The original recording of "Love Buzz" is a decent-enough song... an appropriately-buzzy, slinky, funky, psychedelic song that sounds a whole lot like Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." The translation into Nirvana's version is like a template of nearly every Cobain song: the riff gets magnified, the vocals go from quiet moaning to louder-than-human wailing. When he asks "can you feel my love buzz?" it's so menacing, you don't want to. The guitars are just this side of mindless metallic showmanship, but you'd never accuse Cobain of being Kip Winger... he plays it good and sloppy because that serves the song way better, until he smashes it, then picks it back up and makes it wail for mercy. There's not a lot of love in the Cobain songbook. Maybe he covered songs like these because he just didn't see himself having much to say on the matter.
They released the Live at Reading CD/DVD in 2009, and it's one of the few non-Aerosmith live albums I've got. If you're a fan of the band and you don't have it, there's something wrong with you. Sadly, this track is the one they left out of the CD.
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