Compared to, say, Tupac’s, Kurt Cobain’s posthumous discography has been relatively thin. It’s little wonder, then, that the Internet is soaking up a pre-Bleach mixtape the Nirvana frontman assembled in 1988. The eclectic mixtape innocently titled “Montage Of Heck” has been passed around among Nirvana devotees for years but is newly making the rounds online.
In addition to sounding quite similar to one of The Best Show‘s sound collages, the mixtape sounds pretty much exactly like what you’d expect from a 21-year-old Kurt Cobain. It’s self-consciously weird—the Daniel Johnston rants and kids’ record selections in particular sound like something out of a film student’s horror short—but ultimately suggestive of someone with a broad, non-judgmental love of music.
No rockist, Cobain packs the montage with everything from John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” to Sammy Davis, Jr.’s “The Candy Man” to the classic record store clerk secret weapon of a Monkees deep cut (here, “The Day We Fall in Love”). Exhaustive Nirvana fan site Live Nirvana has the full list of every song that makes an appearance. Anyone who peppers casual conversation with phrases like “a Lynchian odyssey; nay, a waking nightmare” and has more than a half-hour to spare can give the “Montage Of Heck” a listen below.
[via Dangerous Minds]