and think "yes, I'd like to listen to Nirvana", but that almost makes it more fun when I actually do.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 12
Cost: £11.70 new
Bought: HMV Southampton
When: 08/06/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Nirvana - Bleach

I've been writing this blog for years and this is the first Nirvana record I've written about. It's funny given that Nirvana were one of the first bands everyone got into or heard about - it seemed that every band at my school would cover Smells Like Teen Spirit.

My introduction to Bleach happened back when I was at school. A guy I kinda knew gave a copy of Bleach to a friend and I was instantly intrigued - I had no idea who this band were but assumed they were a new, cool band - this was at least a year before I'd start to get into music properly so I really had no clue. When I found out that Bleach came out in 1989 my world was suddenly opened up to a world of music that was neither current nor of my parent's era (kids with older siblings probably never had this experience).

A little while later I was at the local library with my parents and found a copy of Bleach in amongst the cds you could borrow. It was £1 to borrow a cd and this was before I had a job so I had to spend my very limited pocket-money to hear Nirvana; I decided it was worth the money. When I got home and played the cd I was not remotely prepared for what hit me. Bleach, to my young and uneducated ears, was a wall of noise, fuzz and guitars. I had never heard anything like it.

This isn't some fairy-tale of instantly being converted into a grunge fan though. I recorded the album onto cassette, listened to it a few times before misplacing it somewhere. I wouldn't hear Bleach again until I bought this copy aged 18 - in the intervening years I'd had the typical exposure to Nevermind and In Utero and the cult of Nirvana and a wealth of other music. It was strange going back to Bleach after so much had happened.

Listening to Bleach now, and back at 18, I can't help but think of 13-year-old me sat by my parent's hifi being blasted with punk-rock for the first time. This album is so deeply linked to that early memory it's hard to think of anything else.

In reality, I rarely listen to Nirvana. I fully appreciate the status and importance of the band and I think they were very good, however I don't go back to their albums very often at all. Grunge for me was Soundgarden and Mudhoney. I like Bleach for its raw, dark sound. The comparisons to Melvins are much clearer on this album than anything else Nirvana did and I like that. School, Love Buzz and Negative Creep are by far the highlights for me. They certainly didn't catch my ear so well when I was 13, which is a shame - the wails of "No recess" on School should have been the thing I needed to cut through the wall of noise I perceived. I really should listen to Bleach more often.

I picked up this copy at a record fair in 2003 for a slightly pricey £15 - it is the 2002 reissue, which explains how it is in such mint condition (although I did end up accidentally knifing the bottom edge of the picture sleeve by dropping the record into it on carpet not long after I got it - an important lesson learnt there). I read somewhere that early copies had the "Kurdt" spelling but I guess they decided to crack that out again for the reissue.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 23/01/03
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: no