Bleach

I'm a big Nirvana fan, but I had a hole in my collection. Considering their output is slim, with only three studio albums, it seemed silly that I still didn't have their first record, called Bleach. I remedied that a few days ago.

It was released in 1989, and recorded for $600. It initially sold 3,000 copies, but after the success of Nevermind it went on to sell four million. It is not nearly as interesting as Nevermind (which I consider the best rock record released in the nineties) or In Utero, but it has it's moments. It's hard not to listen to it for clues at the greatness to come.

All but one of the songs are written by Kurt Cobain (who is billed as Kurdt Kobain). This also pre-dated the arrival of Dave Grohl on drums--Chad Channing is the credited man on drums (was he the Pete Best of the grunge era?). The sound is definitely more head-banger than what Nirvana would become, with a heavy, droning chainsaw guitar sound, with heavy rhythm sections (particularly on songs like Floyd the Barber, Paper Cuts and Sifter, which all have beats that sound like Satan knocking on the door).

Lyrically, it's tough to know what's going on because Cobain is practically impossible to understand and there is no lyric sheet. I'm going to go out on a limb and imagine that none of these songs is upbeat. In Negative Creep, he can be heard to be singing over and over again, "Daddy's little girl is a girl no more." Maybe I don't want to know the rest of that.

The one song that presages Nirvana's sound is About a Girl, and it's the only one that surfaced on their great live album, Unplugged. Apparently Cobain was inspired to write this after an afternoon of listening to Meet the Beatles, and he was reluctant to expose his more pop sensibilities. It's a great song, though.