Nirvana

Nirvana is a grunge rock band whose popularity rose is the 1990’s. Their popularity then had a very influential impact on the radio and music television scene that time that their breakthrough caused alternative rock several years of dominance in music in the 1990’s. Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden and other grunge bands also rode the wave of rock’s emergence that time as a result of Nirvana’s success.

The first members of Nirvana were Kurt Cobain as lead guitarist and vocalist, Kris Novoselic as bass guitarist and Aaron Burckhard as drummer. After a few months however, Burckhard was replaced by Dale Crover then Crover was in turn replaced by Dave Foster. Finally in 1998, Nirvana settled for Chad Channing as their drummer. Like the group’s drummer, the band had to don different names before ending up with Nirvana. Among other names considered were Skid Row, Pen Cap Chew and Ted Ed Fred.

Nirvana released its first album, “Bleach,” in 1989 under Sub Pop records. The one thousand limited copies of the album was sold at the Lamefest in Seattle. Several influences in the album were “The Melvins,” “Mudhoney,” “Black Sabbath” and “Led Zeppelin.” The said album would eventually be discovered by Nirvana’s fans during the group’s success with “Nevermind” and the resulting clamor for copies of it has been responsible for more than 4 million copies of the album sold up to date.

It was not until September 1991 however when the band released their first major album, “Nevermind,” that Nirvana was to start its trek towards becoming the rock icon of the time. In the course of recording for the said album however, Nirvana changed its drummer again from Chad to Dale Crover, then to Dan Peters then finally to Dave Grohl.

“Nevermind” has sold about 10 million copies in the U.S. alone and more than 25 million copies worldwide. The said album has placed the Seattle grunge scene in the limelight and more importantly, the album became significant in placing alternative rock in its entirety into the mainstream that time. “Nevermind” banners the singles “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Come As You Are”, “Lithium” and “In Bloom.” The said singles and the albums topped music charts all over the world.

Nirvana released it’s follow-up album to “Nevermind,” in 1993. The said album was named “In Utero.” which carried their popular singles “All Apologies,” “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Rape Me.” Some singles such as “Rape Me” got the band dealing with corporate censorship as nationwide stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart cited it along with several other singles and the collage back cover involving a plastic-fetus design as too controversial. The album itself debuted at number 1 in the Billboard Album chart.

Nirvana’s demise started from Cobain’s eventual heroin addiction which eventually led him to rehabilitation. He escaped a week after and after another week was found dead at his home in Seattle. Despite the death of Cobain however, the several post-mortem Nirvana albums were still released.