Second Printing Amends to Dark Slivers and New Information on All Apologies/Black & White Blues

On Friday (tomorrow) I’ll be instructing the printing firm to commence the second print run of Dark Slivers: Seeing Nirvana in the Shards of Incesticide. The first edition, being a first edition, naturally contains a proofing errors and typos that I’m pleased to have the chance to fix. You may ask why weren’t they all cleaned up prior to the first printing – simply because there was a tight deadline (and a long printing leadtime) that meant it had to go to the printers at a specific point in time. The ebook for Kindle received a range of corrections but will also be updated in the next fortnight.

There aren’t many new footnotes or pieces of information being added (three in total)but I would, of course, like to make sure everyone has the information that is entering the book:

“I’ve recently been informed that intriguingly the musician Foetus (JG Thirwell) had a song on a 1992 compilation, Mesomorph Enduros, also entitled Incesticide making it possible that the title of the compilation was borrowed late in 1992. Thank you to Brett Robinson for this. I’ve emailed JG Thirwell and hope he will be able to give some insight into the origins of that song title and the timing of that compilation release.”

Then the two points on Black & White Blues/All Apologies and on Kurdt/Kurt added thanks to the kind support of Jack Endino who took the opportunity to hit me up with some fresh thoughts – I’ve included his original emailed comments here including some I’m not using in the book but think are of definite interest:

“The acoustic instro demo you refer to as Black And White Blues, if it’s the one I am thinking of, I have reason to believe it’s a Krist song, because finger-style is how he plays guitar! It might be Krist on guitar or Krist and Kurt together. But I haven’t asked him. We almost never discuss Nirvana. However if you listen to the January 1, 1991 demo of All Apologies, I can confirm that Krist and Kurt are both playing guitar and there is no bass. If you want to hear Krist on guitar more recently, I recorded this for him a couple years ago (the voice is a naturalist friend of his):

“… explanation of ‘Kurdt’… Kurt used ‘Kurdt’ a few times as a subtle tip of the hat to the only other famous musician to ever emerge from Aberdeen WA prior to Nirvana: local legend, guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof, cofounder of the Northwest-based band Metal Church (with several major label records in the 80s), who was also known earlier by the alias “Blobbo” in the legendary punk band The Lewd! Everyone who writes about Nirvana misses this because 80s metal bands are not on their radar. But Metal Church was huge here, and if not for Nirvana, Vanderhoof would probably still be the ONLY successful musician to have ever emerged from Aberdeen. You can bet every kid who grew up in tiny Aberdeen in the 80s knew who he was.”

“Another thing… when we were recording Bleach they gave me the title ‘Swap Meat’ for the song that later appeared on the record as ‘Swap Meet.’ I was actually disappointed cuz I thought it was funnier the original way, but knowing Kurt he probably had second thoughts (I never asked him) and concluded the humor was a bit too crass!”

“Just between you and me… when I first heard Been A Son, what I thought of was the song ‘Chambermaid’ from Pink Fairies’ 1973 Kings Of Oblivion album which i bought in 1977:

But I’m about 99.9% certain that Kurt never heard the Pink Fairies. I appear to be the only Nirvana fan in the US who has. They were wildly obscure here.”

“Jam/Jam After Dinner… there is indeed a rather excrutiating ‘Jam After Dinner’ from the 1994 Lang Studio session. But one of the menus from the box set DVD has a section (looped) from a jam I recorded in late 1992 at Word Of Mouth. When I popped in the DVD, that was the first thing I heard… I’ve never actually watched it or went further but Gillian tells me the 1994 Jam After Dinner is used somewhere on that DVD too. I am hoping they use my 1992 jam in full, as a bonus track on the In Utero deluxe reissue, but… we’ll see.”