Nirvana 45 RPM

Collection of Nirvana hits. Good stuff!

I recently got into vinyl and I thought this album would be the best way to listen to Nirvana without having to buy their entire catalog. Yes, there are some of my favorites missing. But as I build my library, I may go back and get Nevermind and the like. If you are a Gen Z/Alpha, this may be your best first exposure to the group.

Highly recommended

Everything went great

I first listened to Nirvana in high school as an individual who also suffered from depression. Kurt Cobain’s voice spoke to me in such a way that his music reached the dark blackhole of my worthless soul. The day I heard Negative Creep for the first time was the day I decided to own every album by Nirvana. This is the last cd needed to complete my collection, the playlist goes from Unrelased Track, Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero and to finally MTV Unplugged. In the acoustic version of All Apologies, you can actually hear the pain in Kurt’s voice as he sings the lyrics without the electric feedback. Smells Like Teen Spirit and Lithium are my favorite tracks off this cd. However I believe that 3 tracks are missing that would have made this album perfect. They are listed below: 1) Negative Creep 2) Scentless Apprentice 3) All Apologies (Electric Version) I guess somebody at Geffen Records messed up. Well at least it has 14 great songs, the story and artwork are well worth it. You might find it ironic that I placed this order exactly on April 5. The exact date back in 1994 when Kurt Cobain became a rock legend.

I am a very big fan of Bob Ludwig and the folks at Gateway Mastering Studios, so I was really looking forward to this new NIRVANA cd to hear the sonic treatment that they gave this highly touted "newly remastered" classic NIRVANA music. Generally the classic material on this disc was a disappointment. I own the original master recordings of BLEACH, NEVERMIND and IN UTERO, and the sound on this new NIRVANA disc does not even compare to the sound on these older original master recording CDs. From my listening tests, this new NIRVANA cd has compressed the dynamic range at least 4 decibles, and a full 6 decibles on HEART SHAPED BOX. According to the liner notes, Kurt Cobain was a master at the soft loud musical arrangement, and because of this a NIRVANA fan would naturally want to hear Kurt's music played back with as much dynamic range as possible. (For those non-audiophile Amazon.com customers, dynamic range is the difference between the soft and the loud passages of a musical arrangement.) Gateway Mastering Studios has all of the latest high tech mastering equipment, and Bob Ludwig is famous for his ability to make music come to life with a realism that most engineers in the business can only fream of, so what happened to this NIRVANA disc? Well there are two possibilities. Maybe SubPop DGC's pressing equipment was not up to par to reproduce a full blown sonic experience of NIRVANA music and consequently compressed Bob Ludwig's digital masters. Or maybe SubPop did not provide Gateway Mastering with the first generation master tapes of NIRVANA's original songs. What ever the reason, this disc does not even come close to the original master recording CDs that are now in general circulation. Is this disc worth buying? Definately, at least for the new single alone. But buyer beware, the digital domain is fraught with many a gremlins, and this disc contains quite a few sonic demons.

Got this for my dad

The punk ethos of late frontman Kurt Cobain still shines through post-mortem 'greatest hits' collection. Admittedly skeptical when the radio announced new Nirvana material was going to be released after infamous legal battles between surviving members, Cobain's estate and the reccord company were cleared, I figured I could at least give it a shot. The much-heralded one "new" track "You know you're right" features Cobain's morose vocals at their prime. Reccorded shortly before his 1994 death at the age of 27, this track's experimental musical arrangement adds to the tense enviroment promoted through the lyrics. Of course, Kurt ultimately left this world, the song now ironically sounding like communication from the great beyound. Nirvana was never explicitly political in the sense of the Dead Kennedys, Bikini Kill, etc... but their frequent statements in the early 1990's in support of youth participation and political awareness against Bush the elder and his friends were a prominent fixture in news interviews. However difficult this participation might be, it was preferable to letting people you disagreed with walk all over you and continue to do whatever they wanted. Now as junior makes plans to decimate the world in his own image, we can again hear the passionate doubt of Kurt Cobain throughout the song and be transported to a time when America was forced to admit youth revolution had never really disappeated and we would have to be listened to on our own terms. Other tracks are live versions and B sides from Nirvana's other hit songs. Previously owning Incesticide, I nevertheless appreciate addition to my musical catalog because the beauty of a non-polished version comes from the organic nature of the finished product. Multiple performances of the same song will never be completely the same, and the different perspectives remind us the Washington state band was "Alternative" well befoe it simply became another demographic term for corporate music.