Saturday, August 13, 2011

Great moments in SPIN magazine's oral history of Nirvana and NEVERMIND.

From the August issue of SPIN re "the album that changed everything":
"Of course, now we have Lady Gaga, people with entire staffs constantly manipulating situations to create a monster-type famous person, but that wasn't the case with Nirvana."--Bob Nastonovich, Pavement.

"When NEVERMIND came out, somebody gave us a cassette and we thought it sounded so slick---like a Whitney Houston record."--Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, bemoaning the lack of rawness while calling Kurt Cobain "a really great pop songwriter."

"Kurt loved Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and K Records.  He loved uncool shit too, like ABBA and The Knack.  And what's cool is, he couldn't give one shit about if it was cool.  I mean, really, it's hard to be cool when wearing one of my dresses."--Jennie Boddy, former Sub Pop Records publicist [Nirvana's debut BLEACH was a Sub Pop release]

"I really did love that ensemble they had with the drummer they had before Dave Grohl [presumably referring to Chad Channing]--that's no slag on Dave Grohl--there was just an element from BLEACH that we loved.  We played a couple of shows with them, maybe one in Seattle right around BLEACH, and backstage the mood at these Sub Pop shows was, you know, everyone was having a great time celebrating themselves.  And there was a feeling that Kurt couldn't let loose and be a dork, like "Fuck, I wish I was having more fun than I was."--Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips.

"NEVERMIND is the best Nirvana album, hands down.  Anyone who says it's IN UTERO is lying.  They're just trying to look cool."--Tom Gabel, Against Me!

"I'm not gonna apologize for the fact my mind wasn't blown/life wasn't changed by NEVERMIND.  We've all got our fantastic records.  I don't honestly expect SPIN to do a 30th anniversary feature on how [the Fall's] HEX ENDUCTION HOUR changed music, but it's a much, much better album by a far more important band--Gerard Cosley, Matador Records exec.




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