11 Things You Definitely Don’t Know About Nirvana, You Idiot

1. Nirvana gave a famous performance on MTV’s Unplugged, but the show name was a misnomer. During the performance, speakers, cameras, lights, and various other pieces of electrically powered equipment were plugged in.

2. “Nirvana” is also a name for the highest state of self-realization in Buddhism, but Buddhism never sold 30 million copies of its major-label debut and changed the face of American radio and fashion — so, when you see someone wearing a shirt that says NIRVANA , it’s probably the band.

3. Krist Novoselic is 6’7”, and yet he never played so much as one quarter of NBA basketball. What a waste.

4. The chords to the opening riff of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are: F, B flat, G sharp, and C sharp, in case you want to play them over and over again on guitar to show potential friends and romantic partners that you can.

5. The cover art for the album Nevermind featured a baby in a swimming pool reaching for a dollar bill. Assuming typical CD prices in 1991, the baby would have to catch fifteen of those dollar bills to buy Nevermind itself. In a swimming pool? Good luck, kid!

6. Aberdeen, Washington is most famous for being the birthplace of Kurt Cobain, but is barely even famous for that.

7. Nirvana came out of Seattle, Washington — a city in which it’s frequently cloudy and raining. Seattle is also the home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team, the University of Washington, and some coffee and stuff. Really makes you think.

8. Though the classic lineup of Nirvana was Cobain, Grohl, and Novoselic, the band also had other members. For more details, check Wikipedia.

9. Want to feel old? Nirvana’s first single, a cover of Shocking Blue’s “Love Buzz,” was released 30 years ago in 1988. But want to feel young? Thirty years from now will be the thirtieth anniversary of the thirtieth anniversary of that single’s release.

10. The band’s albums have been available on compact disc, cassette, vinyl LP, MP3, and streaming. If you’ve heard the songs before, you can also think about them, sing them to yourself, whistle them… whatever you want!

11. Nirvana’s success would have been very unlikely if not for Thomas Edison’s invention of the mechanical phonograph cylinder, the first practical sound recording and reproduction device. But they didn’t so much as thank him at the MTV Video Music Awards.