The Bleach Sessions
The first studio session after the Dale Crover Demo was on July 11th '88, and the next one on July 30th. These two sessions yielded 'Love Buzz', 'Big Cheese', 'Spank Thru', 'Blandest' and 'Buzz Cut'. Two further sessions, 7/26 and 9/27 were used to do a proper vocal mix for 'Love Buzz'. It ended up, along with 'Big Cheese', on Bleach. This version of 'Spank Thru' can be found on the Sub Pop 200 compilation. 'Buzz Cut' is a noise collage which was originally planned as the intro for 'Love Buzz', but it was scrapped. The 'Love Buzz' 45 had a 10 second intro taken from Kurt's sound collage 'Montage of Heck', recorded that spring. The only left-over from this session was 'Blandest', which is a really good song, but Kurt didn't like the way it was recorded. He wanted to attempt it at another session, but never got around to do it. He told Jack Endino to erase the tape, and he did so. He erased his tape, but the band had the original tape, and it's from that tape the versions of 'Blandest' available on bootleg discs comes. When Incesticide was in the works, Krist called Jack up and asked him if he remembered 'Blandest', and if he had the tape. Jack said "No, you guys told me to erase the tape". Blandest was originally planned to be the b-side for the Love Buzz single, but instead they used Big Cheese. Here are some sound samples from the June/July sessions:
Blandest
Love Buzz With original intro
Buzz Cut
From December 24 to 31 1988 the rest of the Bleach songs were finished and recorded. They tried out a version of Floyd the Barber with Chad on drums, but thougt the version with Dale was better. They also added some background vocals to Paper Cuts. On December 24 the band came into the studio and said "We'd like to do some experiments." They recorded three songs, 'Blew', 'Mr. Moustache' and 'Sifting' in drop D tuning, the latter also having a wah solo but lacking vocals. The vocals for Blew and Mr. Moustache were also unfinished.
Now, as the recording of Bleach was through, the band started planning for what would be their second Sub Pop album.