Ten from the vaults: the unseen works of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana

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The Go Team: Bikini Twilight

Bathtub is Real

The intended release of a Europe-only tour EP in autumn of 1989 found Cobain having to rush-write a couple of new songs because Nirvana were so low on fresh material. That rapidly changed, the band seem to have only one new song by early summer then half-a-dozen to choose from by October, an indication of how good Cobain was at producing under pressure. It’s an intriguing time, however, for another reason; 1989-1990 was Cobain’s most fertile period of casual collaborations with other musicians outside of Nirvana.

The Olympia scene was a relatively small one, most musicians knew one another, significant activity centred around K Records and around the Evergreen State College with its cheap (or usually free) facilities for musicians. Cobain was a popular presence among the music community – neither the most outgoing person nor a complete loner. During his time in the town he appeared with Calvin Johnson’s The Go Team for a one-off single (with statements suggesting that more songs were recorded), played a number of duets with Calvin on the latter’s local radio show, took part in ‘the Jury’ sessions with members of Screaming Trees, made an awesome contribution to Mark Lanegan’s solo album The Winding Sheet, played unreleased noise collages with his friend Dylan Carlson of Earth before joining Earth for a session in Portland which yielded the beautiful ‘Divine and Bright’ among other tracks (including at least one unreleased piece) and recorded what is known as the ‘Bathtub is Real’ tape with his on-off girlfriend Tobi Vail.

Vail-fronted versions of songs later recorded with Nirvana certainly exist on the tape alongside Vail songs with Cobain on drums. Beyond that the most that can be hoped for are different formulations of lyrics, scratch ideas of known songs, perhaps the odd abandoned idea that never went further…Again, we’re into the unknown here.