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It’s ironic that neither the original 1960s Nirvana nor their more successful 90s namesakes found the elevated happiness alluded to in their shared moniker.
The difference is that the earlier band, formed on London’s Denmark Street by Irishman Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Athens-born Alex Spyropoulos, didn’t achieve their ambition of being huge.
The 12-disc collection The Show Must Go On brings their entire back catalogue – eight studio albums plus bonus discs of unreleased material – together for the first time. Anyone encountering them afresh may wonder how success largely eluded them.
The duo were arguably ahead of their time by making use of classical instruments in their default sound. While The Beatles had unleashed string ensembles on Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby, Nirvana’s six-piece live formation seemed to confuse soundmen on the workaday gig circuit.
Moreover, their 1967 debut album, The Story Of Simon Simopath (included here in stereo and mono versions) left the record-buying public bemused, even with songs as strong as Wings Of Love, which sounds positively McCartneyesque in retrospect.
Their follow-up, All Of Us, was similarly greeted with deafening indifference in the UK – although dreamy, psychedelic single Rainbow Chaser took them to No.1 in Denmark.
Frustration at being overlooked saw Spyropoulos depart, before the group deviated from well-structured four-minute pop songs for 1971’s Local Anaesthetic. Lead track Modus Operandi is 15 minutes long, with forays into free jazz, country blues and sporadic moments of electronics and pastoral flute. It’s an enjoyable, if directionless mess.
Naturally, the band reformed when attention unexpectedly came their way in the 1990s. Nothing they subsequently released hits the heights of their 60s heyday – though their cover of the other Nirvana’s Lithium is an intriguing curio that’s worth seeking out.
The Show Must Go On is available now via Madfish.
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