Nirvana C/D

I was 18 and Bleach was the bomb. Coming after Mudhoney & Tad but so gutsy, urgent and nervous it was different, above the pack. It kept unexpectedly switching gears in the most surprising, yet natural ways. I still rate it higher than any other release of theirs. Actually when Nevermind blew up I couldn't understand why Nirvana provoked/deserved the big break, although I liked that record a lot, it didn't bring anything new to the game in the way the first album did. I guess it made them slicker and more palatable.

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but seeing the video of Smells Like Teen Spirit on a hotel TV in a remote mexican town during a long cross-country trip was an unbelievable experience. I had taped the record to bring it along, a gem I shared with very few people. Or so I thought.

"I've heard a track from a new band called Nirvana."

love this

Yeah, that was amazing to read those reactions.

Anyway, I'm listening to that Singles box set and it's pretty classic all by itself. Okay, it has "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which we're all so very tired of, but it also contains "Even In His Youth," "Aneurysm," "Come As You Are," "Endless, Nameless," "School," "Drain You," "Sliver," "Polly," "Been A Son," (the previous five songs being live recordings), "In Bloom," "Lithium," "Curmudgeon," "Heart-Shaped Box," "Milk It," "Marigold," "All Apologies," "Rape Me" and (yes, it's here) "Moist Vagina." All in all not a bad introduction to them, and leaning way more toward Classic than Dud.

(Man, after all this time "Heart-Shaped Box" still sounds incredible.)

Classic! "The Story Of Simon Simopath" and "All Of Us" were both excellent albums! ;)

That kid looks like Ch1oe Sevigny.

I think it's interesting that those messages were dated January 1992. The album had been out for three whole months and still nobody had heard of them. No wonder Spin magazine chose Bandwagonesque over Nevermind for Best Album of 1991.

I feel bad for that poor kid. How would you like to go through life with that claim to fame? "Yep. That's my peener."

I remember seeing the "SLTS" vid on 120 Minutes, it was first time I'd heard Nirvana. I hated it, I was thinking "put this shit on Headbanger's Ball and show me 'Senses Working Overtime'".

I honestly don't remember the first time I heard SLTS, but I remember when I bought it at Camelot Records, I bought Deee-Lite's World Clique on the same day.

I probably said this on another thread, but I was working in an adolescent group home when I first heard "SLTS", and I'm serious, almost overnight, those kids in government care (all hurting in some way, obv) threw out their GN'R CDs and replaced them with Nevermind. Its impact (at least on that demographic) was that noticeable.

Ha ha, that sounds like they all traded up Gn'R for Nirvana because I heard "SLTS". You know what I mean.

Kurt's whining about Guns N' Roses, and his steadfast refusal to believe that anyone could like both bands, is an excellent capsule of just what a fraudulent prick he was. He even went so far as to say that there were rival groups of GNR and Nirvana fans at high schools, with the poor little Nirvana fans being picked on. All this from a guy who stole a chord progression from a Boston song.

In Utero's great, though.

a fucking sweet ass boston song, though.

One of those bands that is an overall "dud" with the exception of a song or two.

rival groups of GNR and Nirvana fans at high schools, with the poor little Nirvana fans being picked on.

I never saw that quote but the Nirvana and Gn'R fans at my school were either cool with each other or one and the same...it was the Pantera fans that were bullies.

"I never saw that quote but the Nirvana and Gn'R fans at my school were either cool with each other or one and the same...it was the Pantera fans that were bullies."

I'm sure it was just something that Kurt desperately wanted to believe -- cool Nirvana fans vs. thuggish GNR fans.

"a fucking sweet ass boston song, though."

Indeed.

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

guys I'm pretty sure I've ranted on ILM before about how the SLTS chord progression is not the "More Than a Feeling" chord progression. Even Kurt Cobain disagrees with me, but they're not the same. (The rhythms are kinda similar though)

"More Than a Feeling" = I - IV - vi - V
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" = I - IV - bIII - bVI

So their at least both Roman.

they're

yeah

and SLTS is in a minor key, MTAF in major

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

I call bullshit, and the first Boston album is one of my all-time favorites ferreal.

no, the tonic is major in SLTS but they use the borrowed chords (bIII and bVI)

x-post

o rly? he uses power chords, it's hard to tell.

Can we not pretend that Smells Like Teen Spirit is a Boston rip off.

play it on a guitar with a minor tonic chord and it will sound very wrong, curtis.

"Siamese Dream" is a Boston rip-off way more than Nirvana ever thought about being

I think that's because he doesn't play a third at all, he plays a power chord, and adding a minor third to a power chord is more noticeable than adding a major third

xpost

but I'm not gonna argue with you, I don't want to turn this thread into that sort of thing!

The baffled king composing hallelujah? x

hahahaha where's Glodberg when you need him

I'm not that desperate!!

ok, i just listened to part of it and i think you're right! if you're going to play the third, the major third does work way better, though. the melody is all minor diatonic, though, so it's probably justifiable to say it's in a minor key. still, i can't help hearing that tonic chord as being major like, you know, the tonic chord in "Iron Man" and stuff.

I was listening to an old c90 compilation of Redd Kross single, b-sides etc and for the umpteenth time wondering why their big marketing push in the UK was spearheaded by probably their worst song - "Trance". Today it finally dawned on me that some joker at the record company probably noted the similar riff as "Teen Spirit" and figured that was going to make them famous. Result: Redd Kross sink like a stone, which is kinda sad as they would have made wonderful stars.

Boston>>>>>>>>Nirvana

I call bullshit, and the first Boston album is one of my all-time favorites ferreal.

kenan

I'm not denying that Nirvana are classic. I just like that first Boston album better than anything Nirvana did. As far as proper Nirvana releases go, I've always liked In Utero better than Nevermind.

Nirvana borrowed more from the Pixies than Boston.

well, i relent, because the Nirvana vs Boston thing seemed rooted in music theory, not casual listening. So I can't argue about that. I think Nirvana is a great, great band, better than Boston for sure, but that first Boston album is a-fucking-mazing.

But the sentiments in the lyrics are kind of almost the same. Kurt was just more pissed about it.

I understand about indecision
But I dont care if I get behind
People livin in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind

But how else to compare than to listen? I don't relent, but I think we can all agree that Pixies / Sonic / Muses was the blueprint for Nirvana more than Boston, yes.

"Teen Spirit" is no more a rip off of "MTAF" than it is of The Pixies' "U-Mass." That is to say, it's neither.

Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit

Destroy. Search Boston though.

So people just revive this thread and make the same two posts, huh?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

They're going to be doing stories on that Spencer Elden guy until he's dead.

Nirvana and Boston are both awesome. Boston is awesome music for rides at the state fair. Nirvana is awesome music to smoke cigarettes outside the mall to.

They're going to be doing stories on that Spencer Elden guy until he's dead.

him, the bee girl from the Blind Melon video and the girl from the Violent Femmes s/t album cover should form a band

http://www.recordexchange.com.au/lists/cds/images/1720f.jpg

For some reason this thread reminds me of Kundera's shpiel about the value of "lightness". My introduction to Nirvana, apart from the odd song here and there, was really through the odds & sods collection Incesticide, which was peppered with gimmicky songs that aped Aerosmith, the Pistols, Beefheart, and the Vaselines. It was kind of a jokey collection, but IIRC it ended with the visceral thump of Aneurysm, which left you with a sense of the band's power.

Two things struck me about the band at the time: first, that at their core most of their songs contained melodies that would not be out of place in a preschool sing-along; second, that there was something very satisfying about the texture of the vocals and the guitars, it was like the sound of an ancient sea-floor being dredged, and there was something purgative about it, like when Chihiro unplugs the stink spirit in Spirited Away. But that dredging of the psyche was delivered, as I said, in that slapdash curatorial style that was Incesticide, with its way of quoting diverse influences. So the ultimate effect was one of lightness: the band didn't make overbearing claims on your psyche. That changed at some point, of course, and changed definitively with Kurt's death. The music and the band accrued too much weight at that point, which made the band really hard to listen to, for many people, because that weight was overbearing, suffocating, it didn't allow the traces of lightness within the music (whether it's the kindergarten melodies or the skewed humor) to breathe. The whole thing collapses under that weight, and I find that only Bleach somehow escapes that fate, maybe its brand of pre-fame heaviness (which sounds unselfconscious) is innoculated against this suffocation somehow, I'm not sure.

OK, where are these kids?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Gentlemen.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/SmashingPumpkins-SiameseDream.jpghttp://getsomenoise.com/albumimages/52_Alice%20In%20Chains_Jar%20of%20Flies.jpg

Hahah, the Pumpkins actually put out a bulletin asking people if they knew where they were/who they were!

Here's a few more (including the Violent Femmes girl):

http://www.mtv.com/photos/?fid=1567095&pid=2561378

http://www.gittermangallery.com/publish/worksimages/1465web_LG.jpg
Priscilla, 1969 by Joseph Szabo

The girl in the photo is a mystery and will ever remain so. One day as I was photographing at Jones Beach I saw "Priscilla" in front of me and my immediate reaction was to make a photo(s) before the moment changed. I took a few photos, looked down to rewind the film, and put in another roll. When I looked up she was gone! ...but I had the photo and it is my most sought after image.