Album Review: "Nevermind" 10th Anniversary
Steve Glassbrenner | Staff Writer

Ten years ago this month the music world was changed by the release of Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind."  Originally slated to be entitled Sheep, the album delivered top 40 radio out of the clutches of big hair, and mascara-wearing music leftovers from the previous decade.  Armed with simplicity, intensity, irony, and unchecked emotion, Nevermind's sound bookmarked Seattle, Washington, as the new music Mecca for the rest of the country.

Nirvana made very simple music.  A guitar, a bass and a drum kit were all they required.  Dressed in their own everyday clothes, Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl gave mainstream America what all those 80’s hair bands couldn’t.  The key ingredient that took them from another unappreciated underground band to the band headed by a newly appointed generational icon was the vision, with raw emotion embedded deep within the music.  No one will ever know the specific sources of the anguish that Kurt dealt with, but he used clearly crafted pain as only an artist would.  Listening to him at his best was having him paint anguish and frustration across our eardrums.  Whether it was in his screaming vocals and his guitar howling, or him with an old beat up acoustic guitar singing barely above a whisper, it didn’t matter.  It hit like a ton of bricks.

At an age where almost everyone feels out of place, Nirvana’s music was what we felt in our hearts coming straight through the speakers.  "Nevermind" was clearly marked with fire and passion that such music greats as Stevie Ray Vaughn, Pete Townshend (of The Who), and Jimi Hendrix so obviously possessed.   It is that fire and passion that make true rock 'n’ roll so incredible.  As countless imitators such as Silverchair, or the handful of hair bands that tried to “go grunge” would prove afterwards, it’s not the flannels you wear, or how loud you play. It’s what you play, and how you feel about it.  The 90’s produced quite a crop of good bands. Bands such as Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, and Pearl Jam, each continued successfully after “grunge” was dead, but each one of them owed their overall visability to the splash made by Nevermind.