January 01, 1991 The Music Source, Studio A Seattle, WA, US

January 01, 1991 The Music Source, Studio A Seattle, WA, US

Band members: Kurt Cobain (guitar, vocals), Krist Novoselic (bass), & David Grohl (drums)

Producer: Craig Montgomery
Engineer: Brian Nelson

Set:
[O] Aneurysm
[O] Even In His Youth
[U] Oh, The Guilt (instrumental)
[U] All Apologies (with scratch vocal)
[U] On A Plain (with scratch vocal)
[U] Radio Friendly Unit Shifter (with scratch vocal)
[U] Token Eastern Song (with scratch vocal)

Best available sources:
Source Quality Complete Runtime Lowest Gen Tracks Featured Notes

SBD #1a 10.0 No 0:07:53 Official CD (Smells Like Teen Spirit)
• Aneurysm
• Even In His Youth Andy Wallace remixes.

SBD #1b 9.5 Yes 0:27:20 DAT(X)>FLAC
• Aneurysm
• Oh, The Guilt
• Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
• On A Plain
• All Apologies
• Even In His Youth
• Token Eastern Song Craig Montgomery rough mixes. This source suffers dropouts on Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, All Apologies and Even In His Youth.



Notes: After Dave Grohl joined NIRVANA in September 1990, the band practiced relentlessly and wrote dozens of new songs. The band were keen to record these new compositions, but Sub Pop were suffering severe cash flow problems at the time and were unable to finance such a project. (1)

Still under exclusive recording contract to Sub Pop, the band went ahead and recorded with their soundman at The Music Source, where they had previously recorded the Blew EP in 1989. Steve Fisk confirmed that the session was a wholly private endeavour: ‘This was not for Sub Pop or anything. This was something Nirvana was doing with Craig [Montgomery], their soundman, who was friends with this other guy, Brian [Nelson], that worked at the Music Source.’ (1)

Through Montgomery's friendship with Nelson, NIRVANA were able to access the recording facility free of charge. (28) The recording was made very quickly, during the course of just one day, ‘They just had some new songs that they wanted to play with.’ (28)

For whatever reason, quite possibly financial, the band did not return to complete the songs which were left unfinished that day.

Fisk claimed to have submitted the master tape of this session for possible inclusion on Incesticide (1), but the band opted not to use any of it, possibly due to the low vocal volume or, more likely, because songs were being withheld for In Utero. As Montgomery later observed: ‘It's funny 'cause even though that [session] was before Nevermind, a lot of those songs ended up on In Utero. So when I heard In Utero it was like, "Oh, that song?! We did that!!" I guess between that time and the time they recorded Nevermind, Kurt wrote some more songs that he liked better; I think when the time came to record In Utero, he didn't have a lot of ideas and so went back to earlier material.’ (28)