Boxset, Update #2: The Running Order Crystallizes
- Posted by mariteaux on April 8th, 2021 filed in Remasters/Restorations
- Comments Off on Boxset, Update #2: The Running Order Crystallizes
So as I predicted, the second disc of Sunbeams has come together way easier and faster than the first. Primordial Nirvana is fascinating, but you can only get so much of it before you’re just kinda staring out of your eyes and hoping Kurt sings a little better rather than taking any of it in. Nevermind Nirvana is way more palatable.
The running order’s basically set (for tonight, at least, and I can’t see much of it changing). Here’s what I got before I ramble more about it:
- Opinion [KAOS]
- Dumb [KAOS]
- Been a Son [KAOS]
- In Bloom [Smart]
- Imodium [Smart]
- Here She Comes Now [Smart]
- Lithium [Mix 7, Smart]
- Pennyroyal Tea [Winter 90 home demo]
- On a Plain [Music Source]
- Radio Friendly Unit Shifter [Music Source]
- All Apologies [Music Source]
- Drain You [April 91 “Retards” demo]
- Territorial Pissings [March 91 boombox demo]
- Verse Chorus Verse [March 91 boombox demo]
- Old Age [March 91 boombox demo]
- Lounge Act [Sound City tracking]
- Sappy [Sound City]
- Smells Like Teen Spirit [Sound City, Butch Vig mix]
- Something in the Way [BBC]
All that comes out to about 65 minutes, a good eight shorter than any of WTLO‘s discs.
Now, if I was going in strict chronological order, the Smart Studios stuff would come before the KAOS stuff, but the acoustic stuff to start the disc plays better. I’ve decided I want to have all three discs start with studio chatter. Disc one starts with “Sound of Dentage”, the first track on the Fecal Matter tape, which starts with Kurt breathing and a whole lot of tape hiss. Disc three starts with the VPRO “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”, which starts with a very tired Kurt asking about an ashtray. The Elmo version of “Opinion” features the best quality introduction to the 9/25/90 Boy Meets Girl show we know of, which WTLO chopped off. All three seem to fit very nicely where they are.
Although we lose the KAOS “Lithium” (which I really never liked), having more of the Smart stuff on disc (WTLO only had “Pay to Play” and “Here She Comes Now”) means we get that session’s version of “Lithium” instead, and it’s a favorite. This is about the best I’ve heard it. The quality’s great, the mix is great. I didn’t plan on adding “Here She Comes Now” to the running order, but not only does it beef up the Smart stuff, but since I added “Do You Love Me?” to disc one, it felt wrong to lose their two other compilation appearances, “Here She Comes Now” and “Return of the Rat”, which is now on disc three.
The Music Source stuff is criminally underrated. I’ve long loved this version of “On a Plain” (seriously! Since I was a little kid), and while the neat instrumental “Oh, the Guilt” had to be cut for time and flow constraints, I think the big three rarities of the session are here. WTLO neglected that a lot of the In Utero stuff was actually written before Nevermind came out; that set’s version of “Pennyroyal” was rather flat and mostly finished, as was its “All Apologies”. These renditions are much more unique, “Pennyroyal” groaning and moaning like he really is on Demerol, and “All Apologies” sounding like a damn R.E.M. tune.
I actually had to dig out my copies of Nevermind Deluxe for the boombox rehearsals, pretty much the only good thing about that set. It was actually fairly difficult picking stuff from it I both liked and hadn’t used another version of! “Territorial Pissings” was obvious, especially coming off the rawness of the “Drain You” demo (which I got a much nicer source for, I’m happy to say). While I prefer the Sound City “Verse Chorus Verse” for pure listening purposes, adding it and the fabled “Old Age” from that tape (which a tantalizing minute of was used in a Stranger article in the late 90s) works really nicely to round out the “raw Nevermind-era band demos” chunk of the disc.
Finally, getting into Sound City stuff itself. Really, the hard one here was where to put “Teen Spirit”. I tried it right after the rough tracking version of “Lounge Act” and before “Sappy”, but given that it’s really the “release” of the disc, and where I want there to be that big shift in the narrative of all three, where this band goes from “punky pop idealists” to “haggard, discomforted creatures straining under their own joints”, it seemed best to build up to it. Finally, the BBC version of “Something in the Way” I like so much, which seems to be an ominous warning for the third disc in context.
I’m also rather pleased to report that none of the songs on this disc use WTLO as their source. Elmo either upgraded every single source I was gonna use, or a bootleg stepped in to provide what wasn’t included there in the first place. I decided using the extremely-cooked deluxe Nevermind wasn’t too big an issue, given that the boombox rehearsals are already so noisy and overdriven that whatever they did to them isn’t particularly audible anyway. Curiously, since both Nevermind deluxe and WTLO are in the Dynamic Range Database, I compared their overall loudness, and to my surprise, the tracks they share are actually slightly less cooked (like a tenth of a decibel) on Nevermind deluxe. I’ll take it.
Like I said, I’m gonna shift the post-Nevermind b-sides and demos to the third disc, which is looking a little empty at the moment. Tonally, I think they fit a lot better there, while the pre-Nevermind In Utero demos match this disc more in kind. The Winter 1990 “Pennyroyal” isn’t that far removed from “Seed” or the acoustic “About a Girl”, if you really think about it, and that really early “All Apologies” feels more folky than funeralistic. VPRO “Where Did You Sleep”, “Return of the Rat”, certainly anything from Rio, have this bleakness and weariness to them that fits In Utero more than Nevermind, so they go with those.
