An old friend of Kurt Cobain's recently posted audio from some early Nirvana demo tapes Cobain himself gave away in the late-'80s when the legendary grunge band was just beginning to find itself.
Of the first tape (likely from 1988), the friend, John Purkey, writes that it features Melvins drummer Dale Crover, a friend who did stints with Nirvana in '88 and then again in '90 when the band was without full-time drummers.
"Sound quality is not perfect but it's not too band," Purkey writes in the description of tape 1. "...And that is exactly how it was when Kurt gave it to me."
The sound quality of the tapes is pretty remarkable.
While it's certainly nowhere near the quality of the band's studio albums, it's also definitely not the one-mic-in-a-room-type job, you'd expect from a punk band in the late-'80s.
You can clearly hear bass, drums, guitar and Cobain's vocals as the band tears through the tunes that would eventually appear on its 1989 debut album, Bleach.
The second tape Purkey says is a copy of the original, which was a bit of good fortune since the original tape was stolen out of a car (with its stereo).
The third tape is reportedly from after Nirvana recorded Bleach, and presumably with Bleach-era drummer Chad Channing.
The fourth tape, from 1990, includes "NEW SONGS" written on the label. It includes songs like "Polly," "Lithium," "Sappy" and "In Bloom," which made up Nirvana's seminal Nevermind album, and are still played on the radio nowadays.
"[The songs] just absolutely blew my mind," Purkey says in his intro.
Purkey says all the tapes he has are all from between 1988 and 1990. They total about two hours of material few fans have ever heard.
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