The members of Nirvana did not set out to become superstars, didn't expect to move millions of units, had no way to know that an entire generation was equally tired of being lied to – by their parents, by their government and by the music on the radio. They set out simply to write songs that spoke to their experience of the world and that felt good when played. Loud.
That insistence on emotional honesty is really all that connects the so-called Seattle bands; otherwise Nirvana and Pearl Jam have little in common. Weird Al Yankovic lampooned Kurt Cobain's withdrawal into incoherence (remember the Who stuttering "My Generation"?) but laughing at "Smells Like Teen Spirit" misses the
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point: Some emotions are so deeply rooted that only the hideous abuse of an electric guitar and an untutored scream will do to express them. That revelation is hardly unique to Seattle, but few angry young men have so directly dented the consciousness of a culture suckled on sitcoms. The Nirvana compilation
Incesticide and Blood Circus's
Primal Rock Therapy freeze fragments of a creative process that four years later miraculously caught the world's fancy. One band made it, one didn't, but the roles could as easily have been reversed.
Back in 1988, when Nirvana was just three scraggly guys from Aberdeen with bad equipment and half-formed ideas, Blood Circus seemed hellbent for fame. The group's crimson vinyl debut, "Two Way Street"/"Six Foot Under," released before Mudhoney's brown vinyl "Touch Me, I'm Sick," is one of the cornerstones of (sigh) grunge, Seattle's much-hyped urban-suburban synthesis of punk and metal. This collection is virtually all that remains of that dream.
Lacking Mudhoney's sardonic humor and Nirvana's surprisingly pretty hooks, Blood Circus's strength ran to raw, savagely blunt songs. Guitarist-singer Michael Anderson has a gruff voice that howls as if a hot sword were twisting his bowels. His confederates (drummer Doug Day, guitarist Geoff Robinson and bassist T-Man) built crude, durable songs – too clean for punk, too simple for metal – with the precision of factory workers. Their best work (that is, most of it) shares the working-class worldview that propelled blues and country music in the Fifties. "Six Foot Under," their signature tune, begins: "My daddy was a workingman.... Every time I talked to him he was cold as ice/So he smoked too much/So he drank too much.... That's how you feel when you're six foot under the grave." It's a stark, unforgiving vision.
Primal Rock Therapy, the five-song 1989 EP that gives this collection its name, sold badly and was largely savaged in what press took notice. The band broke up (and recently re-formed). Five unreleased tracks of comparable cold rage garnish the collection. The years have done nothing to diminish the band's power and fury.
Nirvana shares much of Blood Circus's aesthetic; the group simply stayed together and phrased its
