'Nevermind' Is The Most Important Rock Album of All Time

[vanlose kid]

Well a person can work up a mean mean thirst
after a hard day of nothin' much at all
Summer's passed, it's too late to cut the grass
There ain't much to rake anyway in the fall

And sometimes I just ain't in the mood
to take my place in back with the loudmouths
You're like a picture on the fridge that's never stocked with food
I used to live at home, now I stay at the house

And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?

Well a drinkin' buddy that's bound to another town
Once the police made you go away
And even if you're in the arms of someone's baby now
I'll take a great big whiskey to ya anyway

Everybody wants to be someone's here
Someone's gonna show up, never fear
'cause here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one who feels ashamed?

Kneeling alongside old Sad Eyes
He says opportunity knocks once then the door slams shut
All I know is I'm sick of everything that my money can buy
The fool who wastes his life, God rest his guts

First the lights, then the collar goes up, and the wind begins to blow
Turn your back on a pay-you-back, last call
First the glass, then the leaves that pass, then comes the snow
Ain't much to rake anyway in the fall

*

i'll get my coat. adios.

[Skunkboy]

From that other Seattle band.

[The Consul]

What About Pat Boone's unforgettable "No More Mister Nice Guy?"

[norton ash]

What About Pat Boone's unforgettable "No More Mister Nice Guy?"

That one's great, but for really summing up Pat's generation-arching importance it's gotta be 'Theme from Exodus.'

This land is mine, God gave this land to me
This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain
Then I see a land where children can run free



Never goes out of style, gives me chills. Pat sang it at Sun City, fuck, wish I'd been there, but it was 3000 miles from campus.

[SonicG]

Interesting to hear everyone's stories/takes...I happened to walk in to Rhino Records when Nirvana did a free show (when Bleach came out) - I hadn't heard it yet but was already buying Sub Pop releases. I can be seen very briefly here:

I loved the hard-edged sound of Bleach but I had already gone through HC in the early 80s and had Forced Exposure to thank for opening me up to all kinds of music and other cultural artifacts through the second half of the 80s so Nirvana was just another band between The New Bomb Turks and the Nomads or whatever. I never bought any other Nirvana release though especially after they got big. I still listen to a lot of noisy racket such as that purveyed at Terminal Boredom and younger folk on the boards there give credit to Nirvana exposing them to a lot of underground culture so that's cool.
How about the real roots of Pearl Jam? Green River...

[IanEye]

*











**



***

[vince]

What About Pat Boone's unforgettable "No More Mister Nice Guy?"

That one's great, but for really summing up Pat's generation-arching importance it's gotta be 'Theme from Exodus.'

This land is mine, God gave this land to me
This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain
Then I see a land where children can run free

[

Reminds me of the lyrics Tim Robbins sings as BOB ROBERTS!
"This land, is MY land!"

[JackRiddler]

.

Albums as unitary works encompassing a set of singles under one concept weren't done intentionally before the 1960s, but here's a salute to the young James Brown. And James Brown begat George Clinton, and George Clinton begat Prince.

.

[vince]

.

Albums as unitary works encompassing a set of singles under one concept weren't done intentionally before the 1960s, but here's a salute to the young James Brown. And James Brown begat George Clinton, and George Clinton begat Prince.

.

WHAT?.... NO SUN RA in that begettin'?

[JackRiddler]

.

I just checked to make sure it wasn't in 1991: Body Count was released in 1992, so Nevermind may indeed be the most important rock album of 1991.

.

[whipstitch]

[Kristine Rosemary]

'Nevermind' Is The Most Important Rock Album of All Time

No it isn't.

For influential, I kind of liked Husker Du's Zen Arcade (1984).

And someone, I think semiconscious, asked 'no love?' for the
Pistols Never Mind (1977). All the love in the world and then some.

Thanks very much to op seems like a dream
for posting Nirvana's Nevermind, to give us this day
our daily flash.*

*another seattle band from long ago

[Skunkboy]

From MSNBC:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44524115/ ... tainment/#

Why Nirvana's 'Nevermind' spoke to a generation

20 years ago the landmark album altered the tastes of rock fans and changed the course of music


By Tony Sclafani
TODAY.com contributor


It was one of the most influential rock albums of all time and arguably the last rock album to drastically change the course of popular music. And come Sept. 24, the album in question, Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” will mark its 20th anniversary with as much fanfare as you’d expect from such a significant piece of pop culture history.

For starters, the album is getting re-released in two versions. There’s a two-CD “deluxe edition” which has the remastered album plus B-sides, live cuts and studio sessions. There’s also a four-CD “super deluxe edition” with all of the above, plus the first official release of the pre-“Nevermind” demos, an alternate mix of the album, a pair of previously unreleased BBC recordings, and a recording of a live 1991 show at Seattle’s Paramount Theater featured on both CD and DVD.

Out in medialand, SPIN magazine put together a free, downloadable tribute album of “Nevermind” cover versions and Alternative Press magazine had 20 bands share their thoughts about the album. Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart is hosting a Q&A session on SiriusXM with surviving band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic Sept. 24 and SiriusXM is launching a temporary all-Nirvana channel, Nevermind Radio, Sept. 23-28.
Story: Grohl, Novoselic reminisce about 'Nevermind'
More Entertainment stories

.
“Nevermind” has been credited over the years with commercializing grunge and alternative rock, ushering in a more serious era of hard rock, helping to kill off hair metal and establishing Seattle as a musical force (even though Nirvana itself was from Aberdeen, Wash.)

But two decades later, it's still unclear why “Nevermind,” of all albums, became so “contagious,” to quote its lead single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Why didn’t albums by Nirvana’s peers, like Alice in Chains, or predecessors like Husker Du, set the world alight?

Timing is (almost) everything
According to Charles R. Cross, the author of “Heavier Than Heaven,” a biography of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, both musical and non-musical factors led to the mega-success of “Nevermind.”

“It’s an incredible album,” Cross said. “It would have been a hit whenever it was released. But at the same time, the timing was right for there to be a superstar act like Nirvana. It came right at the end of the death knell of hair metal and the world was screaming for rock music that would be meaningful again. And the timing for a new generation wanting a voice was also ideal.

“It just so happened that everything came together at the exact right moment when rock needed

a revolution,” Cross said.

Bands from Seattle had already landed some albums on the charts and the city’s music scene was poised for a mainstream breakthrough, said Jack Endino, who produced Nirvana’s debut album “Bleach.”

“People were starting to pay attention to the Seattle thing,” Endino said. “People don’t remember that before ‘Nevermind’ came out we already had Soundgarden on the charts and we had (the Top 50 album) “Facelift” by Alice in Chains and “Uncle Anesthesia” by Screaming Trees. People were already beginning to pay attention to what was coming out of Seattle because it was kind of unprecedented for a place like Seattle to suddenly have rock albums on the album charts — not just one band but two, three or four bands.”

What Endino said Seattle needed at the time was “one really big breakthrough album to come through to really get people to focus on it.” And that’s what “Nevermind” did, he said.



“What the ‘Nevermind’ record had was good melodies,” said Endino. “People forget that ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ has a very Beatlesque melody. That’s not a trivial melody. That’s a very sort of sophisticated melody to actually hear in a rock ’n’ roll song, especially at that point in time when hip hop was coming along which was not particularly melodic.”

Said rock writer Chuck Eddy: “It had a great chord progression that worked in ‘Louie Louie’ and ‘More Than a Feeling.’ And it had a great video. Not only was (Cobain) a pretty guy, but he also wrote pretty melodies.”

Few at the time predicted such success for the album, Nirvana’s first effort for a major record label, Geffen Records. According to Chad Channing, who drummed on “Bleach,” and worked on some of the early “Nevermind” songs, the album’s explosion on the pop charts wasn't foreseen by either the band or its core audience.

“Playing live, I couldn’t really discern any difference between stuff that we were playing from the ‘Bleach’ record and then the new stuff,” Channing said. “They seemed to like it all.”
Story: 12 unlikely covers of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
In the studio, Channing said, “we didn’t really get a lot of feedback per se about the stuff we were recording. So there wasn’t, ‘Oh yeah, this is totally awesome.’ But we were liking it.”

Yet when a friend brought an advanced copy of the finished “Nevermind” to Channing, the drummer said he heard potential he hadn’t noticed before.

“I remember thinking when I got done listening to it, ‘God, this is a great record. I’ll bet this is gonna do pretty well,’” he said. “And, of course, later it got so huge it was like ‘Whoa, I didn’t think it’d get this big.’”

‘I’m so lonely, and that’s OK’
Brandon Geist, the editor of the rock and heavy metal magazine Revolver, was 13 years old when “Nevermind” came out. He said the main reason it had an impact on him and his generation was the seriousness of its lyrics.

“I remember hearing ‘Come As You Are’ on the radio,” Geist said. “It was one of those magic moments where it was like ‘What is this? This speaks to me in a way that nothing I’d heard before had.’”

Geist said that before “Nevermind,” commercial hard rock was “a very sort of macho genre,” where glam rock bands would sing about partying and women, thrash metal bands sang of political and social issues, and straight-up heavy metal bands sang about “Dungeons and Dragons” themes.

“But after ‘Nevermind’ hit, suddenly it was cool to be in a hard rock band and to sing about your feelings — and to sing about your feelings in a complex way,” Geist said. “Hard rock became inward-looking. You can see that influence in the nu metal bands like Korn or Slipknot. All of a sudden it was acceptable to be in a metal band and to sing about your neighbor molesting you or something. Hard rock really became cathartic as opposed to escapist.”

Inward-looking lyrical couplets like “I’m so lonely, and that’s OK” (from “Lithium”) also resonated with Nirvana’s musical peers — to the point where the focus of hard rock music was permanently changed — for better or worse, according to Eddy.

“Once Nirvana hit, there was this assumption that you had to present yourself seriously,” Eddy said. “So this kind of dreariness set into commercial hard rock that has not abated in the 20 years since, all the way up to the post-grunge bands Staind and Nickelback.”

Regardless of any detrimental influence Nirvana may have had on artists that came afterwards, new generations of listeners have been able to connect with the band’s music in much the same way the original grunge fans did back in 1991, Cross believes.


“What people forget is that Nirvana’s music reaches across generations and across cultures,” Cross said. “The songs that Kurt wrote were so deep and meaningful that they have continued to speak to new generations of people who find meaning in them.

“That, I think, is the reason for ‘Nevermind’s’ lasting legacy,” Cross said. “It’s not Kurt Cobain’s personality, it’s not who he was as a rock star. It’s simply that the songs themselves have a life beyond Kurt’s fame.”

Michael Azerrad, author of the 1993 best-seller “Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana,” said by email that Nirvana’s music was able to resonate with teenagers because it spoke to them in an honest way.

[norton ash]

Annus Marabilis
Phlip Larkin

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Since we now have it on record that there was no sexual intercourse beforehand, the Beatles' first LP is the most important rock album of all time. So everyone is please to be shutting up now.

Then again, Larkin may simply be describing what it felt like to be alive in a certain time and place. That's more likely. I'll go with that.

Anyway, sorry, not important, never mind.

[Pierre d'Achoppement]