If you started out the ’90s playing in a scuzzy stomp-rock band, there’s a decent chance that you became a millionaire at some point during the decade. If you were a parent of teenagers, you may have, at some point, worn Doc Martens or stripey multicolor stocking caps in a lame attempt to impress your kids. If you worked in an ad agency, you may have pitched a TV commercial in which a Volkswagen crowd-surfs. These things were happening everywhere during that decade, and in a lot of ways, they were happening as a direct result of Nevermind. In some other ways, the death, less than three years later, of that album’s creator was also a result of the album and its hugeness. So is the fact that this creator, one Kurt Cobain, recently surpassed Elvis Presley to top Forbes‘ morbid list of the top-earning dead celebrities. Twenty years after its release, Nevermind is still making somebody rich.
Saturday marked the exact 20th anniversary of Nevermind‘s release, and that anniversary is loudly being celebrated all over the media. Among the fireworks: A huge box-set reissue of the album, a tribute LP by Spin, a Jon Stewart SiriusXM Q&A with Grohl/Novoselic/Vig, a Seattle all-stars tribute concert, the blog post you’re reading right now. Much of the noise is about the album’s massive and unexpected commercial success, an out-of-nowhere game-changer that nobody expected, least of all the members of the band themselves. 20th anniversaries are usually nice times to take nostalgic looks at certain artifacts and to gauge their after-effects. But you can’t quite do that with Nevermind because those ripples are still rippling. Generations of kids have been brought up with the idea that music can be immediate and personal and weird and loud and deeply felt and also hugely popular. That’s part of the reason we have phenomena like Arcade Fire today. They’re hugely popular because they’re a good band and people like them, but also because people are willing a band like this to be huge, to help validate the precedent that Nevermind set. The hugeness is part of the point. And so is the excitement. When Odd Future played a series of livewire shows at this year’s SXSW, plenty of pundits immediately reached for the Nirvana parallel. Hell, I immediately thought of Nirvana too, and the closest thing I ever saw to a Nirvana show was a 1996 Foo Fighters headlining set at a radio-station festival in a football stadium. The only reason I didn’t say the N-word out loud is that I didn’t want to sound like a lame.
It’s fun to talk about that cultural impact because we still don’t know what the hell happened that made this record so popular. It’s hard to talk about the music. It’s especially hard for me to talk about the music because I simply can’t hear the album as music anymore. The album came out a few weeks after my 12th birthday, and I was just getting to be the perfect age to get really excited about this album and everything it represented. I bought magazines with Nirvana on the cover, I cut out pictures of them and put them on my wall, I developed opinions about their various different producers before I had any idea what a producer did. And I listened to the album over and over, so many times that it immediately becomes background nothingness when I listen to it now. It’s like rewatching Star Wars; once you’ve experienced something often enough, at a young enough age, that you learn every second of it, there’s nothing left to learn of it. Actually, its omnipresence is even more than that of Star Wars. It’s not like I see 10-minute scenes from Star Wars every time I turn on the TV, but this side-A tracks from Nevermind are always on the radio.
I don’t have this problem with Bleach or In Utero or MTV Unplugged In New York. I don’t have it with Ten or Achtung Baby or The Chronic or Faith No More’s The Real Thing or DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s …And In This Corner or the Judgement Night soundtrack or any of the other albums I listened to way too often as a kid. I can hear and enjoy all these records as music just fine. They sound good. They bring back memories. Nevermind just is. It’s like the Monolith in 2001: A giant slab of meaning that we may never disentangle.
Anyway, that’s my overly pretentious take on the album and what it means now. But what about you, the readers? To commemorate the occasion, we’re giving away one of the $109.99 Super Deluxe Limited Edition Nevermind box sets that come out tomorrow (exclusive to Best Buy through 10/24). To enter to win, all you have to do is (1) be a fan of Stereogum on Facebook and (2) comment by telling us your favorite Nevermind-associated memory. You’ll have to comment via Facebook Connect — not your ‘Gum user account on this post — since we’ll have to be able to check if you are a fan of Stereogum on FB when the sweepstakes ends. The prize will go to the author of our favorite comment posted below (that’s right, we’re not picking randomly this time so make ‘em count). Deadline to enter is 10/10 at 5:30PM EST. Have your comment logged by then, and you’re in. (Of course you can also comment below with your ‘Gum profile, but you won’t be eligible to win this sweeps.)
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I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” while going to BGSU in northwest Ohio. I always listened to 89X out of Detroit, and they had played the song a few days before the CD was coming out. I had snagged that ‘broadcast’ on cassette, and easily listened to it in my car on pretty much an endless loop prior to racing out to the local record store to grab the disc when it came out. Even on the crappiest little boom box, that song had so much power….
Kurt being wheeled out in a wheelchair at Reading then breaking into Breed. classic live moment.
hearing nirvana for the first time , and going on napster and downloading every song i could find and becoming a fan ever since. i know it was years after kurt died but bettter late than never.
I knew the album, and Nirvana, were going to be huge when I was sitting in my uncle’s boat (while it sat in his driveway) with my hip-hop & smooth r&b loving cousins and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on the pop radio station they were listening to. We all just started rocking out to it at the same time, turned it up and didn’t say a word while it played. The moment of “This is something” was so crystal clear to me.
My first memory of Nirvana was seeing Weird Al doing the spoof video and then I saw the original and realized how awesome Nirvana was and apparently Weird Al did to to spoof the video use the same director extras and gym. talk about an homage.
I bought this for my mom for mothers day after it had came out. I still have the cassette tape that I had to tape back together after wearing it out on a road trip to Texas.
I remember buying the “Lithium” cassingle and finding the lyric sheet for the album inside. I glanced over the lyrics for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and thought, “That can’t be right.” It took many weeks of listening to the album before I finally accepted those lyrics as legit.
It’s not a memory of Nevermind but the fact then when the advertising campaign began for this box set hearing teen spirit kick in still sounds incredible.
My dad had actually bought the Nevermind cd when it first came out. I was only 7 years old at the time but I remember really jamming to Smells like Teen Spirit. I made him copy it to cassette for me so I could jam with it on my walkman!
i remember hearing kids talk about nirvana in middle school, and sometime in eighth grade i went on that ol’ favorite limewire and grabbed a bunch of tracks and put them on in windows media player (dat visualizer). breed came on, the drums kicked in, and i rocked out so good that i fell out of my chair. eight years later, i’m still having a love affair with rock music.
Riding down the streets of suburban Michigan, blasting Nevermind in my friend’s crappy 1984 BMW after school with the windows down. This was in the late 00′s so we weren’t in the grunge movement at all, we were just a bunch of angsty high schoolers that needed some kind of release from “the man” and this was the hands-down best option. Even now the album speaks volumes.
I know that this is a pretty cliched situation, but still, thinking about that sense of teen angst after a day at school and needing to unwind through the power of music is pretty powerful.
Born when Kurt was dead.
really born when heard nevermind
i was 11 when it came out, but started listening to nirvana, here in Greece, maybe at 13-14, when i bought a cassette of Nevermind. i listened to the cassette at a frind’s house and then i went and bought using (a great deal of) my allowance. i didn’t know what was driving me to headbang when listening to smells like teen spirit. awesome years
I wasn’t born when it came out, but during my early teenage years I was big into grunge. This and Ten were what I listened to for a couple years. Good memories.
My earliest memory, literally, is of me (maybe 2 or 3 years old), really sick, sitting in my living room in the middle of the night with my parents watching, what they would later explain to me, mtv. And they might tell you otherwise, or they just don’t remember like 3-year-old me does, but Smells Like Teen Spirit was definitely on, and I so vaguely remember watching that video. Now it’s like, whenever I watch that music video, it brings up this dreamy, David Lynch-ian feeling of deja vu, and I think of this memory.
p.s. I was gonna leave a gif of the janitor rocking out, but it didn’t work :/
Consolation
I admit I first listened to them when I was 15, sadly it was the day Kurt died. After that I got hooked to Nevermind. Weirdly enough “Something In The Way” was my favorite track.
I remember my friend made me a cassette tape of Nevermind in 6th grade but he cut out “Territorial Pissings” cause the album was too long to fit on one side of the tape and it was the worst song on the album. I was so pissed at him. Later when I actually bought it on CD, “Territorial Pissings” became my favorite song because it was the only one I hadn’t heard a million times before.
Nevermind was the first album my dad and I could really agree on. That’s my first and favorite memory. He is a musician and I’m sure disdained all my tastes in music in my youth. Nirvana changed all that. He bought two copies of the album – one for each of us and we listened to it and discussed it all the time. It was rock. Pop. Smart. Subversive and amazing. We still talk about it.
I remember…wait, no I don’t. I was seven months old when Nevermind came out. :(
I was about 8 years old at summer camp circa 1992, and we had a dance one night with one of the girl camps. I remember looking up to the older teenage kids, thinking they were really wild. There were teenage girls headbanging to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the dancefloor! This actually happened back in the early 90s–I saw it happen, I swear. I’m not talking about a couple of outsider chicks who peeled away from the wall to come out and rage for one song–ALL of the girls were out there going wild for Nirvana. For one hot minute, Nirvana took punk to the mainstream.
I bought the Nevermind cassette when it came out. I was 12. I flipped the cassette jacket inside out so my mother wouldn’t see the cover.
I lived in a military base in Germany until ’95, when my family moved to New York. It was there that I discovered music outside of MC Hammer (my favorite at the time) on the now defunct ZRock radio station. So when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio in ’95, I was 13 and thought I had just discovered some amazing new band. I listened to the radio every day after that just to hear it again before I mustered up the courage to call the station directly and request it. I’ll never forget the Deejay’s reaction. Here I am thinking I’m wanting them to play this super obscure indie band and the deejay replied with “Yeah, okay sure” in the most nonchalant fashion as to say “Not THAT song again.” I was in disbelief and thought that maybe he just didn’t know who Nirvana were. It wasn’t until months later I would start to learn the tragic truth.
thinking it was overrated for about ten years and then finally revisiting the album and loving it.
I loved this album when it originally came out. What made it even more special was hearing my dad (RIP) singing the songs around the house.
He would usually walk around singing The Doors, Hendrix, Talking Heads, but when I heard him singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” it made the band that much more important to me. Mostly because he knew all the “good stuff” and that was his thumbs up.
I think I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on our “rock” radio station here in Indy. And then would tune in every night to here it on the nightly call-in countdown show they did. I remember going to my friend’s house (I had *just* started high school) an we would listen to it on the radio. It’s amazing how that song and album changed *everything* about how I listened to music and what music I listened to…
A few of us in elementary school decided it would be great to perform “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (read lip sync, we were all, like 11 years old) for some sort of talent show. I can’t even recall being familiar with Nirvana or the song at all so I had to be taught by my older brother (how to dress; how to move) and perform the song with not three but six people. It was ridiculous. But this was my first experience with Nirvana and probably heavy duty rock n roll in general.
Wait did we ever find out who won the Neon Indian machine thing? I really wanted one to scare the hell out of my dog
Yes, sorry — there was a winner selected for that!
EASY. when i was in college at liberty university (the late reverend jerry falwell’s school), and i was discovering great music for the first time, my devout christian roommate knocked on my door on day and sat me down for a talk…his words:
“i hear you’ve been listening to a lot of nirvana lately dan…i just wanna ask, is everything ok?”
Seeing riki rachtman debute Smells Like Teen Spirit on Headbangers Ball. You Could Be Mind by Guns N Roses was big on that show at the time, a great hard rocker — but this was on a different viceral level that I haven’t felt since.
This is not my favourite memory, this is, in fact… probably the only strong memory I have from that time. I was a little kid. My older brother Walter, a huge Nirvana fan (and a huge fan of Smells Like Teen Spirit, of course) took me to Buenos Aires, Argentina to see them live at the Velez stadium, in October 1992. I really didn’t understand or care much about music, but my brother, he was a massive fan and was really, really excited about the whole thing. But the experience didn’t turn out as well as he expected it to. Argentinan people, especially in rock concerts, are really intense. Some artists have say that they are the best crowd in the world (I think Mick Jagger said that), but when they’re not in their best mood, things can get pretty dangerous. As I said, they are intense, sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad ways. We got to the stadium. I don’t have clear memories from this night, but do I remember people walking around everywhere, people chanting the chorus to Smells Like Teen Spirit, stuff like that. Calamity Jane was opening, and all I remember is that they got a really BAD reception from the audience, it was just awful, people kept yelling at them. My brother didn’t know what the hell was going on, but everybody was in a real bad mood… So, finally, Nirvana showed up up, and Kurt was so angry, he played the opening riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit and then just moved on to another song. And after that song, he played the intro again, and moved on to another song. My brother kept telling me, “I’m sure they are going to play that song last.” But they didn’t. The big hit, missing from the setlist. My brother’s dream, shattered to pieces. I don’t remember much from that night, but I do remember people being completely mad about this. They probably deserved it. But my brother and I didn’t, we were there to enjoy the gig and have a good time. My brother sold his Nevermind cassette to a friend (it was the only Nirvana album he had), and never listened to them again, ever. Years later, as a teenager, I bought In Utero and it just blew my fucking mind, and I’ve been a fan ever since.
I picked up a copy of Nevermind in seventh grade all the way back in 2005 because it seemed like the cool thing to do. As soon as Smells Like Teen Spirit came on, I immediately had a big ol’ deja vu episode because I wasn’t even one when this album hit big on the populace and my twenty-something parents must’ve engrained it in my head. Anyway, still one of my favorite albums of all time.
there was a short while in 1991 when my dad had two color TVs side by side in our living room. at the time this pissed me off as i still had a tiny black and white in my room, but the upside to this is he kept one muted on MTV almost all the time, and whenever something he really dug came on, he would put it on both TVs and blast them. this is how i first experienced the teen spirit video, and it really had an impact on my 10 year old mind. started playing guitar not long after that, and nirvana songs were the first i learned.
It’s with a heavy heart that I admit to all of you gummers that I was not a teenager when Nevermind was released. I wasn’t ‘there’ when Kurt and Co. defeated Michael Jackson to claim the top position on the Billboard charts, or when he pierced his grunge laden sword through the hearts of metal bands every where and ‘changed everything forever’. When Kurt took his life, I was still getting the hang of walking upright (I was a slow learner), however, thanks to my father’s record collection, Nevermind made me feel as if I was actually ‘there’, whenever I pressed play. When I was 12, I asked my dad if I could borrow a couple of his albums. Without hesitation, he handed me Nevermind with an arrogant smile on his face and told me that this album was perfect for me. Sure enough, it was, and it still is. I don’t know if it’s Kurt’s gravely howl, his unique brand of confusingly brilliant lyrics, or the almighty fuzz that they produce, but Nirvana can connect to anyone on such a visceral level.
I was fairly young when Nevermind came out, but was already an MTV junkie. I remember seeing the “Teen Spirit” video for the first time thinking this is something REALLY different than all the hair metal and bad R&B that was usually being played. It seemed exciting and like music was on the brink of something big.
Im a very judgmental person, and whenever im proven wrong about something, i’m instantly interested in it and probably fall in love with it. I hated high school and a lot of people i didnt really like, cause they looked like ignorant people, loved Nirvana. Wore the shirts, and talked about how they were the greatest thing on the planet. One of their favorite songs were “Rape Me”. I was like “Ugh… what kind of demented shit are they listening to?” I discovered “Come as you are” a year later and was so pissed about how wrong i was. I listened to every song and “Rape Me” became one of my favorites. Went back to the people i didn’t really like and told them i loved Nirvana now and i thought i was wrong about them. I started talking about how i loved Dave Grohl, and named songs like “About a Girl”, “Aneurysm”, and “You Know Your Right”. They had no idea what i was talking about, and i was proven right, they were ignorant and dumb. Thank you Nirvana!
I was one of those kids who didn’t really discover Nirvana until posthumously. I was 11 in 1994. I wasn’t even in the phase of forming my own musical tastes. Then 2 years later I was haunted by Nirvana tracks on the radio. I would tape them from my little tapedeck/stereo. Then I was informed that my own mother had a CASSETTE TAPE of In Utero that she never listened to that was handed down to me. It was all uphill or downhill from there, depending on your perspective. One of the first CDs I bought myself later that year was a copy of Nevermind. I went on to collect bootlegs0 Hormoaning, the Outcesticide’s, etc. And generally become obsessed with them. Nirvana was a very striking force during my formative years.
Nevermind crept slowly into my life. My musical taste did not develop until much later than many of my peers. I remember hearing about Kurt’s death when I was 14 and not really understanding why people in my school were so distraught about it. I think because I was not popular I was not inclined to delve into anything that popular kids liked…which, ironically, resulted in me missing out on an album that was intended for the unpopular kids. A couple of years later, my sister, who is two years younger than me (and was one of the popular kids), would play Nevermind loudly all the time with her door closed. Through the walls, two of the songs struck me as having uncommonly comforting and haunting melodies. I didn’t know it at the time, but these were Drain You and On a Plain. In my senior year of high school, I listened to Nevermind for the first time one day when my sister was out of the house. I liked how something in the music actually sounded blue and watery. It was the first time I had ever heard an album that sounded like an aural representation of its cover art. And still I didn’t buy Nevermind.
Three quarters of the way through my first college semester I had made few friends, and I didn’t even go home for Thanksgiving because I was so ridiculously behind on my work. Around this time, I turned on the radio to WHFS and got in bed, where I basically stayed for three days, only getting up to microwave a Kid Cuisine when I was really hungry or to use the bathroom. There were always Christmas ads weaving in and out of my dreams and the distinct feeling that this wasn’t where I was supposed to be, that this wasn’t what the holidays or life should feel like. On the third night, I awoke to the sound of NIRVANA. WHFS was playing three-song blocks of each artist. The first song was Drain You from Nevermind, which was followed by School from Muddy Banks and Sappy from the No Alternative comp. This was music that sounded exactly the way I felt, overwhelmed and like if I rolled off the bed that I would fall into some abyss. For the first time since I left home, I did not feel completely alone. I got back into the land of the living, and my next purchase was Nevermind. It was my gateway album into indie rock, so I have NIRVANA to thank for changing my life and opening me up to a world of music that actually speaks to me, that I can count on when I can’t count on anything else.
My first memory of Nirvana was seeing Smells Like Teen Spirit and the Weird Al version when I was at the college. Then I remember listening Come as you are. And discovering the tortured life of Kurt Cobain as a teenager. And the 90′s were Nirvana, finally.
I had Nevermind on cassette (well, it was taped from a friend’s CD) for quite some time before I even got a CD player. But another friend of mine gave me his old CD copy of Nevermind. I was at home, alone, so I finally got a chance to listen to the album without headphones on my cheap-ass bookshelf stereo system; after the album was over, I went to do a thing and then, about ten minutes later, I heard some crazy grinding or something. It was at this point that I discovered the hidden track ‘Endless, Nameless’, which was an incredible surprise for a music craving teen. I’m just kinda sad that there wasn’t a hidden track on In Utero…
Search for “Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip”, the hidden track on non-US versions of In Utero.
Nevermind was the first cassette I bought with my own money – after seeing a group of teenagers levitating on bleachers on TV i was convinced this is what high school would be like. I took it to grade 3 “show and tell” and blared ‘In Bloom’ while showing my classmates how to mosh like the kids in the SLTS video..
It was the first and most sincere rock ‘n roll moment of my life
I got a copy of this album in the early fall of 91, before it hit the radio. I don’t remember where I was when I first heard it, I just remember what it felt like — being punched in the gut. It was like everything I’d ever heard before and nothing I’d ever heard before all rolled into one. I didn’t have MTV, so I didn’t even know what the band looked like, but I remember racing home on a Saturday night to see their SNL performance.
It’s 1992 and I’m in 8th grade at a Middle School Dance at my school. Nevermind had been out for awhile and the local Top 40 station (XL 106.7 in Orlando) had been playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio so all the kids knew it. I guess our Middle School was cool or something, because their resident DJ, some goofy dude named Johnny Magic, actually was DJ’ing our Middle School dance! Looking back that was probably no big deal, but he was a star in the minds of pre-teens in the area. Anyway, he gets on the mike and goes “Alright, we’re gonna play Smells Like Teen Spirit, but NO MOSHING! If anybody moshes, we’ll turn it off” They start the song, and within 30 seconds there’s a big group of kids moshing in the middle of the gym (dancefloor) and they cut of the song. You could say that inspiring 11-13 year olds to mosh at a middle school dance no matter what the adults said was very foretelling for what Nirvana meant to our generation.
Well….I stole the nevermind album from my dad back in the day..Hes one of dem old fools who tries hard to be cool or hip..he would try to sing smells like teen spirit but totally butcher the words..haha.I still have the album to this day (frickin scratched !!)and he still asks for it back to this day
I’m like 14 and just heard “smells like Nirvana” for the first time and someone was like “you know thats a parody of a real song right,”? and I was like “whoa.”
There was a kid at my high school who looked so much like a brunette Kurt Cobain that it was freaky. He was a big fan too and we became friends after we bothe wore the same Nevermind tshirt to school one day.
When Kurt started spelling his name “Kurdt”, this kid tried to put an unnecessary letter d in his name as well. Except his name was Aaron. Twenty years later we still call him Darren.
I knew nothing of the northwestern indie scene at the time. I didn’t know Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone or the Melvins. But I was into metal and felt like the mainstream had nothing for me. Some friends of mine were into punk rock, others were into industrial, others were into English alternative bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode. They too felt like the mainstream had nothing to offer them. Then local radio stations picked up Smells Like Teen Spirit, and suddenly every one agreed. That’s what I remember most clearly about that school year when I was 17, fall of 91 – winter of 92, discovering that it was possible for something cool to take over.
The Madonna/Michael Jackson crowd had nothing to do with the phenomenon. It was all about every one else finally agreeing on something.
My father taped headphones to my mother’s stomach while I was in the womb. Needless to say Nevermind was played often. Does that count as a memory?
I remember sitting in my friend Tony’s car, when he slid “Nevermind” into his CD player. I was no newcomer to punk and indie rock, so initially I was underwhelmed as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” played. I said to Tony, “This is just another punk band.” The second listen through it dawned on me… this is a punk band. I knew it wasn’t a mail-order suburban skater and music head thing anymore. At that point in time, it felt legitimizing and vindicating because misfits of all stripes took such abuse all the time from dull unimaginative people. It was a musical watershed and a bonafide classic with all kinds of unintended consequences.
Enjoying 10 minutes of silence after my first listen to Nevermind only to be jolted out of my chair from a haunting sound out my stereo that was the hidden song “Endless, Nameless”.
I used to drive a beat up old ’80s Toyota Supra; cranking Lithium on the highway always seemed to make that car go so much faster and gave each drive its very own theme song.
1991. Santa Fe. Argentina.
A friend (his name was Matías) ask me if i’ve listened a song called “huele a espíritu adolescente”. I tell him no. I was 7 years old.
He put the cassette in the stereo and we just listened the record. It was like listening music from another planet for us.
We were so young, the perception of music was chaotic. And, at the same time, it was like discovering a whole world of new music through that cassette.
In Argentina, in that times, a CD Player was rare to find, so, we just collected boxes and boxes of cassettes.
Matías died some years ago, he was like 21 or something. I was destroyed.
I’m 27 now and when i listen “Come as you are” inmediatly i remember my old friend. But, with a big smile always… after all, it was his fault that i’ve discovered that new planets.
ps: sorry my bad english ;)
First heard “Teen Spirit” in September 1991 and its not an understatement to say it was then and remains to this day the most important musical experience of my life. The only other songs that came close were “I am the walrus” and “It ain’t me babe”, all 3 songs I heard for the first time as a 15 year old, all 3 songs I heard for the first time within a few weeks of each other. But Nirvana were mine, not a previous generations. Not long after that – and if I remember it correctly (which is unlikely but has been know to happen occasionally) – Nirvana played The Word (where Kurt proudly proclaimed that Courtney was the best f**k in the world) on the Friday, then the following monday played on The Jonathan Ross show, which was shown live at 6pm in the evening. Only instead of playing “Lithium” as was planned, they played “Territorial Pissings”, then trashed the stage and walked off to the sound of feedback. This sealed the deal. Also around this they were interviewd on a strange show called Rapido, where Kurt was half asleep during the interview. I thought then (as I do know) that they were thee greatest band in the world. And nothing in the last 20 years has even come close.
when i was 12 me and my father blew the speakers out in his dodge k car when the drums kicked in on smells like teen spirit. shortly after we traded it to a man at the dump for a bottle opener key chain.
I was in high school and I wasn’t very rich. I gave my girlfriend two red roses for Valentine’s Day and not a single rose more. She responded in kind by giving me Nevermind and, to this day, has given the best gift I’ve ever received for that non-holiday holiday. It’s been stolen and replaced four times since then, but that memory remains. It was, after all, the first album I moshed to. True love, right there.
14 years old. Heard Nevermind for the first time. Later that night, I told a friend that it was really great and that he needed to buy it. When he asked what it sounded like, I didn’t have any helpful vocabulary. What I came up with: “I don’t know, ‘thrash-punk?’” Apparently I didn’t really know what either thrash or punk sounded like.
Kurt changed my life with his insightful and surreal music and lyrics. I only wished he could have stuck around to make more to listen to for future generations. I was compelled to compose a portrait of him In Memoriam recently on the anniversary of his death on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/04/in-memoriam-kurt-cobain-and-lane-staley.html Drop in and tell me your memories of his music and how it’s affected you.
This guy in my PE class my sophomore year of high school introduced me to Nirvana and it sorta bridged our friendship. Nevermind always takes me back to that and messing around and PE and hanging out with him and getting yelled at by the coaches
Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” suddenly hijacking the airwaves around the time when I was 11-12 showed me that the unexpected could in fact happen. Possibilities were open, and somehow more open than I had been brought up to think. The emotions in the album had strong parallels to the way a lot of young people were feeling at the time, and it’s not something that can be legitimately trivialized. I know that Nirvana’s music helped me through many very difficult & challenging times. Most artists arguably serve this purpose to some degree. But if we’re really honest about it, Nirvana REALLY served this purpose for a lot of people, and with a recklessly honest and artistic spirit the whole way through.
Many artists such as Korn and Marilyn Manson market to young demographics, but as the years go by it comes across as more of a business choice than anything else. Nirvana were the real deal, and you got the sense that they wouldn’t have kept doing the same thing just to pander to any demographic.
There is a lot of music I’ve left behind, but I still listen to Nirvana, and “Nevermind”. I’m NOT too cool for it. If “In Bloom” comes on the radio, I turn it up. Way up. And it makes me pretty great to be alive.
From sub pop to mass hop. Story of teen spirit what became huge than anyone expected. These days there will hardly be something like Nirvana. Days when music meant something more than digital file in interweb. Recyclable future, good old days passed away.
Being only 17 years old, I was not alive at the time of Nevermind’s release, nor was I able to appreciate it until fairly recently. I do have very distinct memories of my older high school friend playing it in his car as he drove me back from an older kid’s party. I was a freshman and felt really cool hanging out with some of the upperclassmen at the time, and the music made the experience even better. It sounded like a type of cool I hadn’t heard before (well, I’d heard Smells Like Teen Spirit, but everyone has). So that’s the best memory I have of Nevermind
My good friend and I were at Lex lanes bowling on a Saturday morning when he showed me his cassette of Nevermind, laughing at the cover!!!!……..Now i was a fan of G’N”R, Skid Row, Tesla, Metallica, Faster Pussycat, and so on so I was’nt really into punk/thrash….But for some reason, I felt the need to listen to this particular tape…..So in between frames, i played it through my Yellow Walkman(TM)….I was mezmorized by Smells Like Teen Spirit!!!!! I HAD TO LISTEN MORE OF IT!!!!!!!Lounge Act, Territorial Pissings, Lithium, they ALL really stood out to me… I could feel Kurts lyrics in my brain….The vocals were raw!!!!! The chorus effect tickeling my eardrums with every strum of the guitar….the bass lines were seemless and smooth, the freaking drums just echoing in my head from that badass drummer pounding them unmercifully!!! …..After we bowled our games, I immediately “borrowed” his tape and dubbed it!!!! Listened to it over and over again, weeks on end till the noise reduction wouldn’t even work!!!! If I looked really hard, I could probably find it!!!!
Who knew the Verse/Chorus/Verse, 3 power chords and a raw edge would change the world…Nirvana proved that music does not have to be complicated to deliver a message!!!!! There has NEVER been a band like them…….nor will there ever!!!!! Happy Anniversary to Kurt, Dave, and Krist for the birth of “Nevermind”….R.I.P. Kurt………..YOU ARE MISSED!!!!!
It’s cliche, and has already been mentioned here I’m sure, but seeing the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video for the first time was mind blowing. Was in an acquaintances basement (I don’t think I was ever in that basement before or after), playing Nintendo. Switched on MTV and that video came on and just changed everything for me. I don’t know who I’d be if that didn’t happen, and I don’t want to know.
For new memories, I was reflecting on the album this weekend and realized that for my 11 month old, “Nevermind” is as old as “Kind of Blue” was when I was born. That’s also mind blowing, but in a whole different and more depressing way.
I had seen Nirvana on the “Bleach” tour and I was excited to hear the new record. I bought it the day it came out, and blasted it in the afternoon, after school. I dozed off during “Something In The Way” and was suddenly jarred awake by the blast of “Endless Nameless” after the length silence. My copy of the record did not list it as a track on the record.
I bought an advance copy of American Music Club’s “Everclear” that same day (It wasn’t officially out for a couple more weeks) and I WORE THOSE RECORDS OUT in September and October of 1991.
This might be sort of long-winded, but a little over 20 years ago I read an article in “Kerrang!” magazine about Nirvana. I knew nothing about them and the article painted them as the next big thing. Even suggesting that they should open up for label mates Guns N’ Roses, which in hindsight, is pretty absurd.
Anyway, a few weeks after that, I was working at the Camelot Superstore in Charlotte when the CD single of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came in. I opened it up and popped into our CD player and heard their definitive anthem for the first time. It was so weirdly infectious. I was primarily into hard rock at the time, so hearing it was quite a revelation to me. I walked over to one of the hot girls who worked at the store and basically bragged about how this was going to be the next big thing. Of course I had no idea, but she said she liked it and I felt kind of cool for a second. A week later one of the label reps who I struck up a friendship with asked me if I had heard the new Nirvana album. He worked for another label but he had an advance cassette he gave me. That night I had a 40 minute commute so I listened to the tape and was blown away. I immediately told as many hip people as I could about how great this album was so that I could prove that I was really awesome and knew more about music than they did. For once, I was right.
During my French class last year, the professor asked our class which year was the most significant to us. (Don’t ask me how this is relevant to French. It isn’t. We were asked and answered in English for God’s sake.) But anyway, I said 1991. A couple students asked “is that because that was the year you were born?” and “because the Soviet Union ended?” I answered “no” to both questions, though I was actually born in ’91. As you can obviously guess, I said 1991 because that was the year Nevermind was released. That’s the true highlight of 1991 for me, far better than anyone’s birthday, and the Berlin Wall fell in ’89 anyway.
I remember in high school (maybe 07?) my two friends and I would drive around, literally just drive, and put on smells like teen spirit. I would play air drums, back seat played guitar, and driver played bass. I don’t know how many times we listened to that song and just headbanged our dicks off. Just three greasy teenagers, one with long hair and a slayer shirt on, doing nothing but loving music.
One of the first pieces of music I ever owned was a cassette single for Come As You Are. I still remember putting it in my tape deck and just being blown away by the B-Side, “Drain You.” Still love it.
I can recall my dad bringing home the Nirvana Nevermind album in 1991, when I was 10 years old. He came and got me out of my room to let me hear the album and it was a groundbreaking moment in our love for music – my dad was 29 years old at the time. We sat and listened to the music together in our beat up trailer in Alaska, while I looked at the album and looked in awe at a naked baby. I recall asking my dad “Why did they name a song after a girls deodorant?” and he said “I don’t know either.” After we listened to the entire album, he immediately made me a tape of the CD for my boombox and I played that tape until it bound-up so many times it became un-listenable. It was an incredible time in my youth that shaped my love of music in a big way.
Chris Elliott
I started listening to Nirvana a lot in 9th grade which was about the same I had my first girlfriend. We were really good friends first and eventually started dating. It was really awkward the first couple of weeks because I had never kissed a girl before and I was extremely nervous about doing so. So I put it off as long as I could. I had a feeling that she was wondering why it was taking so long. So one weekend we were hanging out with our friends and suddenly everyone left us alone in the room. Looking back it was pretty oblivious- this was tactically planned by everyone. So there I was, in a do or die situation. I made my first attempt and went in for the kiss. I bumped into her nose, then her glasses, then I took off her glasses, bumped her nose again, and still couldn’t quite catch her lip. It was made all the more worse when she said “Catch my lip!”. It was terribly embarrassing and my inexperience definitely showed. I pretty much made an ass out of myself but she liked me enough to not mind. So after that, we went and rejoined our friends and someone was playing “Come As You Are” on the stereo. Despite the awkward first kiss, we dated for a full three years after that. That song is very much a part of that memory and whenever I hear it it brings me back to one of the most exciting (and embarrassing) moments in my life.
I was 8, but I just wanted to have long hair, have a girlfriend and go to high school!
i was 13 at the time, remember hearing for the first time from a friend at school.
My earliest memory of Nevermind was at a Junior High dance. I was nervous as shit to slow dance with a girl for the first time. After a clammy-handed, awkward dance to Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx, the DJ decided to switch gears and play Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was new to my ears. Two guys nearby immediately started moshing into each other and knocked me over as I retreated from the dance floor. I remember being stunned, pissed, and confused as to why this song would make two guys want to repeatedly crash into each other. Not long after that I saw the video on MTV and began to understand the energy and power of Nirvana’s music. I bought Nevermind and remember listening to it on repeat while playing Dragon Warrior on NES. I wore that CD out and it had a large influence on my musical listening exploration during my teenage years.
I don’t quite remember the first time I heard Lithium, but as a kid in the back seat of my parents’ vehicle, I remember singing along to every song. I may have gotten the words wrong, but I’m betting that Kurt got them wrong pretty often too. I remember yelling, not quite knowing the words to Smells Like Teen Spirits and just kinda mouthing along to whatever I thought he was saying.
Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was one of the first albums I remember listening to all the way through, beginning to end. As a young, spastic, ADHD-addled kid, it took a lot to keep my attention, but Nevermind remained fresh and interesting to me. The album was also my first illegal mp3 download, back in the days when I was perfectly content with only having around 100 songs on my 512MB shuffle (around half those songs were made by Nirvana, and the play count reached into the 600s for several of the songs).
After being an avid Nirvana fan for about a year, it finally occurred to me to look them up online to see if they were releasing anything new. Somehow, I had remained oblivious to Kurt Cobain’s death in my year of fandom; I had two T-Shirts, a poster, and bought all three available studio albums, but I didn’t hear anything about one of the most widely known events in the band’s history. Coincidentally, I managed to avoid it in conversation until that point; my parents and friends later said they just assumed I had known. I was in sixth grade at the time, and my immediate reaction to learning about the suicide was anger. How dare Kurt go and off himself instead of making more music for me to listen to? It was crushing as a young fan to realize that my favorite musician had died around the same time I was born and I had nothing new to look forward to.
Despite this, my appreciation of the music never waned, and I started to branch out and listen to music that Kurt had been influenced by, including another one of my favorite bands, The Pixies. Without Nirvana, I don’t think I would have ever searched deeper for a lot of the alternative/indie music I listen to today. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be commenting on sites like Stereogum without that influence.
My favourite memory of nevermind has to be back when i was about 11-12 in 2003 i didn’t know who Nirvana were (although i’d later found out that i knew various of there famous songs on tv and shit) and me and my friend were reading through an article about top 20 alt. rock albums ever in a paper. We then seen the page dedicated to nevermind with a full blown picture of the album cover, and we just glanced at each other and erupted into gut busting laughter at the naked baby weener and made lots of jokes etc. Later in that week, i was watching the music channel and loan behold it was a nirvana dedicated playlist so i watched it and the first song i heard was “Lithium”…Nothing could quite ever compare to magical feeling that came over me when i heard cobain sing that line “I’m so ugly, but that’s ok cause so are you” and the rush i got when the song erupted it in to the “YEAHHHHHHHHH”‘s. That song would become my favourite song to burst out and jump around to….up untill the day i’d fall in the shower and near enough kill myself getting carried away to it pretending the shower head is my microphone!!
I made a video of my experience with the album, enjoy:
http://blip.tv/vinylrewind/nirvana-s-nevermind-20th-anniversary-special-5560916
I recall going to a favorite bar/dance club of mine at the time ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was popular on their ‘alternative’ music night where they played my favorite songs. Of course, they played SLTS and everyone got out on the dance floor and went into wild fits of rage during the chorus. It was so primal, as each person was working out their own private sense of angst in a very public setting, together. There was also a real sense of comraderie, like we were all privy to a secret club from the underground that made us all specially branded with our anger. I always have that memory burned into my brain when I hear SLTS until I die.
I think my favorite memory would have to be when I discovered there was a hidden track at the end of Nevermind (“Endless, Nameless”). This was back in the day when the only way you found out about a hidden track was if someone told you or you discovered it yourself. I suppose this was also back when there were hidden tracks on albums.
I had probably listened to the album 200 times and one time I forgot to start it over or turn it off, and suddenly that hidden track came on. What a cool surprise! There’s really no contemporary version of the hidden track, it was something pretty unique to compact discs and it felt like you were making a discovery that no one else knew.
The funny thing for me is that I was a big fan of 80s hard rock – unironically and unabashedly. Yet when I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” the first time, I thought it was super-f**king cool. Oddly, at that time, all my “hard rock” friends denounced Nirvana, trashed Cobain and basically blamed him for the decline of the “metal” years. For a time, I’m ashamed to say, I might have gone along with that thinking so as not to be an “outcast.” Whatever. Might as well blame Nirvana/Cobain for the dinosaurs dying off, global warming and our current economic woes. That’s how much sense it made at the time (and does now). Nevermind was a game changer – an announcement – and a desperately needed one – hard rock of the 80s was already dead – it just took one album to put the nail in a coffin that was waiting for it. That said, Nevermind is still one of the most amazing albums you can listen to, regardless of genre. Long live Nirvana.
Sitting in the backseat of my sister’s car and listening to Nevermind for the first time. It changed my musical as an 8 year old. I was the only one who was listening to Nirvana in elementary school.
Of course everyone in my high school listened to that album. And yes it inspired people to change their wardrobe, but the funny thing is being from a high school in the middle of a corn field, people were already wearing flannel shirts…so it was funny when other people started wearing them. My fondest memory was we were having a slam dunk contest in my back yard and someone popped in Nevermind and said….and I quote “this is Danger Music, not grunge music” We all looked at each other like “ok what does that mean?” The next thing you know the friend of mine goes up to drunk the basketball and MISSED the rim and falls flat on his face. Without missing a beat another friend of mine says “Well, appearntly it IS danger music” TRUE STORY!
One October day when I was about 15 or 16 (so either 2006 or 2007), my dad and I were headed down to Lincoln, Nebraska to catch a Husker football game. In terms of being an angsty teen, this was my prime time and the hour or so car ride with just my dad seemed daunting. However, being the type who always tried to relate to his kids through music, my dad popped in Nevermind as we sped west on Interstate 80. At first we were reserved, simply bobbing our heads to Smells Like Teen Spirit. But by Come As You Are, we were singing along and swapping trivia we knew about the album. Looking back I realize the disconnect between the music and the listeners. When Nevermind was first released, I wasn’t even able to speak a full sentence and my dad was a good 6-10 years past his mid-20s, slacker prime that seemed to constitute the majority of its original listenership. Further, the relationship between father and daughter was experiencing a time of distance and strain. That day though, Nevermind seemed to slip through the cracks and catalyze a moment of closeness between my dad and I. It wasn’t a feeling of transcendence or realization, just recognition at how the album could be enjoyed by and shared with anyone.
In the fall of 1991, I was 13 and heading into the 8th grade. At the time, Guns N Roses were without a doubt my favorite band on the planet. The day in September when Use Your Illusions I & II came out, as I headed to the Sam Goody in my local mall to purchase the cassettes. I listened to them none stop that day, night, and probably that week.
I don’t have a first specific memory of my introduction to the band that would soon not only transform my listening tastes, but become my favorite band of all time. I do remember the Teen Spirit video appearing on MTV with more and more regularity over September. It was so different from what I was used to, it wasn’t love at first listen, but it slowly won me over. Kurt and Nirvana played in the MTV studio that fall. Kurt’s hair was dyed pink, and I waited through the ‘weird’ songs they played while I hoped to hear Teen Spirit. Guns N Roses quickly became an after thought.
By mid fall there was no escaping the song. At middle school dances, everyone would break out in their young suburban teen version of moshing and shout along with the song’s refrain. When the ‘Come As You Are’ video was released I watched it hourly on MTV. You didn’t have to have the radio or MTV on for 15 minutes before you’d hear Nirvana. (Albeit sandwiched between the likes of Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey and Bryan Adams. So it wasn’t until my 14th birthday in Feb of ’92 when my girlfriend bought me the cassette for my birthday and I finally got to experience Nevermind.
I tore up the plastic wrap, popped it in my stereo in my bedroom, and turned up the volume to the first notes of Teen Spirit. Downstairs I heard my father yell ‘Turn this sh off’, and I smiled.
When Nevermind came out I was working at a record store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I thought I knew a lot about music then, but I really didn’t. A couple of guys I worked with were way into Sub Pop and all of the bands that were out then. They saw Nirvana when Bleach was out in a tiny basement venue in Milwaukee. Anyway, a short time after the album came out they announced a show at the Caberet Metro in Chicago. I had been to the Metro a handful of times and that place still ranks as my favorite place to see a show. My friends were getting tickets right away for the Nirvana show. They asked me if I wanted to buy a ticket and go with them. DUMBEST DECISION I EVER MADE COMING NEXT: I hesitated too long and did not get a ticket. Eventually I did see them on the In Utero tour in Milwaukee and thought they were awesome.
I remember going to a dance rehearsal spot in Seattle WA to see Nirvana and Soundgarden play this tiny spot. The thing that makes this show special was I saw the rare lineup that included Jason Everman & Chad on drums. Chad may have even played rhythm guitar for a few songs while Dave drummed. Now that I think about it I do remember Chad on guitar, weird. All I can say was it was awesome! One of the great things you saw if you lived in WA at the time. I have had some funny encounters with Krist here in LA. He introduced himself to me once, and I was ummm I know you. I also ended up working on some music with the singer from his Sweet 75 project. So yea the Earth is so small, we’re all Nirvana in some way. Hahaha!
Listening to that album, getting drunk and making out girls that weren’t my girlfriend.
in 8th grade my friend and I tried (very unsuccessfully) to give each other tattoos of our favorite song titles off Nevermind…hers would have been In Bloom, mine Lithium. Too bad we couldn’t handle the pain for long enough! Still my favorite album.
The night Nirvana played in Atlanta I was riding around with my friend Melissa listening to the British band 5:30′s cassette, discussing how horrible the Nirvana show and crowd would be and that Nirvana were in NO WAY as good as 5:30. What can I say we were Anglophiles. Where are 5:30 now I wonder?
In the mid-to-late nineties I was too young to “get” Nirvana in any real sense. I was about 12 when I swiped the Nevermind cassette from my older step-sister. She was the hip one into R.E.M. and all that stuff, whereas I was just a little brat (and a thief I guess.) I remember listening to it a lot in an old Sanyo stereo, especially at night. Somehow the assault of “Territorial Pissings” really helped 12-year old me fall asleep. (This might explain why I would later identify with Nine Inch Nails in a big way).
Anyway, fast forward about three to five years and I was in high school when I met this girl named Cailyn. She was absolutely enamored with Nirvana and I thought she was really funny and great (she was). So my way to get to know her were to talk about those late-night sessions with Nevermind. It definitely sparked our friendship. She played guitar and I ‘played’ bass, so some weekends we’d blaze through those chords in “Territorial Pissings.” We didn’t have a singer, and we only had cheap practice amps, and I’m pretty sure we mangled those songs beyond recognition. We never became more than friends and she moved away near the end of high school, but those songs still definitely bring to mind some bittersweet memories.
“With the lights out, it’s less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us.”
“What are you saying?” she asked me.
“Lyics to this new song. It’s really awesome.” I replied.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know, I heard it on the college station today. I had to pull over the car to hear the whole song. It was like someone remmebered what guitars could be noisy again.” I beamed at her, thrilled to share this new rocking band.
“It sounds stupid.”
“I think we have to break up.” And we did, just a few months later.
“…telling us your favorite Nevermind-associated memory.”
You know, everytime I listen to Nevermind… it takes me back, and I’m sure every son of a bitch will say that about this album. I’m no exception nor do I ever like to think of my opinion being superior. I will say though that this album has affected my life in many different shapes and forms.
When the album came out in 91… I was only 3-4. Once 1994 rolled around and I started going to Kinder, I used to hang out at my grandmas and hang with my cousins. My older sister (11 at the time) was the one who got us into MTV (when they used to refer to their and actually show music videos) and I remember watching “Smells Like Teen Spirit” over and over. Later, my cousin got ahold of the CD, one that she stole from someone (this was never really known; I assumed that b/c it was all scratched up she had either stolen it or sucked at taking care of shit). Either way, we would listen to Nevermind and one day…. I ended up shoving that album in my pants and going back home. From home… I remember I used to air guitar and try to sing just like Kurt while playing the album. Eventually, I got caught and had to return the album, but put it back in my pants after playing outside, so it would return with a scent reeking of dick.
I feel like this is a great association with the album. Kurt and Co. did stupid shit all the time. They didn’t really care as to what people thought about them at the time. They just did as they pleased… and became a success in the end. Nevermind helped me establish this view in my childhood, and probably was the reason why I got caught with porn at school and was sent to the principals office for suspension.
But now, finishing up my last year in college, “going corporate” in getting a damn good paying job, Nevermind helps me to never forget my roots, helps me to remember home; all the times I would drive to South Padre Island and blast the album as if Nirvana were locals of our parts here in South Texas. I remember my childhood, I remember all the stupid parties where I banged a girl that I know I’ll regret seeing in a few weeks, drank for a week straight and then realized alcohol and automobiles never mix, and ultimately was the direct inspiration for why I decided to pick up the guitar in the first place. Kurt showed that you can make some amazing without knowing too much about technique and more about just expressing who you really are (if you argue this view, listen to their live takes and tell me he gave a shit.)
Still, I’ve yet to get tired of this album. It has been a unique identification for me: to show all the other fuckers listening to the Katy Perry, Bruno Mars bull and show them that I was a true 90s kid who appreciated musical technicality over autotuning any day. Thanks Nirvana, for making an album that I can proud to put next to and associate with The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and Led Zeppelin. I’ll never forget once on an interview Vig says that he often had to trick Cobain into recording additional takes for overdubs since the singer [Kurt] was averse to performing multiple takes. In particular, Vig convinced Cobain to double-track his vocals on the song “In Bloom” by telling him “John Lennon did it.”
Nirvana and nevermind was overrated
I remeber walking down the hall in school, i kicked a cassette and as it went sliding across the hall i decided to pick it up…ti was Nevermind…no more Poison for me LOL
Living in a military family, we were stationed in Germany until about 95-96. Needless to say our exposure to US culture was extremely limited (we had only one English speaking channel, and it was used for news in the morning, cartoons after school and sitcoms and more news in the evening). In 96 we moved to New York and I started listening to a rock radio station and being exposed to new music (at the time the only music I was familiar with was MC Hammer). On day “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on and it blew my mind! I started listening to the radio every day in hopes that I would hear it again. Eventually I gathered the nerve to call the station and request it, thinking the song was relatively unknown and so was the band. When I got through to the radio station and asked the deejay to play the track he replied with a nonchalant “Yeah, sure okay”. I thought that maybe he wasn’t familiar with the song and never heard of Nirvana, otherwise he would be way more excited to play it! I didn’t find out about Kurt’s suicide and the subsequent demise of Nirvana until a few months later.
During my sophomore year in college, my next-door neighbor, the musician, now the poet, bought Nevermind on CD in the longbox (google that, kids, if you don’t know what that means) at the local mom-and-pop record store. He had heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and picked up the album, hoping the rest was as good as the single. He was not disappointed, and neither was I, as we listened to the disc every afternoon while throwing darts. Our group of friends had a handful of albums that provided the soundtrack for our college experience, but we always turned back to Nevermind. It was the album that had passion, that was never silly, that did not let up. It opened us up to a brand new rock-and-roll niche. A niche that all of us have kept at least one foot in ever since.
For Christmas in 1992, I got a gift certificate for the local Coconuts record store. In my youthful haste, and due to an at times unhealthy devotion to the local pop radio station, I elected to spend it on Bobby Brown’s “Bobby” album (featuring the immortal “Humpin’ Around”) rather than “Nevermind,” despite almost making a last minute switcheroo due to a well-placed sales counter display. Worst. Decision. Ever.
This set me back years on the path to musical maturity, and I only later came to Nirvana after Kurt was gone, in the form of radio play for the “Unplugged” version of “About a Girl.” I’ve (somewhat) made up for lost time and have certainly learned to appreciate the genius of “Nevermind” in the years since but, as in most things, I blame Bobby.
When I bought the game Rockband a few years ago, the song “In bloom” was me and my sisters favorite to rock out too.
Obviously I’m not Jim Halpert, but I think I should be eligible to win despite this fake facebook account. My favorite Nevermind memory was hearing Something in the Way for the first time in the car with my dad. He introduced me to a lot of great artists that I still listen to today. Getting through the whole album and realizing how special it was pretty much defined my youth. The act of finding new music now and that feeling associated with it can all be traced to that one album, driving around with my dad. Thanks dad. Love always.
I can remember that I see the smells like teen spirit video first on MTV. Now when i hear the song i see me rock’in on the Dancefloor in my mind as stupid drunken Teenager – great memory!
Learning (what else?) “Teen Spirit” on guitar, teaching it to my high school band, and then ending our first ever show with that song. Our drummer had literally been playing for only a week (he was originally a sax player) but we were so tight and young and stupid it felt like we had Dave Grohl up there bashing the skins.