...that a small town, high school senior made a mad dash to the local record dispensary the second school let out to buy an album he had been anticipating for months - on cassette no less. Backing up a bit, in December of 1990, upon strolling into Erl Records in downtown Albany, NY, I was blitzkrieged by the assaulting, guttural wallop of Nirvana's "Negative Creep." Who was this friggin
animal I thought? Was this Tad's latest single that I hadn't been previously informed of? That blast, from what is now very much the past, didn't scare me off for long, because a week later I went back to Erl to secure my own copy of
Bleach, just prior to New Years Day of the year punk broke. It was a metallic k.o. of huge proportions to me, a fixture of my weekly if not daily soundtrack of the first three quarters of '91. By spring of that year, news dropped that Nirvana would no longer be a Sub Pop proposition. Wasn't quite sure what to expect, that was until $10 bootleg 7"s of what were to be demos for
Nevermind began to surface, which a friend was gracious enough to dub for me. I believe one of those singles was prophetically dubbed
The Triple Platinum ep. With that dubbed cassette in my Plymouth Reliant's tape deck, (competing for time with my bedroom desktop stereo) I quickly came to the conclusion that spring and summer that I had a new favorite band. Unfortunately my attempts to get an advance tape of
Nevermind proved fruitless, and I was forced to tough it out until September 24th.
For the life of me, their meteoric ascent was something I couldn't rationalize, and I could only take comfort in the fact that most of the metal heads and Deadheads occupying my stomping ground were indifferent to them. Nonetheless, I was gradually forced to cash in a very sacred cow, to a surprisingly appreciative world. There was communication between my home address and Nirvana's
Bleach correspondence address, the majority of which was one-way, with the exception of a two-page, October '91 newsletter printed on light dayglow-green paper (Both sides of which can be read at full size with the click of mouse). And the kicker? It's
signed at the bottom of the second page by "Kurdt," Chris and Dave. If that wasn't enough to get me stoked, they also included a tour itinerary, t-shirt order form, and bumper sticker. The text of the letter itself, penned within a month of
Nevermind's release, mentions the band was thrown out of their own release party. And there are other pertinent details, such as the story behind the unusual spelling of "Kurdt's" name, and the trio even go so far as to name check a fan (who ironically would soon have close personal ties to Nirvana) that voiced some objections with the new album. An up-to-that-point discography is also provided on the second page, which details a fictionalized forthcoming split single. I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of rare studio cuts or uncirculated live shows to pull out of my ass, this but this boilerplate newsletter was pretty damn poignant to this set of eyes. Below is a link where you can download full size versions of everything, including the tour itinerary I mentioned.
https://rapidshare.com/files/3994799651/nirvana91newsletter.rar
2 comments:
This is very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Erl records FTW. I got my cassette of Bleach from Dave @ Erl, as well. Such good times in that store (and World, but I liked Erl better).
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