Record Recipes #49

Sweat and distortion.

A selection of analog recommendations for your listening pleasure. Pulled from my personal collection. Today’s issue: summer grunge.

Pixies - Surfer Rosa. No skips, a perfect 10. Kurt Cobain cited Gigantic as his favorite Pixies tune and admitted that Smells Like Teen Spirit was an attempt to emulate the Boston rockers. I’ve seen them live more than any other band on my fantasy festival roster, covered Where is My Mind on an episode of Warehouse 13, and will consume just about anything Kim Deal creates (honorable mention for her recent solo record and duet with Kim Gordon on Everybody’s Live). I don’t know how to explain this, but this is a warm weather record perfect for the dry Hollywood heat currently impeding my hot girl walks. Cactus

Nirvana - Nevermind. Now’s as good a time as any to admit I had my grunge phase right before I turned 21. Subletting a Barton Fink style bungalow apartment in Los Feliz, between seasons of television and having abandoned NYU for Berklee, I tied the stupid flannel around my waist and learned blues riffs on my Telecaster and thumbed through the copy of Cobain Unseen that Saul gave me as a wrap gift. I took myself on a pilgrimage to Seattle to visit the Experience Music Project’s massive Nirvana exhibition, armed with a vintage Polaroid camera and a desire to feel the spirit. I took a bus out to Lake Washington at sunrise and scrawled my own tribute on the memorial bench in Viretta Park, completely alone in the pre-influencer landscape. I’ve covered In Bloom at Jam Night and taught kids to play Smells Like Teen Spirit and Lithium. A couple Christmases ago I learned that my cousin’s daughters thought Nirvana was a t-shirt brand. All things must pass. Drain You

Hole - Celebrity Skin. The last exit on the way to oblivion. This record is the drive along Sunset Blvd all the way to the water, dying palm trees leaning south, hanging on for dear life to a dying friendship, a dive bar makeout in expensive vintage, a red lipstick smudge on the rim of a vodka soda. If I am in the mood for this one, it’s a whole record with zero interruption kind of mood. The end result is empowered, inspired, and out for blood. Use with caution, or use once and destroy. Boys on the Radio

Bonus reading: Even the Good Girls Will Cry is chock full of behind the scenes anecdotes from an artist who lived through it and kept her wits about her even when the going got tough. Highly recommend.

Keep listening.