If one believes in a god, then that god provides rules and meaning for one’s actions – though, of course, even then no one else is required to accept your meaning. If one doesn’t place meaning in the hands of a supernatural being, then the meaning of life becomes whatever one chooses to devote one’s own time and energy to – it’s your choice and no one can tell you you’re wrong because it’s something inherently and specifically personal to you. I think there’s amazing freedom in that. By that same virtue, I love seeing people dedicate themselves to labours of love that aren’t underpinned by other motivations like career plans, financial rewards, a desire for influence – no one else may care, but you do, so you do it in spite of obstacles, dismissal, lack of interest, because it means something to you.
The Love Buzz 7″ site is a recent favourite on that score. Massimo Salerno and Mattia Cuda built on work by Joris Baas and Enrico Vincenzi, to create this rather nifty website where they identify and log the owners of the 1,000 hand-numbered copies, and the 200 unnumbered copies with a red marker dash where the number would be, of Nirvana’s first single. Original copies go for several thousand dollars and there’s a quite substantial quantities of fakes out there – a bit of a minefield. What the guys have done is provide a source indicating the features that identify an original, a listing so it’s clear which numbers already belong to a known owner, a map showing where in the world copies have wound up over the years, and a guide to the known test pressings too.
They’ve gone beyond that by adding the stories volunteered by individual owners explaining how they came across their copy, the pedigree of each one and so forth. It’s a rather fun read, for example the way a test pressing of Love Buzz wound up with an east coast distributor called Pier Platters, was purchased by a gentleman called Nihility X, then sold to Discourage Records. Or Chad Channing’s personal memory of snagging the third copy of the single, or the story of Nils Bernstein found under #6.
The photos too are interesting, there’s a certain fascination in the way these repeated shots of the ___ / 1000 box vary in terms of photo quality, position, condition…
The home page scrolls beautifully and intelligently through the core details of the release, the counter indicating that 355 of 1,000 copies have been identified so far – rather impressive for an object as small as a seven inch record and one released 32 years ago – links to the genuine copies currently on sale, and the mission statement to get rid of the bootleg copies…All leading to the submission form at the bottom where people can choose to remain anonymous but are invited to provide their story and/or to have their copy studied remotely to prove its genuine.
Nirvana Legacy 
Super interesting. As far as I can tell you forgot to link the site but it was easy enough to google. Thanks for writing about it.
Link is right at the top but has shown up funny! Doh. I’ll amend.