1. Smells Like Teen Spirit. [Nevermind]
2. You Know You’re Right. [Last studio session, 1994]
3. Polly. [Studio Session]
4. Sappy. [Studio Session]
5. The Man Who Sold The World. [MTV Unplugged]
6. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. [In Utero]
7. Immodium. (Breed) [Studio Session, Chad Channing on drums, from the 20th Anniversary of “Nevermind”]
8. Floyd The Barber. [Live At Pine Street Theatre, 1990]
9. Aneurysm. [Incesticide]
Comedian Horatio Sanz talks about Nirvana! Lithium being his favorite track from “Nevermind”, Around 9/11; after hearing it play, he threw a chair straight into the jukebox! “That’s what Kurt would want me to do.”
10. Lithium. [Nevermind]
11. Scentless Apprentice. [In Utero]
12. Negative Creep. [Bleach]
13. Come As You Are. [Boombox Rehearsals, from the 20th Anniversary of “Nevermind”]
14. Molly’s Lips. [Incesticide]
15. Rape Me. [In Utero]
16. About A Girl. [Live At Reading, 1992]
17. Territorial Pissings. [Butch Vig’s Devonshire Mixes, from the 20th Anniversary of “Nevermind”]
18. Don’t Want It All. [With The Lights Out]
19. Stay Away. [Remastered version, from the 20th Anniversary of “Nevermind”]
20. Big Long Now. [Incesticide]
SiriusXM: Nevermind Radio launches 3p ET, Ch. 34. Nirvana’s music, B-sides, rarities, performances + Jon Stewart’s live Q&A w/ band, Vig on Sat. 8p ; get your free trial here!
The Paramount show will also be playing later at 10PM (Vh1)
Today in 1991, “Nevermind” is released in the UK!
The cover shot was inspired by Kurt and Dave having seen a documentary on underwater birth during recording sessions. They investigated pictures of babies being born underwater, but they were too graphic. Therefore they chose a stock graphic of a baby swimming, but it was too expensive. As a result the art director, Robert Fisher, got Kirk Weddle, an underwater photographer to take some shots himself of a baby underwater. The baby in the final picture chosen was Spencer Elden. Kurt recommended the adding of a dollar on a fish-hook and thus a famous album cover was born. Inside the inlay is a page of random lyrics from the songs on ‘Nevermind’ mashed together in no particular order. Two of the lines amongst them were made up by Kurt and do not feature in the lyrics of any of the songs (“The second coming came in last and out of the closet” and “At the end of the rainbow and your rope”). The back-cover features a meat-and-diseased vagina collage by Cobain behind the Chim Chim (above the head of which is a picture of Kiss). Cobain’s name appears on photo credits as ‘Kurdt Kobain’.
(via:@Nirvana):
http://bit.ly/qLAT7f Free trial“Nah, there’s not really too much I would change. What I usually remember are the funny little moments, like doing back vocals. Usually the anomalies are the things you remember from records. It’s all the quirky things. I remember at the start of “On A Plain,” where Kurt took in this little train. He had all these little toys on there and he was playing with them during the song. I remember saying, “OK, are you ready for the vocals?” And he said yeah, so I started rolling the tape and recorded. But he didn’t sing; he just recorded all these odd little things through the song. And I thought it was interesting. Then I’d say, “Are you ready to do a vocal?” And he said, “OK, Butch, I guess so.”
I also remember Dave trying to hit the high vocals on “In Bloom.” Dave’s voice sounds amazingly like Kurt’s and it blended really well. He said, “I have to pull a Keith Richards.” So he’d take a sip of Jack Daniel’s and a puff from a cigarette. He’d get halfway through a line and his voice would start to break up. I remember all of us laughing and laughing. By the time he got the vocal done, I think he had drank half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.” - Butch Vig.
Sappy:
“Kurt overdubbed the guitar with his rat pedal, after doing so he laid his guitar down and just walked straight into the control room and said “I don’t want to do this, I’m not into this song right now. So let’s leave it.” It’s a different version, has few lyric changes, an instrumental intro.”
Verse Chorus Verse:
“That was recorded live, instrumentally. Kurt overdubbed three guitars to complement the drums and bass guitar and never put vocals down for it.”
Old Age:
“That was another live track.”
Song In D:
“They rehearsed that one in Sound City, Kurt was a little leery about this one because it was really jangly, I wanted Kurt to finish the words. It was like On a Plain or About a Girl, this jangly arpeggio thing in the key of D. I thought I could turn it into another single. [being asked if it was “All Apologies”] No, Song in D was it’s own beast. We attempted to track it, but Kurt decided to stop working on it cuz it sounded “too much like R.E.M.”, which is exactly why I wanted to pursue it!”
“We spent most of a day trying to record it as a band, working out different drum parts, Kurt came into the control room and said, I can’t get into this at all.
I said, How do you hear it then?
and he sat down on the couch and was hardly mumbling the vocal, playing the guitar so quietly. So I said “Okay, stop” and I turned off the air conditioner and everything else and had the phones shut off. He was playing and singing so quietly. But we got it down on tape. Later on, we overdubbed drums and Kurt added some harmonies. But it was all built around the acoustic track.
Kurt and I wanted the drums to be very understated, Dave was used to playing much louder; plus, it can be very difficult to go back and lay drums over an acoustic guitar track, as the meter may vary a bit. In the end, Dave came up with a great performance. Novoselic did two bass takes, even that was hard to sync up with Kurt’s part, we had to punch in spots, just so Krist would get the languid feel on the bass to lock up with the acoustics.” - Butch Vig.
“I knew I wanted cello on it, but after all the music was recorded for it, we’d kinda forgotten about putting a cello on. We had one more day in the studio and we decided, Oh geez, we should hire a cellist, you know, and put something in
. We were at a party and were asking some of our friends if they knew anyone who could play cello, and it just happened that one of our best friends in L.A. is a cellist. Kirk. So we took him into the studio on the last day and said, Here, play something
. And he came up with a part right away. It just fell in like dominoes.” - Kurt Cobain.
“Kirk Canning is a good cello player, but we had a hard time getting his instrument in tune with Kurt’s guitar. That old five-string acoustic of Kurt’s was tuned down a few steps and wasn’t really tuned to any standard pitch. I remember I fretted over the whole track.” - Butch Vig.
