Earliest Recordings

The earliest recording of Kurt's that we know of is the Organized Confusion demo done in 1982. Kurt's aunt Mary Fradenburg remembers that Kurt banged on an empty suitcase as percussion. When she offered to lend him her drum machine he said No thanks. There is a tape circulating in bootleg form, which was believed to be the Fecal Matter demo, but now some people are suggesting that it is the Organized Confusion demo. This is what a person stated about the circulating tape on the alt.music.nirvana discussion group:

I am stating my opinion here about the validity of the "Fecal Matter" tape, because I am an experienced musician and recording engineer. There seems to be a lot of mystery involving this tape, and a lot of conflicting opinions. I am going to try and make things easier to understand and more sensible for those who still have questions or the wrong opinions about this tape.

First off, I am not going to argue whether or not the fake FM is really Kurt. I think it sounds like Kurt. Krist Novoselic says that it is Kurt but it's not the real Fecal Matter. So, with that said, here are the reasons why it is obviously not the real Fecal Matter...

The REAL "Fecal Matter" was recorded by Kurt and Dale Crover on a 4-track reel-to-reel at Aunt Mary's house in December 1985. Reel-to-reel 4-tracks in the 1980's had exceptionally good sound quality and Kurt used the real Fecal Matter demo to shop around for a band. The real FM is said to have consisted of vocals, guitars, and percussion backdrops. The guitars were recorded directly into the 4-track. Usually with a 4-track, every instrument is recorded separately. Also, Kurt probably would have mixed the real FM demo to STEREO.

Let's face it, the FAKE "Fecal Matter" sounds like horrible shit, and it is dual-speaker MONO, indicating a single microphone recording. It has no percussion. It sounds like Kurt is playing and singing simultaneously, along with a guest bass player. An analysis of sound positioning on the tape would indicate that the fake FM was recorded into a BOOMBOX built-in condenser mic. The guitars certainly were not recorded by a direct input. The guitars and bass were coming from amplifiers near the boombox, and Kurt screamed his vocals into the condenser mic, which causes obvious dropouts in sound when Kurt screamed too loud or the guitars chunked too loud. Only a boombox condenser mic, and not a 4-track, commonly causes such an effect, which is a built-in feature of condenser mics. When something really loud interferes with the mic, to prevent distortion it pulls the recording level way back. Try it yourself if you have a boombox with a built-in mic. Put in a cassette and hit record, then hum out loud. While you are humming clap loudly near the microphone, but keep humming. Play the tape back. You will hear the same dropout effect that you hear in parts of the fake Fecal Matter tape. This effect is sometimes referred to as "Automatic Recording Level Control".

Also, it should be noted that a boombox is the cheapest and most commonly used form of amateur demo recording.

It is also highly unlikely that the fake FM was recorded on a "karaoke machine". They have external stereo microphones that you plug in. If you used only one microphone it would only appear in one speaker. The pure dual-speaker MONO layout of the fake FM completely disproves this. Some karaoke machines do use a single microphone, but these mics are usually not able to pick up all instruments in a room like a boombox condenser mic does. These mics could only pick up each instrument well by way of multi-tracking, which cannot be done with a karaoke machine. To assume that this demo was made on a karaoke machine is quite a strange assumption. Is this something that someone made up or is there an actual fact that sparked this theory? I think the karaoke rumour was made up by someone who is not familiar with recording techniques, and probably assumed that a karaoke machine is the only demo-recording alternative to a 4-track, which is wrong......

Take my word for it. It is OBVIOUS to my experienced ear, that this tape was recorded on a BOOMBOX, probably sometime in 1985. Therefore, this demo should be re-named "Boombox Demo 1985". People have been calling it "Fecal Matter" and "Karaoke demo" for way too long and those curious assumptions need to be overturned.

Thanks.

JWB

Well, the OC demo might very well have been recorded on a boombox, but what I'm concerned about is the setlist. The Fecal Matter demo features these songs:

'Suicide Samurai' was long thougt to be 'Anorexorcist'. It appears on the circulating tape, on 4/17/87 and on the 1/23/88 performance. For now this song is called 'Anorexorcist', and 'Suicide Samurai' has never been heard...but why would it appear on the circulating tape, which hasn't got 'Anorexorcist' listed? Well, if it's the OC demo it might be real. But there is another problem. Both the FM demo and the circulating tape has an instrumental version of 'Downer' on the setlist. If this tape isn't the FM demo, like the person calling himself JWB says, would it be on the OC demo? Would Kurt do an instrumental song in '82 and then do the same song again instrumentally three years later? This means the circulating tape could be fake (which many thinks, btw). Also, would Kurt keep a weird song like 'Buffy's Pregnant' for three years? Or was the circulating version made up by someone who had read about the FM demo and wanted to play us all a fat joke? 'Spank Thru' was the first Nirvana song, says Krist in the Wishkah's liner notes. It appears here, with pretty much the same lyrics as the Bleach-era version. Would Kurt figured a song like this out in 1982 and not change it the slightest in 6 years? Here are some sound samples from the circulating tape, all in RA format:

Buffy's Pregnant
Spank Thru
Downer
Anorexorcist

I'd say that Anorexorcist and Spank Thru are the most organized songs on this tape, the other ones just sounds like meaningless noise and ad-lib screams to me.

Another version of 'Bambi Slaughter' showed up in a more professional way, recordingwise, done during Kurt's 87/88 4-track demos. 7 songs have been found from that demo:

These songs weren't as amateurlike as the FM demo, but most of them were still not good enough to be put on record. 'Bambi Kill' (which is very much alike the FM version, only this only has an un-plugged bass playing) and 'Clean up before she comes' were the best songs off this demo. The latter has some cool 4-track effects, where Kurt uses dual layers to get two mixes of his voice on each other. Black and White Blues is really just a bootlegger name; it's Kurt doing a 2-minute folk jam on an acoustic guitar. He does the same jam on 2/14/90. Beans is weird, cause Kurt has the pitch on highest level on the 4-track, making the funny sounds. He had also inhailed helium, causing the girl-like voice. For some reason, this demo is called 'The Barnyard demo'. I don't know the cause for that name. Here are some sound samples:

Black & White Blues
Bambi Kill
Clean up before she comes

That's most of the early recordings available before the EdTedFred demo, which is the next category.

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One baby to another said...