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