Rocktober Deep Cut N: "Breed" by Nirvana

It's crazy to think that there was a time in the early '90s when you had to define yourself as a grunge fan or metal and/or hair band fan.  You can guess which camp I fell into.  I didn't necessarily dislike grunge, but if given the choice, I would go hair band and metal all day.  Of course, it turns out that a lot of grunge is essentially hard rock, some of which even borders on metal, so now it seems silly that society made us choose between the two.  All of this is to say that it took me a couple years before I was comfortable listening to grunge, and I found that I really liked a lot of it, including the reluctant spokesband of the genre, Nirvana.

Their record company was hoping their second album, Nevermind -- the cover of which featured someone fishing for human babies with dollars -- would sell around 250,000 copies.  It is now certified diamond, meaning it has sold over 10 million copies in the U.S. alone (and 30 million worldwide).  The singles from the album -- "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," "In Bloom," and "Lithium" –- are all great songs, but, much in the same way I think the non-singles on Appetite for Destruction make it so good, it's the non-singles on Nevermind that really make the album for me.

Of the non-singles, "Breed" –- the fourth song on the album, sandwiched between "Come As You Are" and "Lithium" –- is my favorite.  It's probably the fastest-paced song on Nevermind.  It starts off with feedback, and then bursts into a great hard rock riff, followed by machine gun drums and a driving bass line that kind of acts as the song's locomotive.  The lyrics are about some chick explaining that you don't have to breed if you don't want to, but instead, you can plant a house or build a tree.  Or you can do all three, even if the latter two are impossible without the help of hallucinogens.

I used to listen to this song before flag football games in college.  (And yes, I used to psyche myself up before intramural flag football games.  You may laugh, but did you score three touchdowns in the intramural championship game, leading your team to its first-ever all-campus title, after listening to "Breed"?  Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novselic may as well have been on the team.  Well, not Cobain, you know, because of the shotgun to the face and all a few years prior.)  "Breed" is a mainstay on my running/workout mix, and I don't foresee that ever changing.  It's one of those songs that I hope comes on when I'm about three-fourths of the way through a run and I need some extra pep to take me the distance.