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Nirvana · S2 E2
Love Buzz
Nirvana's first single. A cover of a Shocking Blue song, backed with 'Big Cheese.' Released in November 1988 as part of Sub Pop's Singles Club. One thousand copies, hand-numbered. The seven-inch that starts everything
November 1988. Sub Pop presses one thousand copies of a 7-inch single by a band most people in Seattle have never heard of, hand-numbers each sleeve, and releases it into a world that is not paying attention yet.
"Territorial Pissings", Nirvana, Saturday Night Live, January 1992. The song opens with Krist singing a mocking version of the Youngbloods' "Get Together," a 1960s peace anthem ripped inside out. It is the same instinct that drove Kurt to cover Love Buzz: take something familiar and polite, then destroy it. The SNL performance ends with the band smashing their instruments and Kurt kissing Krist on live television.
The Cover
The A-side is "Love Buzz," a cover of a 1969 song by the Dutch band Shocking Blue, the same group that recorded "Venus." Kurt picks it because the melody is irresistible: a swirling psych-pop riff that sounds nothing like anything else on the Sub Pop roster. It is a strange choice for a debut single, a cover instead of an original, by a band nobody associates with psychedelia.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why are the Love Buzz sleeves numbered by hand?
Territorial Pissings, Nirvana (1991)
The opening is a cover within a song: Krist quoting the Youngbloods' "Get Together" in a sneering, sarcastic tone before the band detonates into one of the fastest, most chaotic arrangements on Nevermind. Kurt wrote the lyrics as an attack on conformity and apathy, screaming over a wall of noise that barely holds together. Listen for how the song has almost no structure. There are no clear verses or choruses, just an escalating fury that builds until it collapses. The connection to Love Buzz is the cover instinct: Kurt loved taking someone else's melody and making it unrecognizable.
Nirvana's debut single "Love Buzz" was a cover. Who recorded the original?
Love Buzz: The Details
Big Cheese, Nirvana
The B-side of Nirvana's debut single, and the first original composition the band ever released on vinyl. Heavy, repetitive, and dripping with sarcasm. Where Love Buzz showed Kurt could take someone else's song and make it his own, Big Cheese proved he could write one from scratch.
Jack Endino's studio in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle has an eight-track recorder and a reputation for making bands sound like they are playing in your living room. Nirvana walks in with a handful of songs and a total recording budget of $606.17. Next: the making of Bleach.
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