Recently I heard radio listeners voting on what they believed were the best Nirvana tracks of all time. As I listened to it I begun to realise that to the new generation of music fans Nirvana never really existed outside of their award winning Nevermind and MTV Unplugged: Live In New York albums. Of course pop-culture and radio play has to lot answer to when it comes it that. These days pop-starlets wear the famous Nevermind nude baby on clothing as a mark of coolness while radio plays “Smells Like Teenage Spirit,” “Come As You Are” and “Heart-Shaped Box” like they are the only tracks the band ever released.
The way Nirvana are looked at today is almost frightening. Today they seem to have become something that would ake Kurt Cobain vomit –a commercial brand. Back in my high school days of the 1990s though we viewed Nirvana very, very differently. To us the angsty screams of Cobain were a breath of fresh air against the ‘pop’ culture that was starting to take effect. The strains of Nirvana were like a war cry to those of us that viewed High School as a torturous battle zone where we terrorised for being ‘different.’ To many Nirvana were a scary band – to teenagers it felt like somebody finally ‘got us’ but to parents and teachers Nirvana was the kind of band that led to you as a listener being asked if “depression or drugs were a problem for you.”
Of course though back then we had more than Nevermind. Nevermind was certainly the album that thrust Nirvana into the international spotlight but I would argue that it is not even their best album. By the time Nevermind hit shelves those of us teens who were into exploring music had been handed a copy of the introductory drug – Bleach.
I’ll be honest, as a teenager Bleach was like anything else I had ever heard before. By the time Cobain was screaming ‘no recess’ on “School” I was completely bought. I wanted to know more about this guy who seemed to be able to take all my teenage thoughts and convert them into lyrics. Then there was the pure brashness and rawness of the album – tracks like “Negative Creep” sounded like the kind of bands that we would pour into Community Halls to watch on weekends. To say that Bleach won us over was an understatement.
Of course for every music lover out there that has never heard of Bleach I would say there is also another that was frightened off by In Utero – another album that I have listened to many times over the years. To record labels and radio stations Nirvana could not have had a worse follow up to Nevermind than In Utero.
Looking back In Utero was pretty much a prog album before anyone even knew what the term meant. Tracks like “Tourettes” were a strange mix of grunge and alternative rock – and they certainly weren’t radio friendly. Some radio hosts persisted and tried to play “Rape Me” on air and were very quickly silenced. Take a quick listen to the album today though and you will clearly see that this was Nirvana returning to their roots – that brashness and rawness that made Bleach such a special album were back in abundance.
To round out my argument that Nirvana had better albums than Nevermind I have to throw into the mix their live ‘best of’ From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah. For teenage me this album seemed like a fitting tribute after the death of Cobain. The band deliberately sought out their heavier tracks to be included on Wishkah and to their credit it sounds like they never even tried to clean up any of the sound. Stage noise and tech issues can be heard all throughout the album and that is one of the reasons why I feel this is one of the best ‘live’ albums of all time… although it should be pointed out that the tracks were not taken from one gig like many believe. In fact it is a truly international album with tracks being plucked from concerts including those held in Rome, Holland, the UK and of course the USA.
Perhaps next time you want to sit down and revisit the magic of Nirvana skip over the familiar blue of Nevermind and give Bleach or From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah a listen – it may just give you a whole new perception of who Nirvana were as a band.
