This one’s off our first album. Most people don’t own it.

 

Bleach was Nirvana’s first album, an often overlooked grunge masterpiece originally released in 1989. For the 20th anniversary Sub Pop is re-releasing it in a deluxe edition re-mastered by original producer Jack Endino and including a concert from the era as well as a 48 page booklet on November 3rd. So is it worth it?

 

I think there’s more than one answer to that question. Obviously if you were one of those people Kurt was referring to in the quote above and you still don’t own this album the answer is a definitive yes. The re-master isn’t as good as a remix would have been ala Pearl Jam’s excellent Ten anniversary release and The Beatles reissues. But the songs do sound better than the original cd versions. Mainly they’re just a little cleaner.

 

The gem of this set though is the live show that comes with it. Now if you’re a die hard Nirvana fan, there is a wealth of live concert bootlegs out there, some with great quality. So you might have heard this already. But this show from February 9, 1990 at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, OR is a perfect representation of an up and coming Nirvana. They’re on fire here and there’s songs that wouldn’t turn up on an album till Incesticide was released. The show is also notable because it includes the not often played live “Scoff”.

 

As most fans know, this earlier Nirvana was much heavier and more grunge, for lack of a better term. A big part of that was Chad Channing who was replaced by Dave Ghrol not too long after this show. This recording shows Channing as a really talented qualified drummer, but at the same time shows that the parting of ways was probably for the best as he seems to be playing more metal than Nirvana really was. He’s using double bass on almost every song in the set.

 

The really great thing about this show and it’s inclusion here is that Endino took the whole thing and remastered it too. It sounds awesome. In my eyes the purchase is worth it just for this 12 song set.

 

The Bleach anniversary edition is also available in high grade white vinyl, how the first original 1000 copies of the album were released.

 

Click the picture to check it out over at Amazon.