9. Radiohead vs. Nirvana vs. Nirvana

	vs.		vs.
"Palo Alto" by Radiohead from Airbag/How Am I Driving?		"Heart-Shaped Box" by Nirvana from In Utero		"Sliver" by Nirvana from Incesticide

"Palo Alto" (7 plays at Last.fm, unranked): I think the listening public has largely come around to my view that The Bends is superior to OK Computer. A big part of why my opinion came out that way is the quality of the b-sides found on the Airbag EP, of which this tune is the last and best. It neatly encapsulates what made the band's 90s output so great, both musically and lyrically -- the little guitar and noise flourishes, the big crunchy chorus, the desolate and soulless future. For me, this was essentially Radiohead's high-water mark. I couldn't say yet whether it's their best song -- "Just" will provide stiff competition if it comes to that -- but it may well be.

"Heart-Shaped Box" (7 plays, unranked): Like so many Nirvana songs, it's hard for me to hear this one for just the song and not for the memory ripples it kicks off. I remember the late summer of 1993, just as I was starting college, being all about this song and its superb video. Those first few times hearing, it was face-smacking: This dry sound, this raucous mess was how they were going to follow up the bright shimmer of Nevermind. It was so much more visceral and narrow; it didn't trade in melody the same way "Teen Spirit" and the other previous singles had. Throughout the promotion and discussion of the album -- and I recall the review in Rolling Stone hitting this pretty hard -- was the awareness of a line being drawn through the band's audience, with this song on one side and about 80% of Nevermind owners on the other. Sales-wise, it didn't quite to that, but this thing that was excised from Kurt Cobain as a middle finger to the grunge industry was revelatory for me both as music and as cultural commentary. I don't think it's a coincidence that I later wound up enjoying artists like Marilyn Manson as media provocateurs as much as musicians.

"Sliver" (4 plays, unranked): The randomizer put these two Nirvana songs together in this round, and I guess it's appropriate that they be from such different eras. And how odd is that this band can be said to have eras at all, let alone these distinct ones three years apart? The sort of play-acted innocence of this song (and the use of Frances Bean Cobain as a prop in the video) is typical of a lot of the band's early recordings ("School," for instance), but this one has such great pop energy that you can't help but be taken by it. Of all the songs that I'll never get to see performed live, this one might be the most disappointing. It's such a perfect two-minute bounce for a small club full of kids looking to dance off a buzz.

VERDICT: I vary from match-up to match-up on how to weigh my historical feelings about older songs, and this time I think my history puts "Heart-Shaped Box" over "Palo Alto" by a nose.

1. Blink-182 vs. Nirvana vs. Splashdown

	vs.		vs.
"Adam's Song" by Blink-182 from Enema of the State		"Pennyroyal Tea" by Nirvana from MTV Unplugged in New York		"Mayan Pilot" by Splashdown from Redshift

"Adam's Song" (1 play at Last.fm, unranked): When I first heard this song I knew Blink-182 for "Josie" and "What's My Age Again?," which are both enjoyable but completely by-the-numbers examples of the skate-punk that dominated early Warped tours. This was before it came out as a single and I was really surprised by both the musical and lyrical depth of the song (which were pretty obviously revamped for "Stay Together For the Kids" on their next album). It's a rare example of an explicitly post-teen angst narrative in a teenagers' genre and it paints a really effective picture by focusing on the space around the narrator and the hole that he leaves. Musically, it foreshadows a lot of what they would do on their self-titled break-up album, with more layering and piano, less chk-chk-chk-chk pop-punk.

"Pennyroyal Tea" (6 plays, unranked): I imagine that there is a substantial group of people like me, who get a bit of a chill hearing Kurt Cobain ask his bandmates, "Am I going to do this by myself?" before launching into his solo version of "Pennyroyal Tea" on Unplugged. It's such an anomaly in the set -- of 14 songs, six are covers and three are quiet Nirvana songs. There are no other songs whose studio versions carry the menace and noise of this one, particularly in the super-secret Steve Albini mix. That Kurt screws up his last run through the chorus makes it even a little bit better -- it caps the stand-out track from maybe the definitive Nirvana document; just as it's done, Dave Grohl compliments him, and Kurt tells him to shut up.

"Mayan Pilot" (8 plays, tied for #395): When I discovered Splashdown in 2000 it was a revelation of what the Internet could do for a music obsessive like myself. Here was an excellent band producing a sound that seemed difficult to market in the late 90's and getting screwed by their major label deal. It seemed at the time that I was discovering great new bands every week, but Splashdown were one of the few that stuck, and a big part of it was this funky but light track built on the sweet vocals of singer Melissa Kaplan. Their whole catalog is full of solid pop songwriting and creativity, but this is the tune that's consistently gotten lodged in my head over the past eight years.

VERDICT: Not a close call, really. I liked "Pennyroyal Tea" a lot when I first heard it on In Utero, but the details of the Unplugged performance have been seared into my brain for nearly 15 years. As much as I love the music itself, it's really the significance of it to my cultural upbringing that makes it so tough to beat it in the first round.