Nirvana's "Nevermind" (1991) : Track by Track!

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious Podcast,
<v Speaker 1>discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
<v Speaker 1>and nineties pop culture with your co hosts James d
<v Speaker 1>Grades and Jason Collin.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah all right, let's go throw ourselves into the marsh.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, even though we're in our forties, we can
<v Speaker 2>still marsh.
<v Speaker 3>Sure it can, Sure it can. I'm gonna stage dive.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna punch you just for fun.
<v Speaker 3>Did you were you ever? Did you ever experience a
<v Speaker 3>much bit? No? Oh yeah? Oh man, see this is again.
<v Speaker 3>You know we talked about in Raiders and Back to
<v Speaker 3>the Future, how the slight variation our age two and
<v Speaker 3>a half years older than I am, right, but that
<v Speaker 3>slight variation can play a huge factor in certain, you know,
<v Speaker 3>spots in your life. You got to see Raiders and
<v Speaker 3>you have full recollection of it. I don't remember the
<v Speaker 3>first time I saw it. I have multiple memories of
<v Speaker 3>being involved in a mosh pit because in nineteen ninety
<v Speaker 3>one I was sixteen and you had gone to college.
<v Speaker 2>And so it was an entirely you know, and it
<v Speaker 2>was yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, somebody bumps into me
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna have a problem. Yeah, hey man, what don't
<v Speaker 2>you to do it? What's your problem?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>No, I was.
<v Speaker 3>I was involved in several moss pits in my high
<v Speaker 3>school days. That's fun. So do you Okay, we didn't
<v Speaker 3>talk about what we're talking about today.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about this, okay, all right.
<v Speaker 3>So today we are again approaching the subject of two
<v Speaker 3>bands that change the paradigm.
<v Speaker 2>No doubt, there's absolutely no doubt.
<v Speaker 3>As not one of the bands I like, no doubt
<v Speaker 3>a lot, but they're.
<v Speaker 2>Not speak okay, No, not no doubt, Nirvanavana and Pearl Jam.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, with there too what I would call debut albums.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, Nirvana had Bleached ten was definitely Pearl Jam's debut,
<v Speaker 3>but the albums that made them the household names.
<v Speaker 2>For sure, and they came out basically at the.
<v Speaker 3>Same time, Yeah, exact same time.
<v Speaker 2>Pro Jam preceded Nirvana by just a couple of weeks.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Pearl Jam came out in August of ninety one,
<v Speaker 3>and Nirvana's never Mind came out in September September nine,
<v Speaker 3>twenty fourth, Yes, ninety one, September twenty fourth. Now, the
<v Speaker 3>single Smells Like Teen Spirit was actually released a couple
<v Speaker 3>of weeks before that, so it is even closer than that, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>the awareness of Nirvana probably occurred before the awareness of
<v Speaker 3>Pearl Jam, and so that's why we're tackling them first
<v Speaker 3>and then tackling Pearl Jam next week.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So this week is Nirvana's never Mind.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, let's just talk personally. Do you remember what you
<v Speaker 3>were doing, what was going on when you when you
<v Speaker 3>heard something off of Nirvana's never Mind? Yeah, So you
<v Speaker 3>and I have.
<v Speaker 2>Talked briefly about this. But in August of ninety one,
<v Speaker 2>I left for college. Right, I graduated from high school.
<v Speaker 2>I'm a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, and I'm
<v Speaker 2>in the dorms. I don't have MTV. I've got the
<v Speaker 2>radio stations or whatever. But so Nirvana was kind of
<v Speaker 2>a slow burn for me because I didn't have access
<v Speaker 2>to it like I did when I was at home with.
<v Speaker 3>Gable for Nevermind, for smells like teen Spirit. I have
<v Speaker 3>a very specific memory. I don't remember what the field
<v Speaker 3>trip was that we were on, but we were coming home.
<v Speaker 3>I think it was like a three hour bus ride.
<v Speaker 3>Who were coming home and this girl who had been
<v Speaker 3>kind of looking at on the bus, so I didn't
<v Speaker 3>really know that well started talking to me and she's like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>have you heard this new song? And I was like,
<v Speaker 3>I think I've heard this before. Let me listen. So
<v Speaker 3>I'm listening to her headphones with her, and she's getting
<v Speaker 3>towards the end of the song and she's like, it
<v Speaker 3>sounds like he's saying bloody nail, bloody nail at the end,
<v Speaker 3>and that was you know, that's kind of Nirvana's thing
<v Speaker 3>that you don't understand what they're saying half the time.
<v Speaker 3>And so even when I hear it today, I still
<v Speaker 3>I still can sing bloody nail to the end of
<v Speaker 3>this song. That girl became a girlfriend for a while
<v Speaker 3>after that, so that was That's probably where that memory.
<v Speaker 2>Step I give you that special feeling.
<v Speaker 3>Well that it does.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I would argue that this album had more impact
<v Speaker 2>on pop culture than any other album since Thriller.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, i'd say more so, I mean I would put
<v Speaker 3>it above Thriller. Wow. Yeah, I mean it was a
<v Speaker 3>it was a big, big change, a big big change.
<v Speaker 3>They're close, but yeah, I would definitely say it had
<v Speaker 3>a huge impact comparable at the very least. So that
<v Speaker 3>started off. The band started off back in eighty seven.
<v Speaker 3>Kurt Cobain had been grown up in a town called Aberdeen, Washington,
<v Speaker 3>which is near Seattle, like one hundred and so miles away,
<v Speaker 3>but couldn't really be further apart as far as psychology
<v Speaker 3>and the scene and all that. It was not a
<v Speaker 3>hip town, right, and he had what a lot of
<v Speaker 3>ds grew up with as a kind of rough life.
<v Speaker 3>His parents got divorced, he had some emotional issues that
<v Speaker 3>made it hard for him to stay at anybody's house.
<v Speaker 3>But as it turns out, those type of people connect,
<v Speaker 3>and he ended up finding a guy named Chris nova
<v Speaker 3>Selic who was also an Aberdeen guy. Actually got introduced
<v Speaker 3>to Chris through his brother Robert. Kurt had overheard Robert's
<v Speaker 3>band playing upstairs. They were really loud. Kurt asked Robert
<v Speaker 3>what was going on, and he says, Oh, that's my
<v Speaker 3>older brother, Chris. He's got a punk band. And so
<v Speaker 3>that piqued Kurt's interest because he had been playing music
<v Speaker 3>and it's you know, I listened to a thing whereas
<v Speaker 3>his guitar teacher is talking, and his guitar teacher just
<v Speaker 3>looks like, I mean, you're going to talk about Aberdeen
<v Speaker 3>being different. He looks like, you're you know, your dad's
<v Speaker 3>drinking buddy, but he's He told him, he's like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>if you want to you know, if you want to
<v Speaker 3>be big, if you want to be famous, you can't
<v Speaker 3>just do what other people are doing. You have to
<v Speaker 3>be unique and do something different. He's like, my gosh.
<v Speaker 3>He took that to heart because he came back with
<v Speaker 3>songs with chords that didn't be along together. But anyway,
<v Speaker 3>Kurt bothered Chris for a while to get him to
<v Speaker 3>join a band, gave him the a demo tape that
<v Speaker 3>he had made with a band that Kurt had started
<v Speaker 3>called Fecal Matter, and basically Chris just wasn't really interested
<v Speaker 3>and didn't listen for a few months, and then when
<v Speaker 3>he finally did listen, he's like, oh, okay, yeah we could,
<v Speaker 3>we could do a band. Yeah, this'd be all right.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not sure Nirvana gets as far if they're called
<v Speaker 2>fecal Matter, Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>No, I don't think so. And that's there are several
<v Speaker 3>interesting names that they tossed around. Fecal Matter was one
<v Speaker 3>of them, obviously, and they had started a group called
<v Speaker 3>the Sellouts, which was a credence Clearwater revival cover band.
<v Speaker 3>I just when I saw that the first time, I
<v Speaker 3>was like, Okay, that has to be a joke. There's
<v Speaker 3>no way.
<v Speaker 2>No.
<v Speaker 3>It turns out you can find recordings of covering Bad
<v Speaker 3>Moon righting. Wow yeah, wow. Yeah. But Kurt decided on
<v Speaker 3>the name Nirvana because he sounded beautiful. You know. They
<v Speaker 3>were they were pursuing punk music, and they thought, I
<v Speaker 3>want to have something that's in contrast to punk, you know.
<v Speaker 3>They didn't want to be another punk group, and so
<v Speaker 3>they picked a name that was more.
<v Speaker 2>I think that was a huge factor in their success,
<v Speaker 2>absolutely truly. Though the name Nirvana is marketable, Yeah, much
<v Speaker 2>more marketable than figal Matter the sellouts.
<v Speaker 3>Skid Row, though, was one of them that name could
<v Speaker 3>be successful.
<v Speaker 2>Skid Row for a later podcast hopefully.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Vana is just a great name, it really is.
<v Speaker 3>It is a great name. But then they started doing
<v Speaker 3>their own material. Kurt has a girlfriend that works while
<v Speaker 3>he stays at home and does his art and his music,
<v Speaker 3>so he gets it's a big amount of time to
<v Speaker 3>kind of develop his style. They have a few drummers
<v Speaker 3>that they have play. They have guys who sub in
<v Speaker 3>and when they ultimately end up doing well enough that
<v Speaker 3>they've got their own material and decide to do an album.
<v Speaker 3>They signed with this kind of underground album label called Subpop.
<v Speaker 3>Subpop's got its own history, which I don't have time
<v Speaker 3>to completely go into, but it is an interesting history.
<v Speaker 3>But subpop was just a couple of guys who went
<v Speaker 3>to these concerts of these bands in Seattle, and Seattle
<v Speaker 3>was this kind of unique situation where other bands really
<v Speaker 3>didn't go there to tour and there wasn't really outside
<v Speaker 3>influences coming in, so they kind of developed their own sound.
<v Speaker 3>And so you get bands like Sound Garden and mud.
<v Speaker 4>Honey and the Melvins, and they all knew each other,
<v Speaker 4>Like half of the crowd at any given concert was
<v Speaker 4>going to be other band members come to see other
<v Speaker 4>guys play, and they're very supportive and had developed their
<v Speaker 4>own sound.
<v Speaker 3>So these guys from subpop here, they're like, well, let's
<v Speaker 3>just start our own record label and we'll do it.
<v Speaker 3>And it became kind of this cult ish Hey, we're
<v Speaker 3>a member of the special club. We got some subpop albums,
<v Speaker 3>and then, in a move of marketing brilliance, they call
<v Speaker 3>a guy who's a journalist for one of the major
<v Speaker 3>music magazines in Europe and they say, hey, if you
<v Speaker 3>want to hear the Seattle scene, come on over, and
<v Speaker 3>they get the money together to fly him out there,
<v Speaker 3>give him the tour of the shows of the bands
<v Speaker 3>that they've got signed. He goes back and writes an
<v Speaker 3>article in his magazine and suddenly sub pop is the
<v Speaker 3>new coolest thing and the Seattle music is super exciting.
<v Speaker 3>Yea with sub pop. Nirvana does their first album, which
<v Speaker 3>is called Bleach. On that album, they had a drummer
<v Speaker 3>named Chad Channing, and he's not a bad drummer. But
<v Speaker 3>as our friend Arlen Bullard put it to me, if
<v Speaker 3>it wasn't for Dave Grohl, Kirk Cobain would be a
<v Speaker 3>barista in Seattle somewhere. I don't know if I'd get
<v Speaker 3>that far. But Chad Channing was good. He didn't have it.
<v Speaker 3>He didn't have a bad technique at all. He was
<v Speaker 3>a solid drummer, but he it was. Adding Dave Girl
<v Speaker 3>to the band was a step of magic.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, it's huge. So does Chad Channing lead one of
<v Speaker 2>the biggest rock bands in the world right now?
<v Speaker 3>No?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, right, Dave Gold does, yes, okay.
<v Speaker 3>And Dave Girl was this guy from Virginia who had
<v Speaker 3>he's quit high school to start playing in bands. He
<v Speaker 3>was drumming in bands and moved out to California to
<v Speaker 3>be more involved in the scene. And after Bleach and
<v Speaker 3>the tour with that album, they kind of said to Chad, hey,
<v Speaker 3>you know, you're not really meeting our standards, and so
<v Speaker 3>they had a few they went through a few other
<v Speaker 3>substitute drummers, and while they're going through that process, they're
<v Speaker 3>not really finding something that they super clicked with. But
<v Speaker 3>then they go to a concert with the lead singer
<v Speaker 3>Buzz Osborne of the Melvins. Go to a concert of
<v Speaker 3>this band called scream which is a hardcore punk band,
<v Speaker 3>and the drummer is a guy named Dave. Girl Wow
<v Speaker 3>and as it turns out, and they're like, oh, this
<v Speaker 3>guy's awesome. But then he's with another band. And then
<v Speaker 3>two weeks later, Screamed disbands and falls apart, and so
<v Speaker 3>the drummer for mud Honey he gets a call from
<v Speaker 3>Dave who's like, Hey, my band just disbanded. You have
<v Speaker 3>anybody that I can hook up with? And he says, ah,
<v Speaker 3>you know, the guys from Nirvana are looking for a drummer.
<v Speaker 3>Dave flies up, they get together, they play and it's
<v Speaker 3>magic instantly.
<v Speaker 2>Whenever Kurt Cobain gets together with Butch Vig. Later he says,
<v Speaker 2>we've got the best drummer in the world.
<v Speaker 3>YEP, and we're ready to go. Yeah. He says he
<v Speaker 3>has perfect metronome timing and he hits really hard. Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So Bleach had come out in nineteen eighty nine and
<v Speaker 3>they were touring still with Chad Channing at that time,
<v Speaker 3>but they decided they wanted to do another album. Subpop says, hey,
<v Speaker 3>you know, why don't we do an EP or something
<v Speaker 3>like that, and they're not really excited about that. But
<v Speaker 3>what ends up happening is they released this release a
<v Speaker 3>single called Slipper. Let's say he wanted to try to
<v Speaker 3>produce the most marketable candy. Basically lame as could be
<v Speaker 3>a song that he could, but that was the most
<v Speaker 3>had the most appeal to the public, and so that
<v Speaker 3>was that was what he did. They actually went to
<v Speaker 3>record that song during a recording session by a group
<v Speaker 3>called Tad, and Tad had a lunch break and the
<v Speaker 3>guys from Nirvana, including Chad Channing, come in and they
<v Speaker 3>use the equipment of the guys from Tad and John
<v Speaker 3>and Dino who's the guy who recorded Bleach for them,
<v Speaker 3>does this song. They do it over the lunch like
<v Speaker 3>Pad's sitting there eating their sandwiches, and they're in there
<v Speaker 3>for less than an hour recording the song as their singing.
<v Speaker 3>And so once that comes out, the sub Pop says, Okay, hey,
<v Speaker 3>we think you should for your next album. You should
<v Speaker 3>use Butch Vig, who's this guy out of Madison, Wisconsin,
<v Speaker 3>and he's got his own studio called Smarts Studios. The
<v Speaker 3>band's touring at that time, so they say, all right,
<v Speaker 3>well stop, we'll do an extended stay in Madison where
<v Speaker 3>we're going to have a show anyway, and we'll go
<v Speaker 3>in and we'll record our second album. And so they've
<v Speaker 3>got several songs on there that are similar to the
<v Speaker 3>songs that end up on Nevermind, and one of them, last,
<v Speaker 3>one of them makes it all the way through. But
<v Speaker 3>they had a week to record, and about five days in,
<v Speaker 3>Kurt Cobain totally kills his voice singing Lithium and said
<v Speaker 3>they can't really go on. Jonathan from Subpop flies out
<v Speaker 3>there and he's like, this sounds good. We'll come back
<v Speaker 3>in a few weeks. And re record, right, and then
<v Speaker 3>they leave on their tour and butch Vig doesn't hear
<v Speaker 3>anything for the time.
<v Speaker 2>Butch Vig was like expecting them to come back, and
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden, it's like, well, where are they?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, I haven't heard from him. But I
<v Speaker 2>do want to say this is I think very fortuitous
<v Speaker 2>for the band, because this is still too early. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty nine nine any hair bands are still ruling
<v Speaker 2>the day. Yeah, and the world has not really tired
<v Speaker 2>of that yet. So let's talk about that for a
<v Speaker 2>second off, because we're talking about a revolution.
<v Speaker 3>Here, right, right. So what was going on at the
<v Speaker 3>time that these albums were released? Right?
<v Speaker 2>Oh?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So September of ninety one, you had the top charts,
<v Speaker 3>had albums like Color Me, Mad Marky, Mark Boys to Men,
<v Speaker 3>Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton, Yeah, and the heavy hitting Garth Brooks, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>the heavy hitting songs like the metal songs that ever,
<v Speaker 3>I mean you had. It had completely changed the days.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we talked previously about Van Halen and def
<v Speaker 3>Leppard changing the way that music looked like. They made
<v Speaker 3>hard rock accessible to the general audience, right, and then
<v Speaker 3>it became what everybody wanted, and everybody was listening to
<v Speaker 3>hard rock, and the people who wanted more listening to
<v Speaker 3>heavy metal, and you had these bands like Motley Crue.
<v Speaker 2>Flappern, bon Jovi Za, Cinderella, Poison, right, and so they aren't.
<v Speaker 3>It becomes a bigger and bigger thing. People more and more,
<v Speaker 3>and so then what became at first a revolution becomes
<v Speaker 3>mainstream and you've got guys dressed in black leather, right,
<v Speaker 3>motorcycles around at strip clubs, and you're just like, this
<v Speaker 3>is this is where we are now, right well for sure,
<v Speaker 3>and so what we have with never Mind is a
<v Speaker 3>reaction to that. Now A whole lot of the guys
<v Speaker 3>who end up being huge players in the here it comes,
<v Speaker 3>here's the word and ready for it grunge grunge grunge
<v Speaker 3>scene are guys who started off as metal players. But
<v Speaker 3>of course they did because that was the most popular music.
<v Speaker 3>And if you're in a band, you're going to play
<v Speaker 3>music that styles that are popular. I mean, the idea
<v Speaker 3>is to do things that people want to listen to.
<v Speaker 2>So Fall of ninety one, for me, this is just
<v Speaker 2>post doctor feel Good, which for me, I love the
<v Speaker 2>album Huge Fan, and this is in the gap between
<v Speaker 2>hysteria and adrenalized right, No Deaf Leppard, right, and we're
<v Speaker 2>still waiting for Guns and Roses fall record right, use
<v Speaker 2>your Illusion, which does come out I think in October
<v Speaker 2>of ninety one. So it yeah, just down the road
<v Speaker 2>a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but there's this.
<v Speaker 2>Kind of gap and when those guys are gone and
<v Speaker 2>when they return, it's different.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, it is a it is a I've said
<v Speaker 3>it before, I'll say it again. It's paradigm shift because
<v Speaker 3>you look at those guys in the leather outfits, with
<v Speaker 3>the big implanted girls and the big hair sprayed hair,
<v Speaker 3>and then all of a sudden, you got these guys
<v Speaker 3>with dirty, unwashed hair, dirty unwashed clothes, torn jeans, flannel shirts,
<v Speaker 3>and they are a completely different scene. And it's something
<v Speaker 3>that a whole generation of people were like, Yes, these
<v Speaker 3>are my people. So they recorded Bleach in thirty hours.
<v Speaker 3>It ends up being this kind of underground thing they've
<v Speaker 3>Grohl had heard and was excited when they finally called
<v Speaker 3>him to be a member of the band, and they
<v Speaker 3>released Sliver, which is getting them more fame, and then
<v Speaker 3>they say, Okay, we want to do a full album,
<v Speaker 3>and so Subpop sends them out to Madison they're recording
<v Speaker 3>with Butch Vig. When they come back, Subpop is having trouble.
<v Speaker 3>And honestly, they're a new record label by two guys
<v Speaker 3>who've never made records before, so they didn't they just
<v Speaker 3>didn't know what they were doing right. But they had
<v Speaker 3>been so good at recognizing talent that major record labels
<v Speaker 3>were starting to court them to go, hey, how would
<v Speaker 3>you like to become a subsidiary of us? And so
<v Speaker 3>what happens is the guys from Nirvana go, why would
<v Speaker 3>we want to be with a label that is a
<v Speaker 3>subsidiary of a major label instead of just going to
<v Speaker 3>the major label ourselves. So when they sign with the
<v Speaker 3>major record label, you know, they have their own producers
<v Speaker 3>they want to use. But the guys are uncomfortable with this,
<v Speaker 3>and they're like, you know, we're this is our first
<v Speaker 3>time doing a big one of these things, and we
<v Speaker 3>really don't want to get pushed around. We'd really like
<v Speaker 3>you to call but you big back and have him
<v Speaker 3>record for us.
<v Speaker 2>I heard Chris talk about this and he said that
<v Speaker 2>they were comfortable with Butch because he was patient.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and so the record labels can see they say, okay, yeah, well,
<v Speaker 3>we'll let Butch Big be the producer on this one.
<v Speaker 3>He's at least familiar with the music that's going to
<v Speaker 3>go on it. But we don't want it to be
<v Speaker 3>over there at Smart Studios want him to come out
<v Speaker 3>here to California, and so they end up going to
<v Speaker 3>this place called sound City. Sound City is a hole
<v Speaker 3>in the wall in the industrial district of Van Nuys, California,
<v Speaker 3>where some of the greatest albums in history have been recorded.
<v Speaker 3>You've got Fleetwood Mac, You've got Tom Petty, You've got
<v Speaker 3>the young.
<v Speaker 2>Fleetwood Max Rumors album record.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean the You know, you walk into this
<v Speaker 3>place that looks like someplace where you'd be buying spare parts,
<v Speaker 3>and there are gold albums on the wall as you
<v Speaker 3>walk in, and there is a great by the way,
<v Speaker 3>there's a great documentary on this one that was directed
<v Speaker 3>by our friend Dave Grohl, because when Sound City ultimately
<v Speaker 3>ended up up shutting down, Dave's like, I'm going to
<v Speaker 3>go buy that soundboard. It had what was called the
<v Speaker 3>Neve soundboard, which was the big reason that everybody thinks
<v Speaker 3>that these albums were so well received is how good
<v Speaker 3>it sounded. In the studio and from this soundboard that
<v Speaker 3>they have the needs need soundboard. So when it closed down,
<v Speaker 3>Dave girls like, I want that soundboard. I will buy it,
<v Speaker 3>And so he made a whole movie about sound City
<v Speaker 3>and then the process of getting the soundboard and moving
<v Speaker 3>it to his own personal studio. Cool. When they were
<v Speaker 3>going to end up recording in California for the major
<v Speaker 3>record label, the date kept getting pushed back and kept
<v Speaker 3>getting pushed back, and they were so excited to go.
<v Speaker 3>I had been practicing hard, ended up having to do shows.
<v Speaker 3>Just imagine this when you think about the sales of
<v Speaker 3>the album they followed. They had to do extra shows
<v Speaker 3>just to get enough gas money to drive down to
<v Speaker 3>California and record it.
<v Speaker 2>It's incredible. It's incredible. And once again, I think the
<v Speaker 2>pushback of the date is very fortuitous for the band
<v Speaker 2>because the world was not ready yet, not quite.
<v Speaker 3>Yet, maybe not.
<v Speaker 2>This album costs about sixty five thousand dollars to make. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it sounds right, which is I mean you compare that
<v Speaker 2>to what Hysteria cost. Yeah, Hysteria costs five million dollars
<v Speaker 2>to make sixty five grand to make this album. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and then you base that on what it sold. I
<v Speaker 2>mean right, it's incredible. David Geffn Company only expected to
<v Speaker 2>sell about two or fifty thousand copies of this album total.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they only when they first produced albums, and this
<v Speaker 3>was albums, tape CDs, everything, they only produced about fifty
<v Speaker 3>thousand of them. Well, and you know, the first song
<v Speaker 3>was supposed to the first song the album was supposed
<v Speaker 3>to be teen Spirit, but was because they expected it
<v Speaker 3>to be kind of laying a bass foundation and then
<v Speaker 3>they're going to release the Come As You Are and
<v Speaker 3>that was going to be the big one. They had
<v Speaker 3>no idea what it smells like.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, this is us. Get ready because we've got this
<v Speaker 2>other song called come as you Are.
<v Speaker 3>It's gonna be great, right. But interestingly, when they first started,
<v Speaker 3>the album wasn't going to be called never Mind.
<v Speaker 2>This album was originally supposed to be called Sheep. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>as in people who buy this are sheep.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so they we're just going to say this. They
<v Speaker 3>had a definite idea about how they wanted this album
<v Speaker 3>to sound, and it wasn't like this album defines us
<v Speaker 3>as a band. They understood they had to build the
<v Speaker 3>following first, and so their objective was to make children's songs, right.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, that's that is literally, Dave Grohl says, children's songs.
<v Speaker 3>They wanted to keep it as simple as possible, and
<v Speaker 3>they wanted to have a melody to it, and their
<v Speaker 3>formula was perfect.
<v Speaker 2>It was perfect. And I'll say this. You know, Kurt
<v Speaker 2>Cobain talks about this, and we can get into this
<v Speaker 2>later about his actual opinion of this album, but he
<v Speaker 2>had an ability to write Beatle like hooks for this album.
<v Speaker 2>Even though he loved punk, his talent really lied in
<v Speaker 2>making pop.
<v Speaker 3>Songs, right. He had grown up listening to the Beatles.
<v Speaker 3>He had musicians in his family who would give him
<v Speaker 3>Beatles albums as presence, and so he loved the Beatles,
<v Speaker 3>specifically loved John Lennon. But what he does is he
<v Speaker 3>takes this dissonant punk. He writes these very hooky melodies
<v Speaker 3>to make. I mean, his vision is to make this
<v Speaker 3>as palatable as possible to the masses. And so you
<v Speaker 3>get these poppy melodies plus these heavy, roaring guitars and
<v Speaker 3>these really hard drums, and you get the punk kind
<v Speaker 3>of dysfunctional, tormented lyrics.
<v Speaker 2>It's a great, great mixture. Okay, before we go into
<v Speaker 2>the songs. Do we want to talk about the album
<v Speaker 2>cover real quick?
<v Speaker 3>Sure? Yeah. It's kind of controversial, yeah, but it's also
<v Speaker 3>one of the most recognizable album called it is in history,
<v Speaker 3>and that's I was thinking about that as I started
<v Speaker 3>looking at that particular aspect. You don't get that anymore.
<v Speaker 3>I mean now people don't go to the record store anymore,
<v Speaker 3>you don't flip through albums, you don't have posters of
<v Speaker 3>album covers on your wall anymore.
<v Speaker 2>It is it's dead, all right, So let's talk about
<v Speaker 2>the album cover. Okay, for those of you haven't seen
<v Speaker 2>it recently, it's a baby, like a couple of months
<v Speaker 2>old baby who's actually swimming little boy. Yeah, you can
<v Speaker 2>see his little beepe Yeah, and he's swimming after a
<v Speaker 2>dollar bill that's on a hook.
<v Speaker 3>Right. The record label wanted to like do something to
<v Speaker 3>cover up or remove the penis, yes, and Kurt Cobain
<v Speaker 3>was like, no, no, And if you decide to cover
<v Speaker 3>it up, I want it to be with a sticker
<v Speaker 3>that says, if you're offended by this, you're probably a
<v Speaker 3>closet pedophilia.
<v Speaker 2>Listen. I know for sure. The Walmart in my hometown
<v Speaker 2>put the price sticker on it. I am not kidding you.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, oh my word.
<v Speaker 2>So the Little Boys Beepee was covered up by thirteen
<v Speaker 2>ninety nine, walmart I was twenty eight years old.
<v Speaker 5>Now it's crazy well by Zoomna the Zeza.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so you know, we're going to jump into the
<v Speaker 3>album here and we'll talk about things as we go through.
<v Speaker 3>But tell me what happened when we decided to do
<v Speaker 3>this episode and you started listening to Nevermind?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So for me, before this episode started, I was
<v Speaker 2>obviously super familiar with smells like teen Spirit.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I knew Lithium, my New End Bloom, all the singles,
<v Speaker 2>all the singles, right, I knew Come as You Are.
<v Speaker 2>But I had not listened to the album. And part
<v Speaker 2>of the joy of doing this podcast, we really do
<v Speaker 2>do a deep dive and we do our research and
<v Speaker 2>we get into it and I listened to it, and
<v Speaker 2>this album is really, really good. I enjoyed it getting
<v Speaker 2>to know it. It makes me so happy, you know,
<v Speaker 2>It's it's one of the fun parts of the things.
<v Speaker 3>We do here. Yeah. Absolutely, As I had that experience
<v Speaker 3>with Pyromania, I did not expect to enjoy it at all,
<v Speaker 3>and I ended up being surprisingly surprised and liked it
<v Speaker 3>even better than Within Hysteria, which I had grown up with.
<v Speaker 2>That's incredible, and when we compare these two, it'll be
<v Speaker 2>interesting to see where both of us lie. But I
<v Speaker 2>found most of this album very, very listenable, very I
<v Speaker 2>mean it's hard, it's edgy, it's guitar raging guitar and
<v Speaker 2>screaming lyrics yep, but not screaming. I mean he sings them.
<v Speaker 2>It's just.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of yeah. So the guy from one of
<v Speaker 3>the guys from Sonic Youth described his voice as toxic glue,
<v Speaker 3>which is really I mean, it's like his voice captures you,
<v Speaker 3>but it's it's so gravelly and rough and then it's
<v Speaker 3>sweet at times in the right moments. Dave Girl said,
<v Speaker 3>it sounds like you're boiling nails.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it's so it's got so much emotion
<v Speaker 2>into it. Huh that pulls me in.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Whenever I listen to like, people are like, I hate it.
<v Speaker 2>I turned off, can't stand it. This is not that.
<v Speaker 3>No, this is the melody You're the Sheep. It's hard
<v Speaker 3>seeing I'm the sheep too, Totally the sheep on this one.
<v Speaker 3>We are we are the sheep. Why I had never
<v Speaker 3>listened to this album beginning to end. Okay, I owned ten.
<v Speaker 3>Ten was something that was I mean, that's been a
<v Speaker 3>part of my life for nearly thirty years now. But
<v Speaker 3>never mind, I knew the singles, I had never listened
<v Speaker 3>to the album. Had that same experience that you did,
<v Speaker 3>where I'm like, Okay, let's put on the headphones and
<v Speaker 3>see how this goes. And four measures into the song,
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, holy crap, but didn realize how good this was.
<v Speaker 3>And then five songs in, I'm like, holy crap, this
<v Speaker 3>is unstoppable. This is amazing. It's it is truly an
<v Speaker 3>amazing album. And for anybody who's listening who hasn't done that,
<v Speaker 3>who hasn't said, Okay, I'm just gonna sit down and
<v Speaker 3>listen to this album from beginning to end. Do it now? Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>well not now, wait till we're done, then go do it.
<v Speaker 2>I would say that this is more of a shocker
<v Speaker 2>with me knowing us, knowing you, and knowing me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I was surprised.
<v Speaker 2>I wasn't expected to like it as much as I did.
<v Speaker 3>Here we go, we're jumping in.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 3>Let's jump in with both feet and of course save
<v Speaker 3>the best for first. Smells Like Teen Spirit.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Smells Like Teen Spirit was released. It's the
<v Speaker 2>first single off the album Yes. This single was released
<v Speaker 2>August twenty seventh, nineteen ninety one. And like we had
<v Speaker 2>talked about earlier, this was an unexpected success, right right.
<v Speaker 2>They really thought that Come As You Are was going
<v Speaker 2>to be their big mainstream hit. This is often marked
<v Speaker 2>as the spot that grunge went mainstream. So let's talk
<v Speaker 2>about this song for a second.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>When it starts, yes, I mean, just the great guitar
<v Speaker 2>right there, and then lean guitar, the drums just blow up,
<v Speaker 2>yes and yeah. And then as we're singing, he's talking
<v Speaker 2>about stuff I don't really understand.
<v Speaker 3>Before you get even to the words, you have that boom,
<v Speaker 3>the boom of the drums and then the boom of
<v Speaker 3>the guitar that comes in, which you're just like, holy cow,
<v Speaker 3>because you if you've listened to him from sub sub pop,
<v Speaker 3>if you've listened to him from Bleach, and you hear
<v Speaker 3>this kind of raspy, change the chain kind of guitar,
<v Speaker 3>you're like, okay, ready for another underground sound, and then boom, boom,
<v Speaker 3>and you were like what am I? What am I
<v Speaker 3>listening to? And so this this goes to the fourth
<v Speaker 3>member of the band. But Vic absolutely this is absolutely
<v Speaker 3>his baby and his kind of tribution. I mean, yes,
<v Speaker 3>it's a great song. But they had this idea of
<v Speaker 3>how they wanted it, and they wanted it bare bones,
<v Speaker 3>and butch Big was like okay, and then commenced tricking
<v Speaker 3>them into playing multiple tracks so that he could put
<v Speaker 3>it all together into a sound like no one's heard before.
<v Speaker 2>You talk about double tracking, because before I study this,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't really know what that was.
<v Speaker 3>So double tracking is basically with vocals, it's you sing,
<v Speaker 3>You sing the vocals, and then you sing the vocals again,
<v Speaker 3>and your voice because even though it you know, it's
<v Speaker 3>still your voice, you're not ever singing it the same
<v Speaker 3>way exactly twice. So it creates this chorus effect on
<v Speaker 3>your voice. And so with that poticular aspect, butch Vig
<v Speaker 3>would be like, Okay, Kurt, we're going to do a
<v Speaker 3>double track. Listen. Kurs like, I don't really like it
<v Speaker 3>just being one. He's like John Lennon did it, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>I'll do it. And he appealed to this, I mean
<v Speaker 3>because he's I mean, all of these songs I can
<v Speaker 3>hear now, knowing his love for the Beatles, I can
<v Speaker 3>listen and go, okay, yeah, I can actually hear some
<v Speaker 3>of those melodies that a lot of style of the
<v Speaker 3>Beatles finds its way in. And the bands that you're
<v Speaker 3>yelling you're talking about yell into the microphone, and those
<v Speaker 3>guys were reacting to the Beatles. I mean, they're they're still
<v Speaker 3>like trying to get away from that. But Kurt embraced it.
<v Speaker 3>And Butch, who is a pop guy anyway. By the way,
<v Speaker 3>Butch Vig is also a member of the band Garbage,
<v Speaker 3>which as a song figures heavily in Captain Marvel as
<v Speaker 3>does the Nirvana song as You Are Yeah Yeah. Before
<v Speaker 3>he does that, he's recording nevermind, convinces Kurt to double
<v Speaker 3>his voice too bad Acotagers, and he was great a
<v Speaker 3>double tracking. He would just run down a take and
<v Speaker 3>do another take and they always locked up really really well.
<v Speaker 3>And then figures out, hey, Dave can actually sing some
<v Speaker 3>harmonies here, and he can, he can do it, and
<v Speaker 3>their voices sound really good together, right right, And so
<v Speaker 3>he's like, Okay, this sounds good, but hey, if doubled
<v Speaker 3>Kurt's voice right as well, double voice right. And so
<v Speaker 3>that's how you get this really around. You know, you
<v Speaker 3>you're hearing it and you just think this is a
<v Speaker 3>raw but as it turns out, a little bit of
<v Speaker 3>production is not a bad thing. Then what happens with
<v Speaker 3>the guitars is he he records Kurt and he just
<v Speaker 3>lies to him. He's like, yeah, that that didn't come through, right,
<v Speaker 3>There's something wrong with the soundboard something, And so Kurt
<v Speaker 3>plays it on not only multiple times, but on multiple
<v Speaker 3>different guitars with different effects pedals, and Butch weaves all
<v Speaker 3>of those things together so beautifully. It's just it's amazing.
<v Speaker 2>Let me just say this. I'm not a producer, okay,
<v Speaker 2>and really I'm not even a musician. But I listened
<v Speaker 2>to Bleach, Yes, I listened to Nevermind, Yes. Butch Vig
<v Speaker 2>is hugely impactful.
<v Speaker 3>On this album, no question about it.
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of like the Muttling effect is like the
<v Speaker 2>fourth member of the band.
<v Speaker 3>He really is.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I got something for you. I think this is
<v Speaker 2>gold nugget.
<v Speaker 3>You're ready, yeah?
<v Speaker 2>All right. So the song title is smells like teen Spirit,
<v Speaker 2>which is never said anywhere in the lyrics in the
<v Speaker 2>entire song, No, just the title teen Spirit smells none
<v Speaker 2>of it in there, Okay, so where does it come from?
<v Speaker 2>This is a great story. Kurt came up with the
<v Speaker 2>title when a friend of his name, Kathleen Hannah, who
<v Speaker 2>actually was the lead singer for the band Bikini Kill,
<v Speaker 2>wrote on his wall like graffitied his wall, Kurt smells
<v Speaker 2>like teen Spirit. What she was referring to was the
<v Speaker 2>fact that Kurt Cobain smelt like the deodorant teen Spirit, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>which his girlfriend Toby Vale at the time.
<v Speaker 3>Who was also in Bikini Kill. Yes, she's a guitarist drummer.
<v Speaker 2>So this is a reference to the fact that he
<v Speaker 2>was rolling around with his girlfriend came off smelling like
<v Speaker 2>a deodorance dick, this teen Spirit deodorant. Yeah, and Kurt
<v Speaker 2>was completely unaware of this until after the single was released.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, And that incredible story it is. It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>So you and I talked off air. This song is
<v Speaker 2>the coming together of three perfect things. And we use
<v Speaker 2>the word perfect a lot. But it had excellent production. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>it was a great song. Killer vocalization on this song, yes,
<v Speaker 2>and then the video is off the charts. Good.
<v Speaker 3>It is fantastic and the video was directed by a
<v Speaker 3>guy named Sam Bayer, and he literally was at the
<v Speaker 3>bottom of the list of guys at the record label
<v Speaker 3>was suggesting to direct the video. The way he puts
<v Speaker 3>it is my demo reel was really bad, and that's
<v Speaker 3>probably why I got the job, because they wanted somebody
<v Speaker 3>who didn't make it look like a corporate video, and
<v Speaker 3>that's what they got.
<v Speaker 2>So here's the story behind that. They shot this video
<v Speaker 2>on August seventeenth, nineteen ninety one. Two days before that,
<v Speaker 2>they had played at a club called the Roxy in Hollywood, right,
<v Speaker 2>and they passed out flyers and said, Hey, two days
<v Speaker 2>from now, we're going to be shooting a video. We
<v Speaker 2>want all of you guys to come. So these are
<v Speaker 2>all the people that were at that concert showed up
<v Speaker 2>and proceeded to trash the place.
<v Speaker 3>Well what happened was Sam Bayer is yelling at everybody
<v Speaker 3>with this megaphone, trying to get a good production on.
<v Speaker 3>He makes them sit still for hours, like I had
<v Speaker 3>the I get to be an extra part in a
<v Speaker 3>movie and we had to sit there while he did
<v Speaker 3>take after take everything. See how that could get a
<v Speaker 3>little boring, right, And so add on to that that
<v Speaker 3>I wasn't nineteen years old, and it wasn't in August
<v Speaker 3>at the you know, peak heat season. So they're frustrated there,
<v Speaker 3>and they're punk rock fans, right right.
<v Speaker 2>These are not sit down, be straight, no Chris.
<v Speaker 3>So at some point, at some point, Kurt says, why
<v Speaker 3>don't you just let them go wild? And that is
<v Speaker 3>exactly what it is. So the girls in the anarchy
<v Speaker 3>cheerleader suits with the tattoos, Kurt's idea, the goofy janitor
<v Speaker 3>dancing along with Kurt's idea, and then when he says
<v Speaker 3>let's just let them, you guys want to mash, let's
<v Speaker 3>mosh and they start playing and those kids go crazy.
<v Speaker 3>They literally started tearing up the set. They destroyed it.
<v Speaker 2>In the video, you can see Kurt gets like involved
<v Speaker 2>in and he pushed and oh yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So there's a couple of live videos out there that
<v Speaker 3>you can see. One is of the first time that
<v Speaker 3>they played Smells Like Teen Spirit in public, and it's
<v Speaker 3>my favorite part. The lyrics aren't exactly the same, it's
<v Speaker 3>definitely not that full sound that you get from the recording,
<v Speaker 3>but my favorite part is Kurt Cobain is saying Okay,
<v Speaker 3>this is a this is a song called smells like
<v Speaker 3>teen Spirit, and somebody in their crowd goes free. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>oh my god.
<v Speaker 2>That guy goes to every single concert.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. And so before another video, before they had become
<v Speaker 3>the big things that they were, they're still you know,
<v Speaker 3>still playing for decent sized groups of people, but it
<v Speaker 3>wasn't stadium size. Is it a video where they're playing
<v Speaker 3>on in this bar, there's this bouncer you know that's
<v Speaker 3>in charge of crowd control, that is literally on the
<v Speaker 3>stage with them, like kneeling down on one knee, just
<v Speaker 3>glaring at all of these kids moshing, just ready to
<v Speaker 3>punch out whoever tries to come on stage. And if
<v Speaker 3>you watch their videos, they didn't give a crap if
<v Speaker 3>people came on this stage. He was expected. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>mean guys would get up there, dance around, jumping the crowd. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I just playing, but they would get involved too, and Kurt,
<v Speaker 3>like many musicians, would stage dive. And so in this
<v Speaker 3>video there's this heavy metal looking security guard guy glaring
<v Speaker 3>at the crowd. Kurt body dives with his guitar into
<v Speaker 3>the crowd. He's playing a little bit. But anyway, as
<v Speaker 3>they start to push Kurt back up onto the stage.
<v Speaker 3>He starts to palm his face, trying to push him away,
<v Speaker 3>which makes Kurt matt who then hits this guy in
<v Speaker 3>the head with the butt of his guitar. So, of course,
<v Speaker 3>as soon as he's back on stage, this guy is
<v Speaker 3>popping him in the face and he's going down, and
<v Speaker 3>you see Dave Grohl jump out from behind the drums
<v Speaker 3>to break up the fight. But it is to me
<v Speaker 3>it was the defining video of Hey, Heavy Metal, Screw
<v Speaker 3>You Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>In two thousand and four, Rolling Stone named it the
<v Speaker 2>ninth greatest five hundred Songs of all time. It reached
<v Speaker 2>number six on the US Hot one hundred and still
<v Speaker 2>today they're only top.
<v Speaker 3>Ten hit, and they thought it might sell fifty thousand.
<v Speaker 3>This album came out in September. By January of ninety two,
<v Speaker 3>it knocked Michael Jackson out of the top spot.
<v Speaker 2>I know that that was insane for an album that
<v Speaker 2>costs sixty five grand I don't know what dangerous cost
<v Speaker 2>to make, but to knock the king of pop, the
<v Speaker 2>iconic artist of that generation, out of the top spot. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>three guys from nowhere Washington, right, It's incredible. I did
<v Speaker 2>want to mention this when he presented this song to
<v Speaker 2>his bandmates. Yeah, Chris called it ridiculous.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, they hated it, and he said, okay, let's do it,
<v Speaker 3>and they stood and they.
<v Speaker 2>He made him play for like an hour and a half,
<v Speaker 2>same song, again and again and again, but slowly. Chris
<v Speaker 2>played the riff slower and kind of molded that a
<v Speaker 2>little bit.
<v Speaker 3>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>They've changed the drums just to touch yep. And so
<v Speaker 2>this is the only song I never mind to credit
<v Speaker 2>all three band members as the writers.
<v Speaker 3>Right, well, that one in the hidden track.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh, I can't wait to talk about that one.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, what is this song? So at this point I
<v Speaker 3>think that we have to talk about Weird Al Yankovic. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>So the guys played for Saturday Night Live nineties, early nineties.
<v Speaker 3>So Victoria Jackson is still on Saturday Night Live and
<v Speaker 3>she comes into their dressing room and she's like, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>my friend Weird Al Yankovic wants to do a parody
<v Speaker 3>of your song. Is that okay? And they're like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you know the Chris Novaceelic also plays the accordion, and
<v Speaker 3>so he was like, oh, I love I love Weird Yankovic.
<v Speaker 3>Of course we could do.
<v Speaker 2>That's how you know you've hit it big. Yes, okay, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so next are we done? I don't know if we
<v Speaker 2>can never fully be done with smells like teen.
<v Speaker 3>I'm starting to smell a little bit like teen spirit myself.
<v Speaker 3>All right. So here we get to song number two,
<v Speaker 3>which is about us. Okay, yeah, so in Bloom In
<v Speaker 3>Bloom is song number two, and he wrote the song
<v Speaker 3>about people who don't understand the underground music scene, and which,
<v Speaker 3>you know, you got to think, how did he know
<v Speaker 3>what was going to happen before the album was released? Well,
<v Speaker 3>he wrote this after Bleach came out. They started seeing
<v Speaker 3>a little bit of success with Bleach, and suddenly they're
<v Speaker 3>going to their concerts and there's all these extra people,
<v Speaker 3>like they've oversold whatever small venue. You know, they were
<v Speaker 3>playing to three hundred people rooms at the time, and
<v Speaker 3>then all of a sudden there's people standing in lines.
<v Speaker 3>And so this song is about all of those guys,
<v Speaker 3>those posers, if you will, who like their pretty songs. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>who like their pretty songs and like to sing it
<v Speaker 3>along but don't know what it means. Don't know what
<v Speaker 3>it means?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, This song is awesome. If it's not Fortine Spirit,
<v Speaker 2>this is the best song now, I love it.
<v Speaker 3>This is a fantastic song and the video is hilarious.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah it is.
<v Speaker 2>Kurt mentioned that everybody was taking them to dagam seriously.
<v Speaker 2>They wanted to show their sense of humor. Yep, and
<v Speaker 2>so they have this sort of Ed Sullivan like, right.
<v Speaker 3>And do you know who the guy who Nirvana? Do
<v Speaker 3>you know that guy.
<v Speaker 2>Doug Llewellen from People's Court.
<v Speaker 1>Nice, Hello, I'm Doug Llewellen, and welcome to the People's Core.
<v Speaker 2>He's the guy who bugs everybody when they come out. Hey,
<v Speaker 2>what do you think the judge thought? I thought he
<v Speaker 2>was terrible.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. They wanted to show everybody they had a sense
<v Speaker 3>of humor, so they dressed up like the Beach Boys
<v Speaker 3>and some Ed Sullivan show cute food. Well, this was
<v Speaker 3>actually the second video for this song. I don't know
<v Speaker 3>if you knew this. They had a different video because
<v Speaker 3>this was one of the ones that came from the
<v Speaker 3>sub pop days and it was them like walking around
<v Speaker 3>in the city and Chris Novacelic had like I don't
<v Speaker 3>know whether he had a bet with himself or somebody else,
<v Speaker 3>but Basically it was like punishment to himself. He had
<v Speaker 3>played so poorly at one of their shows that he
<v Speaker 3>shaved his head, and so he's walking around in this
<v Speaker 3>video with no hair and they're trying to intercut it
<v Speaker 3>with concert footage where he has here. It made any sense.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm really glad that they did this crazy video,
<v Speaker 3>and they had shot they shot three different versions of
<v Speaker 3>the video, some with them and dresses, and they had
<v Speaker 3>planned to do like this kind of sneak one out
<v Speaker 3>and put another video in just to throw people off.
<v Speaker 3>But what they ended up doing was just splicing all
<v Speaker 3>of those videos together.
<v Speaker 2>Videos great, it's funny, but it's it's spout and the
<v Speaker 2>song is awesome.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, awesome song.
<v Speaker 2>This song was their fourth single, released November thirtieth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>ninety two. Second track fourth single, Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So I hesitate to do this. I hesitate to look
<v Speaker 3>at the lyrics and try to offer some sort of
<v Speaker 3>interpretation because Kurt Cobain said, you know, he's talking about
<v Speaker 3>all of the ideas about the lyrics, And they hated
<v Speaker 3>doing interviews right and didn't want to talk about the
<v Speaker 3>meaning of their songs. They just wanted the songs speak
<v Speaker 3>for themselves. He finally gets fed up and he's like,
<v Speaker 3>why in the heck do journalists insist on coming up
<v Speaker 3>with a second rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics when
<v Speaker 3>ninety percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly. So
<v Speaker 3>I hesitate to do what I'm about to do. But
<v Speaker 3>just in my opinion, in addition to being about obviously
<v Speaker 3>about the guys who didn't understand their music who were
<v Speaker 3>the adopters. But you know that I know is frustrating
<v Speaker 3>for him. The song starts off with sell the kids
<v Speaker 3>for food. Whether it changes moods, Spring is here again,
<v Speaker 3>reproductive glands. I think it's just kind of again. You
<v Speaker 3>can put whatever spin on you want to, but to me,
<v Speaker 3>it sounds like, hey, let's have another kid. We won't
<v Speaker 3>really care as parents. We're just gonna, you know, have
<v Speaker 3>another kid because our you know, the Spring's here and
<v Speaker 3>we're gonna have some kids and they end up being
<v Speaker 3>these jack offs that come to the concert.
<v Speaker 2>Dave Grohl actually mentioned this too. I was gonna tell
<v Speaker 2>you this quote, he said, just seeing Kurt write the
<v Speaker 2>lyrics to a song five minutes before he first sings them, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you just kind of find a little bit hard to
<v Speaker 2>believe that the song has a lot to say about something.
<v Speaker 2>You need syllables to fill the space, or you need
<v Speaker 2>the rhymes. That's it.
<v Speaker 3>The way that Kurt wrote music was melody comes first,
<v Speaker 3>music first, then lyrics after, and not only in chronological order,
<v Speaker 3>but in order of importance. The melody was the most
<v Speaker 3>important thing to him, and then he would, yeah, he'd
<v Speaker 3>sit down and write the lyrics five minutes before. But
<v Speaker 3>we're talking about an affected guy, a guy with some demons,
<v Speaker 3>for sure, and I think this was his very simple
<v Speaker 3>way to exercise those demons, to put pen to paper
<v Speaker 3>for these songs in Bloom.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, great five star, great songs. All right, all right.
<v Speaker 2>The next track, third track on the album, is called
<v Speaker 2>Come as You Are. So their second single Come As
<v Speaker 2>You Are, released March second, nineteen ninety two.
<v Speaker 3>So this song comes in with this watery sound and guitar,
<v Speaker 3>very fluid sound.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's.
<v Speaker 3>Not the heavy hitting I mean, we've had s Mills
<v Speaker 3>eighteen Spirit and in Bloom just blowing up in your face.
<v Speaker 3>And then this one is a much softer, smoother, different sound.
<v Speaker 3>It starts off slow and then it's a slow burn build.
<v Speaker 3>The heavy comes in, but it takes much longer than
<v Speaker 3>the first two songs.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we talked about this off the air, but
<v Speaker 2>this song is featured in the movie Captain Marvel, and
<v Speaker 2>I've told you that sometimes when you listen to it
<v Speaker 2>in your car or through the television or something, you
<v Speaker 2>don't really feel the power of the song. Yeah, when
<v Speaker 2>I was sitting in the movie theater, I felt the
<v Speaker 2>power of this song.
<v Speaker 3>There's an idea, maybe we should start something where we
<v Speaker 3>just play music videos at the movie theater for two
<v Speaker 3>hours and let the sound system like be like a
<v Speaker 3>rock concert.
<v Speaker 2>How awesome it was great, man, I blew my head up.
<v Speaker 3>So this song. They were hesitant to release this song,
<v Speaker 3>and it was this was the one that they were
<v Speaker 3>counting on to bring them to fame. It just turned
<v Speaker 3>out that smells like teen Spirit actually brought them to fame. Well,
<v Speaker 3>I was going to mention this to you.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this song, the beginning of this song is very
<v Speaker 2>similar to a song called Eighties by the Killing Joke.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, let's listen to that real quick.
<v Speaker 6>Okay, it's pretty okay, really close to that one.
<v Speaker 2>That's close.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And so the band Killing Joke was pretty upset
<v Speaker 3>about this.
<v Speaker 2>They were clearly they thought Nirvana handled it poorly and
<v Speaker 2>they were mad. And when you listen to it, it's
<v Speaker 2>pretty undeniable.
<v Speaker 3>So they probably were hesitant to finally copyright infringement because
<v Speaker 3>they also stole the intro music. There's a band called
<v Speaker 3>The Damned who had a song called Life Goes On
<v Speaker 3>And here's what that song sounds like.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, man, that is incredibly close.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah wow.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Kurt Kobain could have got this motto from the
<v Speaker 2>More Hotel in Aberdeen, Washington. So the motto for this
<v Speaker 2>hotel that he stayed at sometimes when he got kicked
<v Speaker 2>out of his house was right, come as you are.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. You know, there's a couple of stories that go
<v Speaker 3>along with this album that I want to tell. The
<v Speaker 3>first one is his mom's story. So before this album
<v Speaker 3>is released, he comes back to that and we you know,
<v Speaker 3>if you want to look at his history, he was
<v Speaker 3>in and out of his mom's house, his dad's house,
<v Speaker 3>his grandparents house, friend's houses. But you know that he's
<v Speaker 3>gone on, he's become a man now, he's in his twenties.
<v Speaker 3>But he comes back and stays with mom for a
<v Speaker 3>while before this album is released, and she says. So
<v Speaker 3>he comes down that morning in his tidy whities and
<v Speaker 3>he says, hey, I got the tape of our new album.
<v Speaker 3>You want to hear it? And she says, yeah, turn
<v Speaker 3>it up because she likes her music loud, and so
<v Speaker 3>he starts playing it for her and she starts crying,
<v Speaker 3>not out of proudness but out of fear, and she says,
<v Speaker 3>you better hold on because this is going to change everything.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's an incredible story.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Butcher Vig, Now, so before before he recorded Nevermind,
<v Speaker 3>he had done gish with the Smashing Pumpkins, which is
<v Speaker 3>not a small a small thing. I mean, he'd done
<v Speaker 3>hundreds of things, but I mean he's he's friends with
<v Speaker 3>Billy Corgan, And so after they finally mix and master
<v Speaker 3>the album, he's got a tape of it too, and
<v Speaker 3>he's having a barbecue right at his house, right Billy
<v Speaker 3>Corgan's in the backyard eat a hotdog or whatever those
<v Speaker 3>guys eat. So anyway, he takes the tape and he
<v Speaker 3>puts it in this crappy little boombox and sends it
<v Speaker 3>on the table and hit play and goes over and
<v Speaker 3>starts cooking again. And he says, all of a sudden
<v Speaker 3>he realizes that nobody's talking, and he looks around and
<v Speaker 3>everybody has migrated over to the table and are just
<v Speaker 3>sitting around this crappy little boombox entranced, and they listen
<v Speaker 3>to the whole album. It ends, tape clicks, a few
<v Speaker 3>seconds pass and someone says, can you play it again? Wow?
<v Speaker 2>That's incredible, man. Yeah. This reached number thirty two on
<v Speaker 2>the Hot one hundred, stayed on the chart for eight weeks.
<v Speaker 2>In twenty eleven, Rolling Stone named it the four hundred
<v Speaker 2>and eighteenth Greatest song.
<v Speaker 3>Of all time. So the video for Come As You
<v Speaker 3>Are is much more surreal, different than their other videos,
<v Speaker 3>same director as several of them, but it along with
<v Speaker 3>that kind of watery guitar, they have this effect where
<v Speaker 3>there's water coming down in front of it, and then
<v Speaker 3>Kurt is like swinging from a chandeliers. Water's falling on him.
<v Speaker 3>The watery effect is kind of clear to everybody, but
<v Speaker 3>it's It was another great video. And then Aberdeen, the
<v Speaker 3>guy's hometown. Now the introduction sign where it says welcome
<v Speaker 3>to Aberdeen. Underneath that announced as come as you Are.
<v Speaker 2>That is cool. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, all right,
<v Speaker 2>moving on to the next song.
<v Speaker 3>This song is called Breed. That gom the song bly crap.
<v Speaker 2>This song is good and it rips off with a bang,
<v Speaker 2>isn't it?
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, it's a good song.
<v Speaker 2>This song was actually written in nineteen eighty nine and
<v Speaker 2>recorded in April of nineteen ninety with Subbump.
<v Speaker 3>But that's the subpop version is not what made it.
<v Speaker 2>Onto No, no, they updated it for this one.
<v Speaker 3>So this song was originally called Emotive after the anti
<v Speaker 3>diarrheal medicine.
<v Speaker 2>They were touring with our Buddi's Tad.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Tad, that's right, and the lead singer Tad a
<v Speaker 3>little dummy issue, so they decided to write a song
<v Speaker 3>called the Modium. But I'm glad they changed it. Breed
<v Speaker 3>is a much better title to this song. This one.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we talk about the anthem for the apathetic.
<v Speaker 3>This is apathy at it's clearest, right. I don't care,
<v Speaker 3>I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I
<v Speaker 3>don't care if it's cold.
<v Speaker 2>Good song, not great, but very enjoyable and solid, solid,
<v Speaker 2>solid track.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. So yeah, this is one of those ones that
<v Speaker 3>was a good new discovery for me because I hadn't
<v Speaker 3>had the album before. This is one that I was like,
<v Speaker 3>Holy crap, this is really good. I was surprised they
<v Speaker 3>didn't have this as a as a single. Honestly, I
<v Speaker 3>thought this was amazing, deserving of a single.
<v Speaker 2>But it was really good, really solid.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah all right.
<v Speaker 2>Next song, very popular song released July thirteenth, nineteen ninety two. Lithium.
<v Speaker 3>I'm So happy got to today fum my friends in
<v Speaker 3>mine head. So, lithium was this drug that they used
<v Speaker 3>to treat manic depression before, like Prozac and stuff, and
<v Speaker 3>so I think this kind of went along with some
<v Speaker 3>experiences that Kurt had had in his past. Obviously, mental
<v Speaker 3>illness is certainly a big factor there. The fun guy.
<v Speaker 2>Good song, very very popular song. This was the tenth
<v Speaker 2>most played song in the decade according to mainstream rock
<v Speaker 2>radio one hundred and twenty three thousand times during the nineties.
<v Speaker 2>Really really good song though.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay. So this song is about a guy who
<v Speaker 3>is dealing with suicidal thoughts finds religated and that saves
<v Speaker 3>him from the suicidal thoughts, which goes along with that
<v Speaker 3>whole mental health thing. What plays a part in the
<v Speaker 3>song is some of Kurt's own experiences. This one was
<v Speaker 3>one that he actually wrote the song from beginning to end.
<v Speaker 3>It wasn't pieces of poetry or written five minutes before.
<v Speaker 3>He had this song when they were doing their sessions
<v Speaker 3>with which vig over at Smart Studios before they ended
<v Speaker 3>up in California, and this was the one that tore
<v Speaker 3>up his voice. This is also the one that caused
<v Speaker 3>the rift between him and Chad Channing, which led to
<v Speaker 3>them getting rid of him because he couldn't get Chad
<v Speaker 3>to get the drum right.
<v Speaker 2>This sounds awesome, man. He makes that. He takes the
<v Speaker 2>word yeah and turns it into a fist pumping scream
<v Speaker 2>your head off, but yet perfectly great chorus, great melody.
<v Speaker 2>It just sounds really good.
<v Speaker 3>It's one of those hooky melodies for sure. Yeah. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 3>And I found God that concept. He actually had stayed
<v Speaker 3>with a friend who was a Christian. Kurt Cobain accepted
<v Speaker 3>christ at that time and was a Christian for a time,
<v Speaker 3>but you know, later on was he Christianity was not
<v Speaker 3>for him. He renounced it. But he said, you know,
<v Speaker 3>if other people need God to be saved, then didn't
<v Speaker 3>they need it?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, here's his quote on that. I thought that was
<v Speaker 2>interesting too. Lithium is a song about a guy who
<v Speaker 2>turns to religion after his girlfriend dies. It soothes him
<v Speaker 2>much like a dose of actual lithium. I've always felt
<v Speaker 2>that some people should have religion in their lives. That's fine.
<v Speaker 2>If it's going to save them, it's okay. And the
<v Speaker 2>person in Lithium needed So after Lithium we have Holly.
<v Speaker 3>Holly wants a cracker, he goes sue it all. Holly
<v Speaker 3>was another one of those songs that I had heard before,
<v Speaker 3>but when I listened to it again, I was like,
<v Speaker 3>this dark, Yeah, this is creepy, and I'm listening to
<v Speaker 3>it and I'm like, this is an interesting perspective, and
<v Speaker 3>I'm kind of thinking of this as an imaginary story.
<v Speaker 3>And then I was Todays years old when I learned
<v Speaker 3>this is based on a real event. Yeah, the guy
<v Speaker 3>kidnapped a girl after a punk rock concert whose name
<v Speaker 3>was Polly. She's fourteen, Yeah, fourteen years old, and he
<v Speaker 3>kept her captive. All things that come up in the song.
<v Speaker 3>But the thing that really spoke to Kurt about the
<v Speaker 3>song was that she decided to come on to him
<v Speaker 3>and to you know, identify with him as a person
<v Speaker 3>in order to set herself up for escape, and that
<v Speaker 3>was how she got away from him and how he
<v Speaker 3>ultimately got caught. Chris said that Kurt really that really
<v Speaker 3>stuck out to him, which I may be over analyzing
<v Speaker 3>a bit here, but isn't that kind of what they
<v Speaker 3>did with this album? Like they had their punk grunge
<v Speaker 3>sound that was underground sound, but they made an album
<v Speaker 3>that the masses could identify with so that they would
<v Speaker 3>be adopted and be able to do what they want.
<v Speaker 2>Nice. Nice, I see what you're doing there.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, interesting, it seems to be.
<v Speaker 2>This song dates all the way back to nineteen eighty eight.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so there's a mistake in this song that they
<v Speaker 3>left in Paul's Kirk comes into early. When they listen
<v Speaker 3>to it again, they're like, I don't know, I kind
<v Speaker 3>of like that. You've heard Jason talk about accidental drip.
<v Speaker 3>An accidental drip is something that I've talked to him about,
<v Speaker 3>but I don't know that we've ever talked about it
<v Speaker 3>in an episode. But the accidental drip is when you
<v Speaker 3>are painting a picture and the picture isn't quite right,
<v Speaker 3>and then a piece of paint or a drop of
<v Speaker 3>paint falls off the brush. And hits the canvas and
<v Speaker 3>suddenly the picture comes to life just from that accidental drip.
<v Speaker 3>And so that this is one of those accidental drip moments.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So that wraps up Side one of never Mind,
<v Speaker 2>and we've talked. I mean, I mentioned a couple of
<v Speaker 2>weeks ago in our episode on Hysteria that I thought
<v Speaker 2>the Side one of Hysteria was the best side of
<v Speaker 2>any album that we had covered up to that point. This,
<v Speaker 2>this competes with that. I mean, you've got teen Spirit,
<v Speaker 2>You've got in Bloom, you've got Come as you Are,
<v Speaker 2>breed Lithium and PAULI. So hit stop on your tape player,
<v Speaker 2>kick it out, flip it over. Now we're going to
<v Speaker 2>decide to Okay, this song, the first song on side
<v Speaker 2>two is a song called Territorial Pissing.
<v Speaker 3>Yes. And here's the point in the podcast where Jason
<v Speaker 3>and I take different positions.
<v Speaker 2>This song is garbage, so good is crap.
<v Speaker 3>A wag? If you've got, If you've got a song
<v Speaker 3>that defines what the attitude and the aggression and the
<v Speaker 3>nastiness that Nirvana brought to the rock music scene, that
<v Speaker 3>is this song. Oh it's so good. I love it.
<v Speaker 3>I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, this is where I become the old man.
<v Speaker 2>As soon as they start singing that attitude, I'm like, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>this is definitely not pop production right here. This is
<v Speaker 2>full on punk, which is not to my liking.
<v Speaker 3>Right I can't say whether it's full on punk or
<v Speaker 3>not because I've never been a punk guy, but this
<v Speaker 3>is definitely If I was going to say this is
<v Speaker 3>the punkiest song on there, yeah, I would say this
<v Speaker 3>is it.
<v Speaker 2>This is not the worst song on the album. The
<v Speaker 2>song sucks, It is not the worst song on the album. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>all right, Yeah, keep going. Gotta find a way, a
<v Speaker 2>better way for as good as I enjoy his voice
<v Speaker 2>and how he strains it kind of leans on it
<v Speaker 2>in teen spirit and stuff like that, yeah, he it
<v Speaker 2>breaks on him on this one, and it's no good
<v Speaker 2>to me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, because he's not doing that. He's not doing your
<v Speaker 3>hooky melody in this one there. That's true melody. Just
<v Speaker 3>because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you. I
<v Speaker 3>had to think about that line for a long time.
<v Speaker 3>So this was not obviously not a single forum. I
<v Speaker 3>think this is probably one that their fans love, but
<v Speaker 3>probably not for the masses. Would you agree?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, this is the type where the guy next to
<v Speaker 2>you punches you in the face just because he's joying
<v Speaker 2>the concert. Yeah, I do not care for that. Please.
<v Speaker 2>Can we move on to the next song?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we can move on all right.
<v Speaker 2>Next song is called Drain You, says.
<v Speaker 3>This is another one. This one comes from his relationship
<v Speaker 3>with Tobey Vail yep. And the song starts off with
<v Speaker 3>one baby says to another, I'm lucky to have met you,
<v Speaker 3>and that was something that she used to say to him.
<v Speaker 3>But then shortly thereafter, it's my duty now to drain you,
<v Speaker 3>because that's kind of how he felt the breakup went.
<v Speaker 3>But it's a good one. I like it.
<v Speaker 2>It's a good song. It's a good song. Kirk Obank
<v Speaker 2>claimed that this song was the equal or better than
<v Speaker 2>teen Spirit.
<v Speaker 3>It does have that kind of pop hook to it.
<v Speaker 3>To me, it's it's got a very Allison Chains feel
<v Speaker 3>to it. The way that the harmonies are going in
<v Speaker 3>the chorus sounds a lot like Jerry Cantrell and Lane's
<v Speaker 3>Day to me. But it's just my thought. I don't
<v Speaker 3>know that I would say it's as good as well.
<v Speaker 2>No way, no way, I'm going against the Kurt on
<v Speaker 2>this one. Dave Girl actually compared this one to Bohemian Rhapsody.
<v Speaker 3>He's kind of a.
<v Speaker 2>Goofball, right, But I gotta disagree with both of them.
<v Speaker 2>This is a good song, yeah, but there is no
<v Speaker 2>way it's as good as teen spar.
<v Speaker 3>They're a little more proud of it than we are,
<v Speaker 3>I think. Okay, So next song on the album is
<v Speaker 3>Lounge Act. Another good song. Okay, So when I was
<v Speaker 3>a kid, I used to lay in bed and when
<v Speaker 3>I couldn't go to sleep, I would play with my
<v Speaker 3>voice and it sounded like That's what the beginning of
<v Speaker 3>this song is. And then you go into this really big.
<v Speaker 2>I'll rest myself.
<v Speaker 3>Well, this is probably the poppyist to me, this is
<v Speaker 3>the poppyist sounding song on the album.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for sure. It's got the same it's just solid guitars.
<v Speaker 2>It's a head bobber. It's a good song.
<v Speaker 6>I like it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, not the best song on the album, just no.
<v Speaker 3>It's a song that you cruise on through.
<v Speaker 2>This is actually the tenth most favorite song by Nirvana
<v Speaker 2>fans really, according to Rolling Stone.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, well it's a head It's yeah, I was gonna
<v Speaker 3>say it's hooky. I got it, but didn't like it.
<v Speaker 3>Didn't blow my screwed up.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Next one song called stay Away.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I'm not a fan.
<v Speaker 2>Didn't like it, really didn't like this.
<v Speaker 3>One, all right. So just in case you might have
<v Speaker 3>forgotten whether Dave Girl can hit the drums hard or not,
<v Speaker 3>this song answers that question.
<v Speaker 2>That's true, fast and hard.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this is speedy, less hooky.
<v Speaker 2>But I mean, all these songs you can sing along to.
<v Speaker 3>This is a song where this is another one of
<v Speaker 3>the songs. I'm like, Okay, this is good. This is
<v Speaker 3>not one that I remember, but definitely a good song
<v Speaker 3>to listen to. I don't have a whole lot to
<v Speaker 3>say about it.
<v Speaker 2>It's okay, it's all right, okay, all right. Next song
<v Speaker 2>is called on a Plane stout in words, yats.
<v Speaker 3>It's okay. So this one, to me, this is this
<v Speaker 3>is what I'm dissatisfied with, because to me, this one
<v Speaker 3>almost sounds like the bands that came out after Nirvana
<v Speaker 3>that we're trying to sound like Nirvana. That's what this
<v Speaker 3>one sounds like to me.
<v Speaker 2>It is interesting. This one has a little bit of
<v Speaker 2>the you know that's stuff that you don't really expect
<v Speaker 2>Nirvana to do.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this one is not mine. This is not in
<v Speaker 3>my top Nirvana songs at all.
<v Speaker 4>I like it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's good, it's catchy, it's a pop song.
<v Speaker 2>It's a pop song.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Now they had a version of it on Unplugged,
<v Speaker 3>which was completely different plane.
<v Speaker 6>Dam on the plane.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, obviously Unplugged has a lot of different you
<v Speaker 3>don't have the distortion of your guitar. But they've got
<v Speaker 3>a cello playing on that one, and I enjoyed that one,
<v Speaker 3>more natural sounding song. But this is one that Kurt
<v Speaker 3>Cobain later on would say he wasn't happy with how
<v Speaker 3>it turned out on the album.
<v Speaker 2>I do think it'll be interesting once we get done
<v Speaker 2>with these songs. To talk about his response to the album.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he said the way we play it live, and
<v Speaker 3>it's funny because they I mean, he wrote the lyrics
<v Speaker 3>for the song like five minutes before the song was recorded,
<v Speaker 3>and so they didn't play it live until after they
<v Speaker 3>had already done the recording. But he said he liked
<v Speaker 3>the way they played it live better, had a raw
<v Speaker 3>or sound to it.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, man, butch Vig puts out good pop songs.
<v Speaker 2>I can and he made them superstars. Dude, I will
<v Speaker 2>not and I don't not say anything bad about Butcher
<v Speaker 2>vigue with this. Just this particular song is a little
<v Speaker 2>overproduced for the songs on this album. It's still a
<v Speaker 2>Nirvana song, it's still kicks by, but it's just not
<v Speaker 2>my favorite.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So let's talk about the best song on side too, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And that song is called Something in the Way.
<v Speaker 3>So this one is beautiful.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. It's it's gorgeous.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. And there's a Beatles song that's got the lyrics
<v Speaker 3>Something in the Way as well.
<v Speaker 6>Bridge.
<v Speaker 3>Topestrong. But this is this was a unique songs all around.
<v Speaker 2>When I listen to this song, to me, I listen
<v Speaker 2>to this song, and you put Madonna's song Secret next
<v Speaker 2>to it, I think it sounds very similar.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, we can put that to the test.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, the same since you came into this song when
<v Speaker 2>they were they were working in the studio and Kurt
<v Speaker 2>was not satisfied with how the recording was going, and
<v Speaker 2>so he went to the control room and he told
<v Speaker 2>Butch He's like, this is the way it needs to
<v Speaker 2>be said. He's like almost like a whisper.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he lays down like he's on the couch. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>he's lays down on the couch. He's got a five
<v Speaker 3>string guitar.
<v Speaker 2>Butch says, okay, dude, hold on a second, just stay
<v Speaker 2>right there, don't move, and he goes and gets a
<v Speaker 2>microphone and he tells everybody, okay, everybody quiet.
<v Speaker 3>He said, go for it. Yeah, in the control room
<v Speaker 3>on the couch right, And then that's how they captured it.
<v Speaker 3>They used that as the core of the song afterwards.
<v Speaker 3>And so then Dave Groll and Chris Novacelik have to
<v Speaker 3>record to something that wasn't on a click track like
<v Speaker 3>this is the They're just going by how Kurt felt
<v Speaker 3>the rhythm was going. So this is this is a
<v Speaker 3>very soulful, spiritual kind of song, and the lyrics are
<v Speaker 3>kind of a you know, a guy under a bridge
<v Speaker 3>with no place else to go, talking to the animals.
<v Speaker 3>It's you know, there was a like people kind of
<v Speaker 3>talked about, oh, did he really live under a bridge now,
<v Speaker 3>But this again kind of captures that feeling of isolation
<v Speaker 3>and of not knowing where you belong. That guys my
<v Speaker 3>age were feeling like, you know, we were in the nineties.
<v Speaker 3>We're sixteen, seventeen years old, and we just don't know
<v Speaker 3>what the point of everything is, right, and so this
<v Speaker 3>is one of those songs that kind of captured that feeling.
<v Speaker 2>They brought in a guy to play cello on this song. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>not many Nirvana songs you hear a cello on, not.
<v Speaker 3>On this album, that's true. Yeah, but it's so soulful
<v Speaker 3>and sweet. I love it. Whenever they were recording Dave
<v Speaker 3>and Chris's parts, Kurk kept sitting behind Dave going no quieter.
<v Speaker 2>I love this song. And this to me is a
<v Speaker 2>heavy hitter up there with Come as You Are in Lithium. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's really, really, really good.
<v Speaker 3>It's beautiful. It is the It is the most beautiful
<v Speaker 3>on the album for sure. All Right, okay, we done,
<v Speaker 3>and then we have the secret track. Yeah, okay, hold on, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that's enough of that. Yeah, okay, that's not a song.
<v Speaker 2>That's not a song. No.
<v Speaker 3>So they I mean, this is like something where they
<v Speaker 3>were just jamming, and this is a jam session and
<v Speaker 3>this is just them.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, Okay, this is what I heard about
<v Speaker 2>this song. Okay, they were trying they were working on Lithium, yes,
<v Speaker 2>and they were having some difficulty making it work, and
<v Speaker 2>then this is just an improv jam session and it's
<v Speaker 2>frustration and I'm mad, and they just kind of went
<v Speaker 2>with it. But Big left the tape recording and he
<v Speaker 2>picked it up. Now, then they should have thrown it
<v Speaker 2>in the.
<v Speaker 3>Trash, right. Well, the the guy who did the Master,
<v Speaker 3>who masters, is saying he came in, like everybody was
<v Speaker 3>supposed to meet at a certain time, and he came
<v Speaker 3>in to do the Master and nobody was there. So
<v Speaker 3>he was like, all right, well, I guess I go
<v Speaker 3>ahead and get started working. And so he made this
<v Speaker 3>whole master, which, if you don't know what that is,
<v Speaker 3>that's creating the one piece that all of the other
<v Speaker 3>pieces come from. Right before digital really became big, you
<v Speaker 3>had to have a master to go back to so
<v Speaker 3>that you could get the cleanest sound. So he's putting
<v Speaker 3>all of these things in the master, and here's endless nameless,
<v Speaker 3>and he's like, okay, that obviously is not supposed to
<v Speaker 3>go on the album.
<v Speaker 2>Right, that is so horrible. I can tell without even
<v Speaker 2>asking anybody that doesn't belong here.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, his name was Howie Weinberg, and so he leaves
<v Speaker 3>that off and they printed twenty thousand album CDs and
<v Speaker 3>tapes without it, Yeah, without it, And then Kirk Cobains
<v Speaker 3>finally listens to one of them and he's like, wait
<v Speaker 3>a minute, where's Endless Nameless? And so they were like,
<v Speaker 3>we told you that had to be on there, and
<v Speaker 3>he's like, okay, yeah, I thought that was a joke.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah exactly, Yeah, it's I don't know what that is.
<v Speaker 2>So they got really mad and they actually made them
<v Speaker 2>reprint the album with that on there. It was kind
<v Speaker 2>it was it's a secret track, yeah right, yeah, it
<v Speaker 2>comes all the way after Something in the Something in
<v Speaker 2>the Way Now weird Al actually has a.
<v Speaker 3>Version of this Endless Nameless.
<v Speaker 5>Yes, oh no, it's called bite Me. Okay, it's a
<v Speaker 5>secret track. I can't remember what record is on. It's
<v Speaker 5>got to be on the one that smells like it's
<v Speaker 5>got to be and it's called bite Me. Okay, we'll
<v Speaker 5>find that. So when they first when all these songs.
<v Speaker 3>Were done and they had recorded them all butch Vig
<v Speaker 3>tried to do the mix for him and they were
<v Speaker 3>neither he nor the band was happy with it. So
<v Speaker 3>they brought in this guy called Andy Wallace who had
<v Speaker 3>co produced Seasons in the abyss by Slayer, which they loved,
<v Speaker 3>and unfortunately, you know, the band, even though they said
<v Speaker 3>they loved the mixes, they would later on say, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we didn't really like the way that that sounded. We
<v Speaker 3>you know, Kirk Cobain said it sounded closer to Motley
<v Speaker 3>Crue than a punk rock record.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he's a little bit embarrassed at the production of
<v Speaker 2>this one.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean punk as a definition as a genre.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, is not produced. It's just like right, yeah, it's
<v Speaker 3>it's Yeah. If you want a song that it's going
<v Speaker 3>to appeal to the masses, if you want to achieve
<v Speaker 3>what you said your goal is, you want your art
<v Speaker 3>to mean something, so you want it to appeal as
<v Speaker 3>to as many people as possible so that you can
<v Speaker 3>get their attention, you don't produce a punk album right. Right.
<v Speaker 2>Once again, we've talked about this, how some movie stars
<v Speaker 2>don't watch their movies, right And for me, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I understand creating art as you want it to be, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but this was so impactful to me that they should
<v Speaker 2>love this album.
<v Speaker 3>Right, And you know, it's it's kind of again being
<v Speaker 3>in that situation where people are obsessing about it and
<v Speaker 3>constantly talking to you about it and constantly asking you
<v Speaker 3>questions that I can see how it would wear on
<v Speaker 3>you after a while. But he, Kurt Cobain would say, actually,
<v Speaker 3>I really I still really enjoyed playing smells like teen Spirit.
<v Speaker 3>It just became such a thing that it almost became
<v Speaker 3>embarrassing to play because of how obsessive people were about it.
<v Speaker 2>Right. I did hear Chris talk about talk about Nevermind? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like a twenty year later retrospective. Yes, he says, the
<v Speaker 2>best thing I've ever been associated with. Yeah, So it's
<v Speaker 2>that makes me feel good. I love I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure,
<v Speaker 2>And the fact that he thoroughly enjoys it does make
<v Speaker 2>me feel better.
<v Speaker 3>Right, I'm sure that everybody listening to this knows what
<v Speaker 3>the history is. They produce other albums, and then in
<v Speaker 3>nineteen ninety four, Kurt Cobain commits suicide at his home
<v Speaker 3>in Washington, And there's lots of stories there that we're
<v Speaker 3>not going to go into at this time. But you know,
<v Speaker 3>kind of in doing this and looking at this, I
<v Speaker 3>almost like, if I'm watching this as a movie, I
<v Speaker 3>don't see any other ending except that he can't grow old.
<v Speaker 3>He has to be eternally youthful. He has to be
<v Speaker 3>twenty seven forever, because you can't be the voice of
<v Speaker 3>the generation. You can't you change the music the way
<v Speaker 3>that he did and continue on and still have the impact.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, so he was. I read this about
<v Speaker 3>Michael Stipe of RAM. They were planning an album together,
<v Speaker 3>Kirk Cobain and Michael Steiper planning to do an album
<v Speaker 3>together that would have been completely different than anything they
<v Speaker 3>had done before, clean, bringing in orchestra style music, and
<v Speaker 3>I can't even I mean, can you just imagine Kirk
<v Speaker 3>Cobain with an orchestra or with strings behind him, with
<v Speaker 3>very clean but we never got that.
<v Speaker 2>Sadly, sadly, yeah, sadly.
<v Speaker 3>I remember when that happened.
<v Speaker 2>That was I mean, people held candlelight vigils and were
<v Speaker 2>crying and shocked. And if you grew up in the nineties,
<v Speaker 2>this sky was your John Lennon.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah for some folks for sure.
<v Speaker 2>So do we want to talk a little bit about
<v Speaker 2>the impact of the album. Yea, For me, it's interesting
<v Speaker 2>because it's had this huge, huge impact. It wasn't the
<v Speaker 2>best selling album of nineteen ninety two.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, according to Who you look at. It was
<v Speaker 2>beat out by at least three albums by Garth Brooks,
<v Speaker 2>an album by Crisscross, and an album by Billy Ray Cyrus.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my, well again you have you have folks who
<v Speaker 3>buy in at certain points. You have the early adopters,
<v Speaker 3>you've got the masses, and then you've got the the
<v Speaker 3>tag alongs or the late adopters. And yeah, I can
<v Speaker 3>see this was not a thing. Like I mean, a
<v Speaker 3>lot of our listening audience, like if they came in
<v Speaker 3>with Van Halen. I bet a lot of those guys
<v Speaker 3>are like, I don't want to listen to something about
<v Speaker 3>Nirvana right because it was it was a revolution against
<v Speaker 3>that style of music. Yeah, for sure, I love them both,
<v Speaker 3>so I'm good with it.
<v Speaker 2>The staying power, though, is really the is the factor here,
<v Speaker 2>because I mean Crisscross gone, Billy Ray Cyrus gone. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean Garth Brooks.
<v Speaker 3>Those Garth Brooks albums are kind of iconic. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>but yeah, let me if you haven't, if you haven't
<v Speaker 3>listened to this album from beginning to end, if you
<v Speaker 3>kind of wrote off the Proper Grammer, if you wrote
<v Speaker 3>off Nirvana back in the nineties, take a listen again.
<v Speaker 3>Sincerely listen with an open mind, and I think you'll
<v Speaker 3>be impressed.
<v Speaker 2>We talked about it. Both of us sort of rediscovered
<v Speaker 2>this album and it's impressive. Yeah, it's impressive.
<v Speaker 3>And so next week we're going to move on to
<v Speaker 3>another impressive album that came out at the same time,
<v Speaker 3>which I have a whole different experience with. And I'm
<v Speaker 3>excited to talk about that one. You talked about waiting
<v Speaker 3>thirty five years. I've been waiting nearly thirty years to
<v Speaker 3>talk about this one for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Great, I can't wait.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so next week we'll talk about Pearl Jams ten.
<v Speaker 3>Stay tuned for that one, and you will hear our
<v Speaker 3>final judgment as to which of the grunge albums are
<v Speaker 3>the best. Stay tuned for that. And if please subscribe now,
<v Speaker 3>you know all you have to do if you're on
<v Speaker 3>your phone, you scroll down on your phone. There's a
<v Speaker 3>little subscribe button. Hit that button right now, and then
<v Speaker 3>you won't miss that next episode when it comes out.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for listening. I hope that some of our
<v Speaker 2>Van Helen and def guys have stuck around for this one. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>thank you for doing that. We sure appreciate you. Thank
<v Speaker 2>you so much for listening.
<v Speaker 3>See you next week, See you next week. Sart, all music, images,
<v Speaker 3>and movie clips are used for the purposes of commentary
<v Speaker 3>and education in conjunction with the fair Use agreement under
<v Speaker 3>the US copyright law.