Once a month on a Sunday afternoon at La La La’s we’ve been hosting a record club event, where guest DJ’s select an album for a play through, then play influences and adjacent artists either side of the album listen. For the February edition, I’ve teamed up with my longtime mate Gregos (aka Wellness Coach) to select Nirvana’s classic Nevermind. Before the album play through you’ll hear influences such as Black Flag, The Pixies, The Vaselines, Iggy & The Stooges and much more, while following it you’ll hear Nirvana contemporaries including The Fluid, Mudhoney, The Melvins and we’ll even include their Australian tour friends Tumbleweed and The Meanies. It happens next Sunday February 8th at La La La’s from 3pm.
As part of the Record Club events, I’ve been curating a crate or two of records from the shop to sell and I’ll be doing the same for this event with some great selections. I thought I’d highlight some of my personal favourites of the music we’ll be spinning, starting with the self-titled album from Mudhoney, it was my introduction to grunge, it was really my introduction to ‘alternative’ music. I remember seeing the video to This Gift on Rage, and it was music like nothing I’d ever heard before, I went out and investigated as soon as I could, and the rest of the album lived up to the first single I’d heard. It was truly a life changing record.
The Fluid were one of the more underrated bands of the era, they were I believe the first non-Seattle band signed to Sub Pop. Great vocals, I thick driving sound, they are almost like a prototype of what the ‘grunge sound' was getting described as. They are a band that deserves further listening if you haven’t got across them before.
The Vaselines are a Scottish band and were one of Kurt Cobain’s biggest influences, so much so that Nirvana covered three of their songs during their existence. Sub Pop in recent years just reissued a retrospective collection of their recordings and across the songs you can get a real feel on where Kurt drew inspiration from. In the way he structured songs, how he phrased his lyrics and how he bought together a sound that balanced the loose and noisy with pop sensibilities.