NIRVANA released their 3rd and final LP IN UTERO
30 years ago today, on 21 September 1993
Rolling Stone wrote: “This is the way Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain spells success: s-u-c-k-s-e-g-g-s. Never in the history of rock & roll overnight sensations has an artist, with the possible exception of John Lennon, been so emotionally overwhelmed by his sudden good fortune, despised it with such devilish vigor and exorcised his discontent on record with such bristling, bulls-eye candor… ‘In Utero’ is a lot of things — brilliant, corrosive, enraged and thoughtful, most of them all at once. But more than anything, it’s a triumph of the will.”
Score: 4.5/5 – Full review here.
Turn Up The Volume: Heart-piercing eruptions. Emotional musings.
Profound sentiments. Deeply human. Unquestionably Nirvana‘s magnum
opus to my ears.
Three highlights: All Apologies / Heart-Shaped box / Scentless Apprentice
The late great grunge star KURT COBAIN loved to smash a guitar,
now and then when he was cooking on stage with Nirvana.
One of them, a black-and-white Fender Stratocaster
that he broke on one of the many ‘Nevermind’ tours.
It was signed by the Nirvana members and features a message
from Cobain to his friend and fellow musician, the late Mark Lanegan,
to whom he reportedly gave the guitar in 1992.
The message: “Hell-o Mark! Love, Your Pal, Kurdt Kobain / Washed up rockstar.”
The guitar sold at an auction in New York last weekend
for nearly $600,000. Smells like a lot of money.
More details here via The Washington Post newspaper.
An electric guitar smashed up by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in the 1990s has sold for nearly $600,000 at auction in New York — at least seven times more money than the auction house had expected.https://t.co/gv2P3akDdL
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 22, 2023
Pitchfork said: “The brilliance of Rid of Me is in the vividness and detail with which it captures that Boschian panorama using only blues rhythms, loud-quiet-loud dynamics, Harvey’s voice.”
TUTV Pick: Rid Of Me
Stream the album HERE
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Pitchfork wrote: “This major-label debu is a harrowing song cycle chronicling the death
throes of a relationship. That cycle implies a romantic fatalism, as though every relationship is doomed to end painfully. Gentlemen is both personal and unknowable, cocksure yet deeply troubled.”
TUTV Pick: Debonair
Stream the album HERE
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BBC Music: “Suede’s main sources were Bowie (in Anderson’s wonderfully fey delivery) and
the Smiths. Ironically, Mike Joyce of the Smiths was a member for a short spell, but their bleak chronicles of urban dysfunction, modern love and sexual confusion were never a million miles away from Morrissey’s home ground.”
TUTV Pick: Animal Nitrate
Stream the albumHERE
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AllMusic: “Its best moments — and the Deal sisters’ megawatt charm — end up
outweighing its inconsistencies to make it one of the alternative rock era’s defining
albums.”
TUTV Pick: Cannonball
Stream the albumHERE
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Rolling Stone wrote: “Blur‘s second LP is their secret classic. Coming between the pop-psych shimmer of 1991’s Leisure and the cool Britannia of 1994’s Parklife, the brittle jangle and bitter observations on Modern Life Is Rubbish were near-career-killers.”
AllMusic said: “With their cult following growing, Morphine expanded their audience even further with their exceptional 1994 sophomore effort, Cure for Pain. Whereas their debut, Good, was intriguing yet not entirely consistent, Cure for Pain more than delivered. The songwriting was stronger and more succinct. Cure for Pain was unquestionably one of the best and most cutting-edge rock releases of the ’90s.”
TUTV Pick: Buena
Stream the album HERE
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Rolling Stone wrote: “The album is a lot of things – brilliant, corrosive, enraged and thoughtful, most of them all at once. But more than anything, it’s a triumph of the will.”
TUTV Pick: All Apologies
Stream the albumHERE
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GuitarCom said: “A Northern Soul may have more choruses, Urban Hymns may have shifted 10 million copies and made them Wigan’s only global superstars, but Verve‘s (the ‘The’ came later) celestial debut A Storm In Heaven is the guitarist’s choice. Nick McCabe’s enveloping waves of reverb and tape delay, in turn soothing and savage, moved producer John Leckie to conclude “To some extent, A Storm In Heaven is his record”.
TUTV Pick: Slide Away
Stream the album HERE
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Band: NIRVANA Artwork: Cover of compilation album Incesticide
featuring non-album singles, B-sides, demos, outtakes,
cover versions, and radio broadcast recordings. Released
30 years ago this year (December 14).
The cover art was painted by the late great Cobain himself
who is credited as Kurdt Kobain in the liner notes.
R.I.P. Kurt Cobain
Aberdeen, 20 februari 1967 – Seattle, 5 april 1994
Anniversary album: NEVERMIND Released: 24 September 1991 – 30 years ago today
Billboard says: “Nevermind took Nirvana to an entirely different plain. It’s heavy, yes.
It’s loud and aggressive, too. But it’s the songwriting and glossy pop production courtesy
of Butch Vig that set this album far apart from its contemporaries. Cobain’s innate sense of melody was front and center; his punk, you-can’t-fire-because-I-quit ethos were in your face; and the loud-soft dynamics served as barbed hooks, drawing listeners into his world. The lyrics were personal, opaque, and often dark, but also playful, and this dynamic gave Nevermind a familiarity to listeners, who felt as if they knew Cobain… The Seattle-based alt-rock trio hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 – unseating Michael Jackson – with its major-label debut and ushered in the age of grunge.”
Turn Up The Volume: The magnum opus that made grunge a worldwide (commercial) phenomenon. Nevermind the bollocks, Cobain and his mates rocked their asses off while Kurt Cobain wrote about his life in his songs.
Singles/clips: Smells Like Teen Spirit / Come As You Are / Lithium
Grunge icons NIRVANA shot the video clip for their global breakthrough blockbuster SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT at GMT Studios in Culver City, California on 17 August 1991, 30 years ago today. It costed less than $50,000 to make. All the youngsters going wild in the clip were Nirvana fans. The video won Nirvana the Best New Artist and Best Alternative Group awards at the 1992 MTV Video Music Award.
Number of views at the moment of writing this: 1.326.343.410.
