NIRVANA Songlife 1967-72 MADFISH

IDEAS forever above their station, baroque two-piece Nirvana were thrown to the wolves somewhat in 1967 when they were billed to play an Island Records showcase at London’s Saville Theatre. With the stage still half set for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (featuring Cleo Laine and Bernard Breslaw), and the audience eagerly awaiting new rock sensations Traffic, Patrick Campbell-Lyons, Alex Spyropoulos and their mini-orchestra were barely audible. “We had only had three rehearsals,” Campbell-Lyons recalls ruefully in the sleevenotes to this remastered vinyl collection of their five studio LPs, plus an unreleased sixth. “It was a dreadful experience.”

Wobbly-voiced aesthetesis a suitably gigantic testament to a band that – like the Zombies or Big Star – failed on the very grandest of scales.