Nirvana-Nevermind (1991)
Artist: Nirvana
Title: Nevermind
Label: DGC/Sub Pop
Sell Date: 5/8/25
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold: 5/8/25 NM/NM $14.00
Low: $1.00
Median: $5.75
Average: $7.03
High: $28.54 NM/NM
Current low price: $4.50 VG/VG+
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 19
Have/Want: 861/831
Where Sold: Austin, TX
Time It Took To Sell: 3 years
Where and When Bought: Facebook marketplace lot
Gwiz-gau Grade: A
Sad To See It Go: No
My first copy of Nevermind I bought right when it came out but I had this record club copy from a CD lot I got a few years back. I'm trying to remember the last time I voluntarily had the urge to listen to this start to finish and my guess is somewhere around 1992. Other people might've played it after that circa 1993 and bars with a CD jukebox inevitably would have it on the rest of the 90's. It got so stamped into mainstream backdrop that I never felt the need to hear it again. If you asked me to chose a Nirvana album to hear I'd pick Bleach or In Utero over this every time.
But what of the commerical coming out party on it's own merits listening to it in 2026. What were my favorites in 1991? "Drain You" and expecially "On A Plain." Those, 'Breed" and for that matter "Lounge Act" and "Stay Away" I'm enjoying hearing again. I also forgive the obnoxious 10 minutes of dead space before "Endless Nameless" kicks in. I think my first copy didn't even have that add on and I had to buy a fancy import CD EP of "Come As You Are" to get it.
I have to admit when this sold I was looking forward to hearing "Drain You" to replace it going through my head right off the bat and dreading hearing Teen Spirit yet again. That was the first Nirvana song I initially didn't like when the EP came out before this and pop culture be damned I never really had the affinity for it. Somehow I grew to accept it among "Litium" and "Come As You Are" even though they would be heard whether I did or not.
Most of 1990-1 I had a 3rd generation cassette of some of these songs in demo form that kicked off with "Breed." I think it was from a guy who passed away blind from diabetes complications but worked at Nuggets in Boston and was friendly with Kurt who copied it for Carreiro of Red Bliss who let me copy his tape along with the forever then unreleased Moving Targets album Brave Noise. These tapes were more my regular 1990 soundtrack than the actual releases were, but those we heavy home rotation when they came out. Here the singles were front loaded before it--Teen Spirit in In Bloom into Eighties I mean "Come As You Are." For me once those are out of the way the album gets more enjoyable for casual listening. I would say back when this came out I didn't think of it that way in terms of a hard demarcation. I also didn't think of Nevermind as a downgrade to the recording on a tape the way I sometimes felt when a great single got rerecorded for an album like Mudhoney did with "You Got It" a couple years before. Sometimes you can't put lightning back in a bottle. Nirvana stayed true to great songs on the demo, they just added to it for the bigtime.
The people that liked to sniff at Nevermind never really seem to come up with something else from 1991 that was any better. Mainstream rock had "Cherry Pie" and Tesla's 5 man acoustical jam. GNR & Metallica were the establishment and on the road they still are. Soundgarden were coming on but weren't contenders yet on that level. Everything else commercial for the kids outside of the Backstreet Boys and Madonna was either rap or a niche genre or establishment arena rock. Even Priest & Maiden were a decade away from their peak and soon their give their frontmen a rest before soldiering on. American indie rock that evolved from punk rock was an escape from all that and at the time there seemed to be clear boundaries of how far even a major label could take it. Think Sonic Youth in a 2,000 cap theatre and maybe geting to open for Neil Young.
Nobody expected pop culture contention with Garth Brooks and MC Hammer, let alone Queensryche, Van Hagar and REM. Of course, nowadays all the pop culture signifiers in Rock of 35 years ago are either dead, inactive, demoted or fully replaced with some other generational signifier just as the current crop will be replaced in 30 years. Children rise, elders die and sometimes have a Sinatra-style last gasp, other people die in their prime and the middle aged have comebacks 20 years in. Even Donnie Osmond. Over and over again. Somehow most of the Stones, Dylan, McCartney & Ringo are still alive and active at the head of the hierarchy. Same with writers, monarchies and corporations. Music always seems eternal in real time evolution, but celebrity is forever as long as somebody remembers.
Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.
FOR FURTHER REVIEW:
Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
Various Artists-No Alternative (1993)
Comments
Post a Comment