I first heard Nirvana when my school friend Lewis lent me his copy of Nevermind on CD when we were about 13. What... sticks in my mind still decades later is the intro to Territorial Pissings:
Come on, people, now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
After overplaying Nevermind, I went out with the money I'd saved to buy another Nirvana album. After much deliberation I settled on "Unplugged in New York".
I can't lie, I was disappointed when I took it home and put it on. I didn't understand what "unplugged" meant at the time.
Over the next few months, I grew to love this album. This was before streaming was a thing and I had a limited supply of music. I remember getting to know the songs and realising it was the same thing as Nevermind without the noise, without the bells and whistles. It was raw songwriting.
Ever since I've considered Kurt one of my favourite songwriters, because of the way he used the simple tools he understood to deliver something that mattered. show more
