Saturday 14 March 2009

NIRVANA – THE TRIPLE PLATINUM EP (NO LABEL)


NIRVANA – THE TRIPLE PLATINUM EP (NO LABEL)

This is the point that music becomes a fetish item. This record is a prized rarity for all the wrong reasons and as a result it is a thing of beauty. In the wrong eyes/hands/ears a purchaser could feel ripped off but in a learned mind the things that could make this bad are the things that actually make it exciting.

When Nirvana broke music was still exciting, fresh from a format perspective and exciting to collectors as the songs still possessed some kind of tangible value, still had personality and individuality. As MP3s songs just literally get lost in the shuffle but when Nirvana came along it was years before the digital nation took over and ruined many prized aspects of the glory of music.

The concept and idea now of doing a seven-inch bootleg feels truly absurd. This unfortunately confirms just how Nirvana (and grunge) was truly a lifetime ago.

From an aesthetic viewpoint everything about this record is wrong. With the garish green colour choice and crap fonts used on the artwork to the sneaky way the gorgeous white vinyl attempts to disguise (justify) itself as a promo you sense not a lot of love was put into the construction of this record. Indeed the photo on the cover features the drummer (Chad Channing) that wasn’t even part of the band at the point it reached triple platinum. Full of faults, you cannot but love this record and see it as anything but beautiful.

Reading the tracklist you are met with nonsense. At no point did Nirvana have songs called “Not What It Means”, “She Said” or “Make It Big” in their cannon. Instead the songs are “In Bloom”, “Breed” and “Pay To Play”.

The version here of “In Bloom” is a poorly transferred copy of the rather jagged Sub Pop video from the Chad Channing period and in my opinion superior take on the song. Following is a demo version of “Breed” that arrives abruptly and sounds finished if not polished. Perhaps I’m wrong, maybe it is just a poor lift from Nevermind. Either way the energy of the song remains undiminished and undisputed. Finally is the demo to “Stay Away” called “Pay To Play” that eventually wound on that strange Geffen Rarities compilation they put out for no reason in the mid-nineties. Again rougher and starker this is possibly a better than the eventual version that wound up on Nevermind.

This release causes me to crave for a music industry of old. There is no excitement or glamour in stealing tracks as MP3s but the downright theft of tracks to produce this distorted but beautiful release is the stuff of dreams.

Thesaurus moment: crafty

Nirvana

1 comment:

Miss phoenix said...

Fucking beautiful. I would save this along with my cat if there was a fire.