1. Nirvana
Unless you were on Sub Pop's mailing list in the late '80s, chances are that you weren't listening to Nirvana at the time. Their big breakthrough was still to come. Well, it just so happened that John Peel was on Sub Pop's mailing list, and he was listening to Nirvana a couple of years before you saw the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on MTV and stopped cutting your hair for five months.
The band recorded the first of its three Peel Sessions on Oct. 26, 1989. The setlist for that initial session included "Love Buzz," "About a Girl," "Polly" and "Spanx Thru." The recording sounded great, but the group hadn't quite perfected the sound that would launch one billion mosh pits in '91 yet. Of course, it wouldn't have sounded like anything if John Peel hadn't caught on to Nirvana immediately, because no recordings of the kind would even exist from that period of the band's history.
