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Starting today (November 12th), Nirvana‘s Nevermind will be celebrated with several multi-format reissues. A total of 94 audio and video tracks — 70 previously unreleased — will be made available across configurations ranging from Super Deluxe Editions to standard digital/CD and single disc vinyl with bonus 7-inch. In all formats, Nevermind is newly remastered from the original half-inch stereo analog tapes to high-resolution 192kHz 24-bit.
Among the previously unreleased material exclusive to various versions of the Nevermind 30th Anniversary Editions are four complete live shows that document Nirvana’s “historic ascension on the concert stage,” including: Live In Amsterdam, Netherlands (recorded and filmed on November 25th, 1991 at the famed club Paradiso); Live In Del Mar, California (recorded on December 28th, 1991 at the Pat O’Brien Pavilion at the Del Mar Fairgrounds); Live In Melbourne, Australia for triple j (recorded February 1st, 1992 at The Palace in St. Kilda); and Live In Tokyo, Japan (recorded at the Nakano Sunplaza on February 19th, 1992).
All four newly remastered live shows are included in the Nevermind Super Deluxe Editions, which will be available in both vinyl (8 LPs — 180-gram black vinyl – all in premium tip-on jackets — plus the new 7-inch – A-side: “Endless, Nameless” / B-side: “Even In His Youth” and “Aneurysm”) and CD+Blu-ray (5 CDs plus Blu-ray — Live in Amsterdam, Netherlands complete concert video newly remastered audio & video in HD).
Not long after Nevermind’s mega-platinum success Kurt Cobain spoke about the effect the massive adoration and fame Nirvana was suddenly dealing with: “Either I’ve accepted it or I’ve gone beyond insane to where I can deal with it emotionally. I really don’t care. I know that I’m too stubborn to allow myself to ever compromise our music or get so wrapped up in it and involved to where it’s going to turn us into big rock stars. I mean, I just don’t feel like that. Everyone else accuses us of it, but y’know, we’re not as popular as everyone thinks and we’re not as rich as everyone think, y’know? We’ve always had a good sense of humor, I don’t think that’s been translated very well. We’d rather laugh about it — (feigns happiness) ha, ha, ha.”
Nevermind producer Butch Vig told us a while back that the album remains a high point of his career: “Nevermind has been an album that, for me, is one of those things that, well, it changed my life. And it’s. . . I’ll always have it as something that I worked with and was associated with. And I’m really proud of it, because to me that record still sounds as vital as it did when it came out.”
Charles R. Cross, author of the Nirvana/Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven and Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact Of Kurt Cobain, explained why Cobain’s music has had such a lasting impact: “The music that Kurt and Nirvana created is still considered some of the greatest music we’ve had in modern rock n’ roll. Y’know, the albums still continue to sell, and as an influence of other bands and the sound of things that we still hear on the radio, I think you still hear the influence of Nirvana and Kurt. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that: I mean, the most notable being the fact that he just wrote incredible songs that touched so many people.”
Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich told us that he thinks Nirvana’s music sounds as fresh as ever: “The music gets better and better. It ages so well. Some bands that you sit and listen to, and it just sounds completely silly a few years later, but that Nirvana stuff, it sounds as vital and as vibrant as it did when it first came out.”