[Tokyo Jihad]

(My stupid list's introduction here)

#7: Nevermind

Maybe it’s a dubious distinction. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it is something that looks good on a resume and I enjoy repeating. Maybe it was largely lost on me at the time, or, maybe it is the defining cornerstone to my entire musical world. At the green age of 7, my first music CD was purchased for me at my request. As a devout child of the 90’s, it is only right that my first album was Nirvana’s monolithic Nevermind.

At seven, I am not going to make pretense that I was the only kid my age exposed to Nirvana’s brand of music. However, I did not have an older sibling to influence to influence the music I heard as most of my second, third grade peers; those who would smuggle copies of Dookie to school. My mom was not averse to rock, even hard rock, but she clearly wasn’t one to seek out radio stations that played grunge. My introduction was when I saw the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was on MTV and proceeded the song’s parody by Weird Al -- the real reason I had been watching that evening. I liked Weird Al’s version. But I liked Cobain’s better.

I didn’t fully grasp what I was listening to. Dirty hair, raspy vocals, guitars, and just rebellion for the sake of it -- that’s what caught my attention. And for a time, Nirvana was my musical world. Even as the decade closed and I knew lot more about music, I was still quite surprised that Nevermind was being hailed as the album of the decade. The draw back of being a seven year-old listening to Nirvana is that as you grow up and grow as a music fan is that Nirvana is always going to remind you of being seven. That’s right, songs like “Polly”? Kid’s stuff! Might as well watch Blue’s Clues.

I knew there were other similar, grunge, bands out there: Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden. But I wasn’t very interested in any of them. The key difference that would make Nirvana appeal to one of the lowest common denominators (me as a little kid) is the same reason why they were “a thing” and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains not so much. Kurt Cobain wrote catchy songs. Take a song like “Lounge Act,” if you remove that “Nirvana” arrangement, it could pass as a Paul McCartney song. I certainly didn’t realize this when I was little; I wasn’t listening to messy flannel shirts and someone howling into a mic, I was listening to some of the best composed and arranged melodies this side of “Abbey Road.”

Nevermind is a tale of two half-albums. (Yes, that makes sense!) Side A is just one long single. Teen Spirit, Come as you Are, In Bloom -- almost every song you think of when you think of Nirvana comes from the front end of their sophomore album. Then, just before the act break comes the minimally arranged, acoustic “Polly,” which of course features the darkest stuff on the record. Side A really showcases the more MTV/radio friendly side of the band. Big songs, big sounds, easy hooks. And then putting “Polly” at the end has to be the band saying to the listener, “but wait! There’s more!”

The second half of the album, starting with “Territorial Pissings,” is a different animal. We hear the band’s new rounder edge most evident on “Stay Away,” a song that Bleach-era Nirvana would dirge its way through, a screamer with clarity. Same goes for “On a Plain,” a song that comes across almost mellow, if not for Dave Grohl’s pounding beat. “Drain You” isn’t even disguised from a normal pop song. The band plays it straight -- apart from the lyrics, reflected through Nirvana’s skewed lens. In a normal song, what would be a saccharine rendering of a lover’s kiss becomes “Chew your meat for you / Pass it back and forth / In a passionate kiss / From my mouth to yours.” And then there’s “Something in the Way.”

Like “Polly,” “Something in the Way” closes the album on an unexpected note. A quiet, unnerving reflection, upon re-listening to Nevermind later in life, I almost forgot it existed. You might think the 7 year-old me might have skipped this track, but I recall almost always allowing the CD player to stop the music. I know it to because I remember noticing one line in particular. “It's okay to eat fish / 'cause they don't have any feelings.” As a little boy I remember thinking this was such a mean line. I didn’t dislike it, but I found it shocking someone would say it. And it blew my mind. In a song that couldn’t be father from “Teen Spirit” I found the most graphic and stirring line (in my mind. And the line is even more evocative in context.) When compiling my list, I inevitably had to decide between Nevermind and In Utero. “Something in the Way” played a large part in the decision.

Not only was Nevermind my first CD, and Nirvana my first favorite band, but became the foundation for my outlook on music forever, whether I realized it or not. I can just barely remember a time before Nirvana. I only just remember an external music world before Nevermind, and being so young at the time, I will never truly appreciate the album’s impact on culture. And likewise, maybe I can also never truly appreciate its affect on my internal musical world and how it may have influenced me as a person. Make no mistake, listening to the three Nirvana CDs* I had was what I did when I was that age; it was a big deal. Even after twenty years, I still feel rather innocent listening to this record, discovering new things every time.

*: my mom refused to buy me Incesticide because it carried a "Parental Advisory" sticker.