In the months leading up to the release of Nevermind, hearing Nirvana often meant relying entirely on memory. In a retrospective piece for Stereogum, a writer looked back at being a 19-year-old college student during the summer of 1991, completely consumed by songs the band had played live but had not yet issued on tape or vinyl.
That April, Nirvana had unveiled a bombastic new anthem called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" during a show at the packed, compact OK Hotel in Seattle. By June, the writer caught the group again and managed to swipe a handwritten setlist directly from the stage below Kurt Cobain's microphone stand. That scrap of paper provided official titles for tracks that had been lingering in the listener's head, including the driving "Breed" and the Beatles-influenced "Drain You."
Desperate to hear the tracks again, the fan spent the summer combing through record shops, scanning tiny mail-order listings in collector magazines, and buying bootleg seven-inch singles in the hope that one might contain the new material. None of the searches yielded results, leaving the listener with the strange sensation that the songs repeating in their head were the best-kept secret anywhere.
Source: Stereogum
