the nirvana heart shaped box

I like to collect junk. I make no excuses about it. I have tried to cut back in recent years after realizing I have a closet full of just empty boxes for items I may or may not even still own. Despite this, I am still drawn to any pile marked “Free” whether it is on the street or at a conference table at work. For once in a long time, it actually may have paid off. At my current place of employment (in the advertising field) they are doing a shift of floors to accommodate some construction going on. The people up top now have to roam among the trolls like myself who work a few floors down. To make sure everyone was happy, they shifted people around into different rooms to facilitate the teams that exist a few floors up.

One of the groups that exist on our floor that had to be moved from one end to another was the music licensing department. You know that song that you can’t get out of your head that you picked up from a commercial for a travel website or a car you probably can’t afford, that is music licensing. They would go through stacks of music to find the right song or work out the licensing for a track that a director just HAD to have. At least that is how it used to be. With the advent of digital music libraries, gone are the days of sifting through CD’s and skipping track to track. Now it is all about search terms hitting the right metadata to find a song that fits the bill. With the music licensing department being moved, it seemed like a perfect time for them to unload all of the CD’s that have been just taking up space. Over the course of a week there would be a good 300 CD’s to sift through and take gratis. I got in on it early in the week and came out with some true classics from artists like MC Hammer to somewhat recently released music. I checked every day for any new additions. The selection got a little drab by the end of the week, but on Friday there was heart shaped box that caught my eye. I didn’t even think anything was in it and just grabbed it for the cool wooden box with the Nirvana logo.

Once I got back to my desk and opened it, I knew I would have to start finding out more.

In 2007, Courtney Love signed away between 25 and 50 percent of Kurt Cobain’s back catalog to Primary Wave Publishing for a potentially large sum of money. This also includes the complete Nirvana back catalog as well. In order to both celebrate the catalog acquisition and tell agencies and production houses that they were open to licensing, they produced a very well thought out box set. They only made 500 individually numbered box sets which makes it a bit of a collectors item, especially when it’s a complete. The one I acquired was an upper number, but it’s in pristine condition. I don’t think it was ever opened other than to see if any money was shoved into the box. The official name for the box set is “The Songs Of Kurt Cobain.”

The box itself is made of nice stained wood that is also conveniently heart shaped. On the top is the Nirvana logo of the smiley face with the squiggle mouth etched in and on the back is the number of the box out of 500 etched into the back. The condition is overall solid and the worn out appearance appears to be deliberate.

Upon opening the box a music box like jingle of Heart Shaped Box’s main chorus is played as seen in the video below. It looks to have a light sensor on the top to detect it opening so once you put the lid back on it plays the next time you open it. The music doesn’t stop when you put the lid back on though so plan to hear the whole thing. The box itself is lined in a blue and green flannel, summing up the grunge era of fashion minus the chain wallets. Loose in the box is a “certificate” (a business card more or less) that has the box’s number on it and the rest of the content (aka the real meat and potatoes) is on the spindle in the middle.

The five discs in the box are all numbered and have the track listings on them. Before the discs there is a paper tri-fold insert that has some corporate talk, a note written by Kurt Cobain at some point in his life and some pictures. The first three discs contain a number of recognizable and unrecognizable songs from Nirvana’s album catalog. I don’t claim to be a complete Nirvana expert, but I do know there are songs from Bleach, Nevermind, Incesticide, In Utero and Unplugged in New York on these three discs. The complete track listing for these discs is as follows:

Disc 1

1. Smells Like Teen Spirt
2. In Bloom
3. Come As You Are
4. Breed
5. Lithium
6. On A Plain
7. Pennyroyal Tea
8. Heart Shaped Box
9. About A Girl
10. Polly
11. Something in the Way
12. Dumb
13. All Apologies
14. You Know You’re Right
15. Something In The Way (Unplugged Version)
16. Pennyroyal Yea (Unplugged Version)

Disc 2

1. Blew
2. Floyd The Barber
3. School
4. Mr. Moustache
5. Negative Creep
6. Dive
7. Sliver
8. Been A Son
9. (New Wave) Polly
10. Territorial Pissings
11. Drain You
12. Lounge Act
13. Stay Away
14. Serve The Servants
15. Sappy

Disc 3

1. Swap Meet
2. Downer
3. Aero Zeppelin
4. Big Long Now
5. Aneurysm
6. Scentless Apprentice
7. Rape Me
8. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge
9. Very Ape
10. Milk It
11. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
12. Tourettes
13. Come As You Are (Unplugged Version)
14. Dumb (Unplugged Version)

The fourth disc contains cover versions of popular Nirvana songs from such industry chiefs as Paul Anka, Patti Smith, Herbie Hancock and many others. The track listing for the fourth disc is:

Disc 4

1. The Polyphonic Spree – Lithium
2. Paul Anka – Smells Like Teen Spirit
3. Suala – Smells Like Teen Spirit
4. Tori Amos – Smells Like Teen Spirit
5. Patti Smith – Smells Like Teen Spirit
6. Morel & Desmond Williams – Smells Like Teen Spirit
7. Charlie Hunter Trio – Come As You Are
8. Steve Earle – Breed
9. Herbie Hancock – All Apologies
10. Sinéad O’Connor – All Apologies
11. Stereophonics – Something In The Way

And finally on the fifth disc, we are treated to Lullaby and String Instrument versions of some hits. The lullabies are most likely from the full album of lullabies they put out and I am not sure about the string instrumental versions. The full track listing for the disc is:

Disc 5

1. Lullaby – Come As You Are
2. Lullaby – In Bloom
3. Lullaby – Lithium
4. Lullaby – Something In The Way
5. Lullaby – About A Girl
6. Lullaby – Heart Shaped Box
7. Lullaby – All Apologies
8. The Tallywood Strings – Smells Like Teen Spirit
9. The Tallywood Strings – Come As You Are
10. The Tallywood Strings – In Bloom
11. The Tallywood Strings – Lounge Act
12. The Tallywood Strings – Polly
13. The Tallywood Strings – Something In The Way