A GUEST SERIES

19 – Pennyroyal Tea – Nirvana (1994, Geffen Records)

Not Released as a single in April 1994 (Release cancelled)
Re-released as a Limited Edition 7” in April 2014 (Reached Number 121)

‘Pennyroyal Tea’ was as most of you will know supposed to be the third single to be released from Nirvana’s final studio album ‘In Utero’. It was all set to go when Kurt Cobain tragically took his own life and therefore it was rapidly cancelled. The B Side for those of you that are interested was a cheery little ditty called ‘I Hate Myself and I Want To Die’

Ten years later it was finally released as a limited edition single a part of a Record Store Day, which means that it qualifies for this rundown. I would imagine that Cobain would be delighted with reaching Number 19 in this chart.

I was sitting on the sofa in OPGs lounge when I heard the news about Cobain’s death. OPG was devastated and for something like the next four hours we sat and listened to Nirvana records. It was a bleak few hours, I think I may have drunk some cider as well.

We had tickets to see the band on May 7th 1994 in London. We were heading up there with a couple of people from the branch of Our Price where she worked. One of these people was a lanky bloke called Stuart, who only ever wore a black and red stripey long sleeved t-shirt, tight black jeans and Doc Martens. Like Dennis The Menace, only more annoying. I called him Mr Goatee because he fondled goats had a goatee beard.

Mr Goatee liked his American Rock and played it constantly, you knew when he was working in the Chatham Branch of Our Price because all you could hear when he walked past the shop was tracks like this

Today – Smashing Pumpkins (1993, Hut Records, Number 44)

And very occasionally this – but only I feel if OPG was in control of the office stereo.

Let It Slide – Mudhoney (1991, Sub Pop Records, Number 60)

Regular readers of T(n) VV will remember that when I broke up with OPG in the summer of 1994, (outside the Purple Turtle in Reading half way through a Scarfo gig).

Skinny – Scarfo (1995, Fierce Panda Records, 7” Only Did Not Chart)

We broke up largely because she had fallen for the charms of Mr Goatee. I remember chucking a tape of his out of the window of my car somewhere on the M25 outside of Leatherhead, after OPG and I split and laughing like a maniac as cars crushed it unto dust under their wheels. Then I cried nonstop for the rest of journey.

SWC

Album : Nevermind – Nirvana
Review : NME, 21 September 1991
Author : Steve Lamacq

Nirvana do here what Sonic Youth did so emphatically with ‘Goo’ last year – making the move from cult indie to major label with not as much as a hiccup. In fact, just as the Sonics impressed and outstripped the sceptics’ expectations, Nirvana have made an LP which is not only better than anything they’ve done before, it’ll stand up as a new reference point for the future post-hardcore generation.

For starters, this makes a refreshing change from the recent crop of groups – both British and American – who’ve used the Dinosaur Jr/Husker Du sound as their base starting point. Nirvana’s rawk, instead, draws upon their roots in Sub Pop grunge, but also takes in chunks of heavy ’70s bass/guitars and ideology.

Normally, this would spell the sort of appalling disaster you’d usually associate with ITV’s autumn schedules, but Nirvana, in their defence, have attacked rock and changed the format. This is monstrous in the sense of a good drama series, rather than a cheap US thriller. While various American grunge bands seem content to slosh around in their respective hardcore genres – albeit with some success and lucidity – Nirvana have opted out of the underground without wimping out of the creative process.

‘Nevermind’ is a record for people who’d like to like Metallica, but can’t stomach their lack of melody; while on the other hand it takes some of the Pixies‘ nous with tunes, and gives the idea new muscle. A shock to the system. Tracks like the excellent ‘In Bloom’ and best of the lot, ‘Come As You Are’, show a dexterity that combines both a tension and a laid-back vibe that work off each other to produce some cool, constructed twists and turns.

‘Come As You Are’ has something eerie about it, while opening track (and forthcoming single) ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ has a ‘Goo’ey feeling inherent in its lurching structure. At other times, the threesome lean into thrashier territory with the berserk ‘Territorial Pissings’ and screaming-pop of ‘Breed’.

This is the natural progression from their debut LP ‘Bleach’, exploring different avenues. They are less specific lyrically than SY, sometimes annoyingly so, but yet they still produce these vivid moods with ‘Drain You’, ‘Polly’ and the closing, quieter ‘Something In The Way’.

‘Nevermind’ is the big American alternative record of the autumn. But better still, it’ll last well into next year.

mp3 : Nirvana – Come As You Are
mp3 : Nirvana – In Bloom
mp3 : Nirvana – Something In The Way

JC adds : For a man who would become, thanks to his BBC Radio 1 Evening Session shows, so closely associated with the rise of Britpop just a few years later, credit has to go to Steve Lamacq for such a concise and well-thought review of an album that nobody could have predicted, at the time of its release, would later become so omnipresent.  His prediction that the impact of Nevermind would last a year or so was likely what everyone thought, not least the trio of musicians who made the album.

 

The idea of pulling together a Nirvana ICA was inspired by me catching up a few weeks ago with the documentary Montage of Heck, released back in 2015.

It tells the story of Kurt Cobain, from his childhood to his death at the age of 27. I found it to be a tough watch in many places, being at times a sad and moving portrait about an individual who was, to say the very least, a complex and troubled character. It was incredibly informative in many different ways, including opening my eyes to just how much there is out there in terms of material by Nirvana given that so many bootlegs, live, home and radio studio recordings have been issued in addition to the three studio albums. There’s a page on wiki that lists all known Nirvana recordings and there’s well over 100 different songs out there in some shape or other.

The ICA is drawn purely from the CDs that I have in the collection, consisting of the studio albums, a handful of singles and the MTV Unplugged release and as such may not be completely representative of the band’s output. But the question is, will it be entertaining enough for you?

SIDE A

1. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (from MTV Unplugged, 1994)

If anyone doubts that Kurt Cobain was an incredibly talented performer, then I would ask them to listen to this, the closing track of the MTV Unplugged performance, recorded on 16 November 1993 and aired the following month, with the CD eventually released in November 1994 as the first posthumous release after the singer’s suicide.

It’s a cover of a traditional song known as ‘In The Pines’ thought to date from the 1870s with Nirvana basing their take on the version recorded by bluesman Lead Belly in the mid-1940s. The MTV performance takes up the final few minutes of Montage of Heck on the back of a very telling contribution from Courtney Love which reveals that her late husband was an incredibly insecure man, which was really no surprise given the story that had been told over the previous two hours. There can be few better instances of a singer reaching deep inside himself to give absolutely everything to the moment, revealing what was a largely unknown tender side to someone whose fame and fortune had been made on noise and raw energy.

2. Territorial Pissings (from Nevermind, 1991)

There will be a number of songs lifted from the album which provided the commercial breakthrough. Almost 30 years on and I can still listen to it from start to end without reaching for the FF button. It’s aged very well, which is unusual for anything which sold 30 million copies world-wide in its day. The shortest track on the album is loud and energetic, driven along by the pounding drums of Dave Grohl and the dynamic bass of Kris Novoselic, without whom the band’s sound wouldn’t have been so perfectly formed. There’s a co-credit given to American songwriter Chet Powers as the opening spoken lines are lifted from his song ‘Let’s Get Together’. Interesting that Powers was another musician whose reliance on drugs caused him a great many problems and grief, including a jail sentence that he served in the infamous Fulsom Prison.

3. About A Girl (from Bleach, 1989)

Nirvana will always be thought of as a grunge band, but this track from the debut LP shows that their songwriter was more than capable of writing a fabulous pop song that is reminiscent in places of R.E.M. and (whisper it given what I said a few weeks back) The Beatles. The only Kurt Cobain song you are likely to hear aired at an indie-disco…..

4. Come As You Are (from Nevermind, 1991)

The most obviously radio-friendly (musically speaking) of the tracks from Nevermind, but with a chorus that became awkward after the suicide. It’s not the band’s most representative of songs and the fact it was such a fan favourite had a lot to do with the determination to make the next again album as unlistenable and uncommercial as the record label would allow them to get away with.

5. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter (from In Utero, 1993)

Just as Ian Curtis’s bandmates failed to spot his increasing problems as illustrated within the lyrics he had penned for the songs on the album Closer, so too did those closest to Kurt Cobain fail to realise that much of what he was doing for In Utero, musically and lyrically, were cries for help. This ironically-titled track comes with a real sense of despair in the repeated use of the line ‘What Is Wrong With Me?’ within its chorus, and in retrospect is really the singer wanting someone, anyone to consider just why it is that he had turned into a junkie increasingly incapable of taking care of himself or thinking rationally.

SIDE B

1. Drain You (from Nevermind, 1991)

The fact that this track also appears on the b-side to the single release of Smells Like Teen Spirit demonstrates how little faith there was in Nirvana making any crossover from grunge obscurity into the mainstream.

Drain You has ‘smash hit’ written all over it, from its cheery sounding opening to a tune that wasn’t a million miles removed from those released a few years earlier by Pixies. The demand for Nirvana product was such that four singles were eventually lifted from Nevermind and while there is a huge amount of to admire about In Bloom and Lithium, neither sound as wonderful coming out of your FM radio as this.

2. Pennyroyal Tea (from MTV Unplugged, 1994)

It may well be one of the most accessible songs on In Utero but its finest rendition comes courtesy of the Unplugged show. It’s the only song in which Kurt Cobain performs alone during the show, which itself was a sort of happy accident as various arrangements tried out during rehearsals hadn’t been to everyone’s satisfaction. Answering questions during an interview carried out to promote the release of In Utero, the singer revealed that while the song title refers to what many had recommended as a way to try and cure his stomach ailments, he saw this as a death-bed song by a depressant who only made things worse for himself by reading deep and difficult books or listening to the most cheerless lyrics put to music by Leonard Cohen (something in itself which I find is a bit of an unusually lazy-cliché from Cobain)

3. All Apologies (from In Utero, 1993)

For anyone who may have missed out on About A Girl and the fact that there was more to Nirvana than screaming vocals.

I’ve long been a sucker for the use of cellos on rock and pop records and the contribution from Kara Schaley borders on perfection. It’s a song that took on an added poignancy after the suicide, sounding at times like the note that would be left behind.

4. Breed (from Nevermind, 1991)

From one extreme to another – one of the most alive-sounding tracks that Nirvana ever issued. Let’s raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwkk.

5. Smells Like Teen Spirit (from Nevermind, 1991)

The trick to a successful ICA is to get the ‘correct’ running order of the tracks. I’ve long said that an ICA doesn’t need to feature the best 10 songs by a singer or band but instead should seek to make for a seamless listen. There’s no doubt that Teen Spirit overshadows everything else the band ever did, becoming something of an albatross around their collective neck leading to Kurt Cobian re-using its distinctive introductory notes again on a later song that he would call Rape Me. But it became said albatross for the simple reason that it is an outstanding song that appealed to so many different types of music fans back in the day.

It is the first answer that 99.999% of folk will give when asked to name a song by Nirvana. It is likely the only song by them that many folk know. It was the obvious candidate to open the ICA but when I chose to go with the cover version, I couldn’t imagine it being anything else but the closer. It’s a killer tune and the repeated guttural and abrasive use of ‘ a denial’ over the last few seconds provides as great an ending to any song ever written and maintains the majestic epic nature of what had come before in the earlier five or so minutes. You don’t agree?? Oh well, whatever, never mind.

JC

Some facts and stats.

The debut 45 by Nirvana, in November 1988, had a limited run of just 1200, of which 1000 were hand-numbered in red ink and the remainder unnumbered.

It was the very first release of what is now referred to as the first volume of the Sub Pop Singles Club, a monthly subscription service run by the label. Volume 1 ran from November 1988 till December 1993 and issued one single per month to its subscribers, always in limited editions.

The a-side of the 45 was a cover of a song, originally released in 1969, by the Dutch band Shocking Blue. The b-side was an original Nirvana song.

The trip of players on the single are listed as Kurdt Kobain (vocals, guitar), Chris Novoselic (bass) and Chad Channing (drums). It was recorded at Reciprocal Studios in Seattle and production is credit to Jack Endino and Nirvana.

A slightly different mix of the song would also appear on the band’s debut album, Bleach as well as featuring on the Blew EP, released on license by the Tupelo Recording Company in the UK in December 1989.

There are currently two copies of the single up for sale on Discogs. One is from a UK dealer – it is #765. The dealer has graded it as ‘Very Good Plus’ in terms of the vinyl and the condition of the sleeve and is asking for £2,500. A bit of a bargain when you consider that the only other copy, from an American dealer will set you back over £3,600 depending on the exchange rate, although to be fair, this dealer states that the sleeve is near mint and that the vinyl, ‘is super clean with the exception of the tiniest hairline scuff, barely noticeable that does not affect play’ – oh and this copy is #115.

mp3 : Nirvana – Love Buzz
mp3 : Nirvana – Big Cheese

As debut singles go, it is of the raaaaaawk variety with hardly an indication that a revamped Nirvana, with a different drummer, would become the biggest band on the planet.

But you wouldn’t catch me paying anything like the above sums of money for a piece of black plastic just seven inches in diameter.

Imagine, though, if you did happen to have one and had persuaded the lead singer to autograph it……there’s someone on e-bay selling a copy of the single along with an accompanying letter from Kurt Cobain in which he extols the virtues of the debut to a close friend. The single itself isn’t signed but obviously the value is in the letter. The asking price is $39,999.

Bonkers.

JC

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON FRIDAY 9 MAY 2008

(and featured again in this form on 4 March 2015)

Is this the song in my self-indulgent rundown that stands out like a sore-thumb?

In terms of a world-wide audience, it’s probably the best-known of all of the 45s (so far). It’s certainly got the most identifiable opening notes (that is unless you get confused with Call It What You Want by Credit To The Nation which sampled the intro).

First time I heard this was as the opening song on a cassette made up by Jacques the Kipper. It was a time when every six weeks or so, we would thrust a tape into each others hands along with set of cryptic clues for each song, and challenge the other, not just to identify the track, but also offer a few observations.

His clue for the opening song was ‘Vodka’. Sheer genius if you ask me…..the boy should have become a copywriter with an advertising agency.

But back to the song…

It’s about as far removed as you could ever imagine from the twee stuff that I listened to so much over the previous decade, and it could almost be classified as the dreaded stadium rock. And yet…

There’s just something very special and outstanding about Smells Like Teen Spirit that is difficult to pinpoint. I can’t argue that it’s anything unlike you’d ever heard before, given that it has a riff that is very similar (some say identical) to More Than A Feeling by 70s soft-rockers Boston. Nor is there a case to be made that the vocals are completely different from other folk given that Kurt Cobain’s style of quiet/shout/quiet/shout was something you heard from Black Francis on many Pixies songs. And yet…

The song did seem to arrive like a bolt out of the blue. Yes, there had been some coverage in the UK music papers about some sort of scene based around the city of Seattle, but how many times before had we read about a scene in Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco or any other American city that had petered out before it crossed the Atlantic. But then Nirvana came across to the UK to promote Nevermind. There was a live appearance on an early evening chat-show on Channel 4 hosted by Jonathan Ross. He introduced the band who went straight into a heavy-metal riff, and then Kurt took over on a completely indecipherable lyric that was a low-moan or a scream…

In the middle of the tune, he sang the words, ‘Just Because You’re Paranoid Don’t Mean That They’re After You’. Then he started screaming again. The song finished in a flurry of feedback not seen in any TV studio since the heyday of Jesus And Mary Chain, before the drums were kicked over and the band stormed off to muted applause and a bemused chat show host who had his finger in his ear. Jonathan Ross than, in a brilliant piece of improvisation said ‘That was Nirvana – doing a song that none of us were expecting. They’ve asked me to mention that they are available for children’s parties and bar mitzvahs…’

It was a truly astonishing piece of TV, and the most ‘punk’ thing I had seen in years, and I knew right then that Nirvana were the genuine article. (The song they played was Territorial Pissings). It was the sort of thing that won’t happen nowadays as prime-time TV live shows are no longer really live and bands won’t behave in that way for fear of upsetting the label bosses.

Of course it all went badly wrong almost immediately, and the band nowadays seem to be loved and admired more for the dead rock star syndrome rather than anything else. The fact that it all ended before there could be any critical backlash or before they fell out of fashion, means that there are very few reasons why music historians and commentators can ever make critical comments about Nirvana, other than be horrified at some of the copy-cat acts that came in their wake. But that’s just nonsensical – you never read anyone blaming The Beatles for every single four-piece band that’s walked the planet since 1963 do you?

mp3 : Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
mp3 : Nirvana – Drain You
mp3 : Nirvana – Even In His Youth
mp3 : Nirvana – Aneurysm

I never did get to see the band live on stage. Mrs Villain and myself had tickets for a Glasgow gig that never happened as Kurt Cobain committed suicide shortly beforehand. I immediately went back in for my refund, but Mrs V kept her ticket as a memento. Seems she was the clever one as she could probably get far more than its face value if she was to put it on e-bay…

Oh I’ve  tracked down the Jonathan Ross clip as well. Even if you’re no fan of the band, it’s worth having a look just to see how fresh-faced he was back in 1991. And check out his hair, as well as the ad-libbing (turns out I didn’t repeat it 100% word-for-word, but I wasn’t far off).

Enjoy

The opening few notes of this must be among the most recognisable of all time:-

mp3 : Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

I can still recall the very first time I ever heard this.  It was the opening song on a cassette made up by Jacques the Kipper. It was a time when every six weeks or so, we would thrust a tape into each others hands along with set of cryptic clues for each song, and challenge the other, not just to identify the track, but also offer a few observations.

His clue for the opening song was ‘Vodka’. Sheer genius if you ask me…..the boy should have become a copywriter with an advertising agency.

I loved the song then and I love it still.  I put it at #11 in my all time 45s rundown back in 2008 and it would still feature just as highly if I was to re-run that exercise today. ( much of the rest of this posting is adapted from that particular piece over at the old blog with a few additions)

This song is  about as far removed as you could ever imagine from the jingly-jangly stuff that I listened to so much over the previous decade, and it could almost be classified as the dreaded stadium rock. And yet….

There’s just something very special and outstanding about Smells Like Teen Spirit that is difficult to pinpoint. I can’t argue that it’s anything unlike you’d ever heard before, given that it has a riff that is very similar (some say identical) to More Than A Feeling by 70s soft-rockers Boston. Nor is there a case to be made that the vocals are completely different from other folk given that Kurt Cobain’s style of quiet/shout/quiet/shout was something you heard from Black Francis on many Pixies songs. And yet…

The song did seem to arrive like a bolt out of the blue. Yes, there had been some coverage in the UK music papers about some sort of scene based around the city of Seattle, but how many times before had we read about a scene in Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco or any other American city that had petered out before it crossed the Atlantic. But then Nirvana came across to the UK to promote Nevermind. There was a live appearance on an early evening chat-show on Channel 4 hosted by Jonathan Ross. He introduced the band who went straight into a heavy-metal riff, and then Kurt took over on a completely indecipherable lyric that was a low-moan or a scream…

In the middle of the tune, he sang the words, ‘Just Because You’re Paranoid Don’t Mean That They’re After You’. Then he started screaming again. The song finished in a flurry of feedback not seen in any TV studio since the heyday of Jesus And Mary Chain, before the drums were kicked over and the band stormed off to muted applause and a bemused chat show host who had his finger in his ear. Jonathan Ross than, in a brilliant piece of improvisation said ‘That was Nirvana – doing a song that none of us were expecting. They’ve asked me to mention that they are available for children’s parties and bar mitzvahs…’

It was a truly astonishing piece of TV, and the most ‘punk’ thing I had seen in years, and I knew right then that Nirvana were the genuine article. (The song they played was Territorial Pissings). It was the sort of thing that won’t happen nowadays as prime-time TV live shows are no longer really live and bands won’t behave in that way for fear of upsetting the label bosses.

Of course it all went badly wrong almost immediately, and the band nowadays seem to be loved and admired more for the dead rock star syndrome rather than anything else. The fact that it all ended before there could be any critical backlash or before they fell out of fashion, means that there are very few reasons why music historians and commentators can ever make critical comments about Nirvana, other than be horrified at some of the copy-cat acts that came in their wake. But that’s just nonsensical – you never read anyone blaming The Beatles for every single four-piece band that’s walked the planet since 1963 do you?

Here’s the other tracks on the CD single:-

mp3 : Nirvana – Drain You
mp3 : Nirvana – Even In His Youth
mp3 : Nirvana – Aneurysm

The back of the single provides details of a promotional tour in 1991:-

November 26 : Bradford University
November 27 : Birmingham Hummingbird
November 28 : Sheffield University
November 29 : Edinburgh Calton Studios
November 30 : Glasgow QMU
December 2 : Newcastle Mayfair
December 3 : Nottingham Rock City
December 4 : Manchester Academy
December 5 : London Kilburn National Ballroom
December 9 : Belfast Conor Hall
December 10 : Dublin McGonagle’s

A few thousand people struck gold with tickets on that tour.

I never did get to see the band live on stage. Mrs Villain and myself had tickets for a Glasgow gig that never happened.

It was initially cancelled as Kurt Cobain had been unwell and was re-scheduled for later in the year but as we all know, the singer committed suicide on 6 April 1994.  The £12 was obviously needed for something else as I  immediately went back in for my refund, but Mrs V kept her ticket as a memento. Seems she was the clever one as she would get far more than its face value if she was to put it on e-bay.

(Incidentally, that’s not an image of Mrs V’s ticket…just one I lifted from the internet)