Nirvana - Ashamed to Be Human (1988)

 

Side A:
1. Downer
2. Mexican Seafood
3. Pen Cap Chew
4. Beeswax
5. Hairspray Queen
6. Floyd the Barber
7. New Union

Side B:
8. Blandest
9. Spank Thru
10. Aero Zeppelin
11. If You Want
12. Paper Cuts

This is my theoretical Nirvana album from 1988, Ashamed to Be Human. An internet blogger known for reconstructing famously unreleased albums once did a project where he did "a reconstruction of the unreleased 1990 Nirvana album Sheep, which is essentially the precursor to what would eventually be released as Nevermind in 1991." Well, I wondered what it would be like if Nirvana had released an album in 1988, before 1989 when Bleach came out. The reason why I wonder this is because on page 84 of Kurt Cobain's Journals, there are drawings of a hypothetical album that had a couple of working titles, Humans Are Dumb, All Humans Are Stupid, and Ashamed to Be a Human. The last one I liked, chose, and modified, because it was a name that combined the similarly-named original working title for Bleach, Too Many Humans, with a lyric from "Floyd the Barber". 

I found another theoretical 1988 Nirvana album on the internet, and this guy was inspired to also do album reconstructions from the other guy. His description starts off with, "In one of the many YouTube interviews with Kurt Cobain from the early '90s, he mentioned quite notably that there should have been an album before Bleach," which I did not know about but is probably true.   

The track listing on the back cover says Floyd the Barber/Mexican Seafood/Paper Cuts/Spank Thru/Downer/Pen Cap Chew/Aero Zeppelin. At 7 tracks, it's obviously not enough, so we need more. Like Sheep and really Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero too, this album is centered around one recording session/demo tape, these tracks having come from the band's first studio session, which was on January 23, 1988 at Reciprocal Recording Studios in Seattle. Other tracks from that session were "Beeswax" and "Hairspray Queen" from Incesticide and "If You Must" from Disc 1 of the With the Lights Out box set. This is not to be confused with the concert that same day.

It's still not enough tracks though. We need things from With the Lights Out. "Blandest" was from later that year and "Mrs. Butterworth" from 1987 would increase the album's length. I renamed "Mrs. Butterworth" "'New Union", since it was only given that name just so it could have a name just so that it could be officially released, and "If You Must" "'If You Want'", since that's what Kurt sings and that's what the lyrics say. Interestingly, a lot of these song titles are not sung in the lyrics of their song, so I don't know where these titles came from or why they are what they are. Although I did find this on Wikipedia. In one of his first interviews, Cobain told journalist John Robb, "When I write a song, the lyrics are the least important thing. I can go through two or three different subjects in a song and the title can mean absolutely nothing at all."

This is also coming from the liner notes of WTLO: "'Blandest' didn't come out very well and they opted to re-record it at a later time because the song was just not ready yet. They instructed me to record over this version which we did. I never even kept a cassette of it myself so the bootleg copies of it that exist must have come from band members' rough mix cassettes, perhaps stolen ones. When they were planning Incesticide, Krist called me up and wanted to know if I remembered "Blandest" and if there was a tape of it anywhere; I told him no, you guys told me to erase it! Imagine how spooked I was when I later heard it on a bootleg... tenth-generation cassette tape hiss, horrible fried 3 A.M. rough mix and all..." So then the version we have is the only version that exists, in case you wanted a better one. The fact that it WAS gonna be on Incesticide is only more reason why we should include it here.

Now for the track listing. Incesticide goes Beeswax/Downer/Mexican Seafood/Hairspray Queen/Aero Zeppelin. I could put those together, but I wonder which track would be the best opener. "Downer" begins with not only bass, but a countoff on the sticks before it too. "Aero Zeppelin" also has a stick countoff intro, and I think it's weird to have more than one when only the one would be necessary, so that intro, as well as the one for "Spank Thru", is gonna be edited and cut shorter. "Downer" ends on a note, "Mexican Seafood" ends on a stick click, and "Pen Cap Chew" begins with a stick countoff with some guitar in it (forcing the intro to be uneditable) and ends on a fade out, but only kind of, creating an almost end to the medley but still going into "Beeswax", which ends on a bass note and continues "Hairspray Queen"'s melody and then finally fades out, making them coincidentally transition well into a smooth, flowing medley. From there, the medley just kinda ends, but the side doesn't, so we need some other songs: "Floyd the Barber" and "New Union". A better sound quality version of "Mrs. Butterworth" has been released since January 2015, but it's longer than the WTLO version, and considering the fact that side 2 is already longer than side 1, I would rather not include it.

The first sound you hear on "Blandest" sounds like a switch being flipped, like this side of the album, which you had to flip to listen to, is being turned on. The ending note gets combined with "Spank Thru", whose ending note gets combined with "Aero Zeppelin", whose ending notes gets combined with "If You Want", From there, the medley just kinda ends, but the side doesn't, so we need another song: "Paper Cuts". It's a shorter medley but still as unintentional. The cover art was based on the "Love Buzz" single from 1988, although Chad Channing is on the cover when Dale Crover played on the demo. 

If Bleach was recorded from December 1988 to January 1989 but released in June, and this was recorded from January to September 1988, then I would say that this would've been released the same time Nirvana was recording Bleach, or maybe even after! It wouldn't chart high much though; "Mrs. Butterworth" was obviously never played live, "Blandest" was only played live once, and only one song out of these tracks has been played more than 100 times live: "Spank Thru". Hell, only "Spank Thru" and "Mexican Seafood" have been played more than 10 times, and "Mexican Seafood" was only played 11 times. In comparison, "Polly", "Breed", and "About a Girl" have all been played over 200 times. But maybe the only reason why these songs weren't played live that often was because they were unreleased. This isn't saying that releasing these songs would increase their popularity though. Or maybe it's because by the time Bleach came out, they dropped most of these songs from their repertoire. "Blandest" had its only appearance a month after Bleach came out though. If "Spank Thru" WAS released as a single, I think "Clean Up Before She Comes" from 1987 would have been a good B-side. Definitely a better song than "Don't Want it All". Maybe even "Bambi Slaughter", also originating from 1985. "Downer" actually originated from 1985 too. All three songs have also never been played live. Only three real songs seem to have never been played live: "Big Long Now" from Incesticide and two In Utero-era B-sides: "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" and "Moist Vagina" (if you don't count the 2014 reunion concert performance).