San Antonio has demonstrated that it has one or two radio stations that redeem all the other garbage on the airwaves. KSYM 90.1, run by San Antonio College, is one of these. I caught Brian Parish’s show this evening and was pleased and shocked to hear a song I have heard a zillion times before, but never in its original form.
On 1992’s Incesticide, Nirvana include two cover songs originally written by The Vaselines, one of which is called Son of a Gun. Everything about it is simple. Simple chord changes, simple rhythm, simple structure, simple lyrics. What all this simplicity adds up to is an innocent, poppy, and harmless song that sticks in your head. It makes very obvious Nirvana penchant for pop.
Until today, I had never heard the original version of the song. But now I can say that I am amazed at how Kurt Cobain was able to envision that song as something Nirvana could cover; it sounds like nothing of the sort. It is completely devoid of any of the intensity Nirvana is known for. It’s just a simple pop song with fluffy melodies and a drum beat so basic I could hardly tell it was there. The choruses were sung by a female; the verses by a male (think ABBA). It was friendly and inoffensive and good-natured, none of which one would generally associate with Nirvana songs.
How Kurt was able to visualize it as a Nirvana song is beyond me, but he made it work. The cover version exposes Nirvana's friendlier and poppier side evident in songs like About A Girl and On A Plain. It's easy to see now how Kurt and company got the pop so worked into their systems.
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