Laundry Room Studio
Earlier in 1992 Dave Grohl was joined by his sister Lisa and Mikey Dees to lay down some of his demo tracks, the one-time band dubbed 'Allister Lob'. Later in the year Dave heads back into the studio to add vocals to the tracks and in turn, give them some titles.
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The second half of 1992 saw Nirvana continue their meteoric rise to fame with tour dates across the world, including a now-iconic headline appearance at the Reading Festival in England. The final tour date of the year came on October 30th with another now well-known mischievous performance in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Exhausted, the band returned home for a much-needed break, but Dave Grohl wasted no time heading down to the basement with Barrett Jones to crack on with more of his songs.
On this occasion rather than starting entirely from scratch with new songs he instead primarily spent his time going back over the instrumental tracks recorded earlier in the year as Allister Lobb. Vocals were recorded for all five songs first put to tape in April and with these, the tracks were given their final titles - ‘Podunk’, ‘Let’s Make A Bet’, ‘Alex's Pizza’, ‘How I Miss You’ and ‘Watered It Down’.
Whilst the lyrics recorded for the these five tracks were mostly a serious effort, towards the end of ‘Watered It Down’ Grohl switched delivery to imitate the style of B-52s singer Fred Schneider, something he would do on a few later occasions, evidently not something he ever expected anyone else to hear.
The five tracks from April 1992 were book-ended on the November reel by two new songs, entitled ‘Pretty Girl’ and ‘Slacker’s Password’. Whilst little is known about the former, the latter was featured in an out-take video initially recorded for the 2015 documentary series ‘Sonic Highways’. In the clip, Grohl and Jones are seen listening to both ‘Watered It Down’ and ‘Slackers Password’, with Grohl showing embarrassment for the former and not even remembering the latter, initially.
The only song released in full from the combined results of these two sessions was ‘How I Miss You’, included on the Foo Fighters single ‘I’ll Stick Around’ in 1995. Whilst the instrumental versions of the five songs recorded in April do circulate, only the aforementioned clips aired during the Sonic Highways documentary exist for the versions with added vocals.