by Buzz Drainpipe’s spiritual descendant (aged 13 and forever)
I came of age not with a needle but a disc tray that clunked like a vault door, and the first time I heard “Dive” after Nevermind ended, I swore I was being let into a secret club. Not the Nirvana for malls and MTV marathons, but the Nirvana you find buried in a shoebox of unlabeled tapes beneath Kurt’s bed—no parents, no gods, just feedback and feeling.
My temple was the 2-disc special edition, the holy format. You know the one. Clear plastic tray, maybe a booklet fat enough to feel like a zine. You’d get the album you already loved—and then the curtain would pull back. Demos. B-sides. Rough mixes with too much hi-hat. Producer banter before take one. A skeletal version of a song you thought was carved in stone.
This is how I learned the Ramones were even rawer without Phil Spector’s echo chamber, how Kill ’Em All's bassless clang led directly to the abyss of Ride the Lightning, how White Light/White Heat sounded even more dangerous with the studio floorboards creaking in your ear.
So when the Nevermind Super Deluxe Edition came along, it wasn’t just nostalgia. It was sacrament.
You get the classic album, sure. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg made of broken pedals and bleach-scented distortion. You get the Devonshire Mix, an alternate-reality Nevermind, where Butch Vig’s original pre-Andy Wallace mix rumbles like a high school gym PA system. It’s what Nirvana might have sounded like without being handed the keys to MTV. The drums are messier, the vocals more frayed, and it makes “Smells Like Teen Spirit” feel dangerous again—like it’s about to explode instead of already iconic.
Then you dive into the live sets, and holy hell—you feel Krist’s bass rattling your ribs, Dave’s fills careening like a trash can rolling downhill, and Kurt’s voice cracking in all the right places. You hear the band trying to catch up to their own myth in real time. The “biggest band in the world” sweating it out on club stages, still figuring out how to weaponize melody.
To me, this box isn’t about extras. It’s about permission to obsess. To loop four versions of “Drain You” until you hear the moment when it goes from idea to gospel. To understand that music isn’t born finished—it evolves, mutates, unspools in basement takes and bathroom mics.
This edition validates the weird kid with Discogs bookmarked, the kid who read liner notes like scripture, the kid who wanted to know what kind of tape they used on track 3.
I am that kid.
I am still that kid.
And this Nevermind—Super Deluxe, multiverse and all—is our inheritance.
Long live the bonus track.
Long live the alternate mix.
Long live the full mess behind the masterpiece.
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