Nirvana Song Featured In Baseball Video Game And Commercial

02/23/07 7:30pm

by Natalia Manzocco (CHARTattack)

Game developer 2K Sports has included Nirvana's "Breed" on the soundtrack of its Major League Baseball 2K7 video game.

The Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 game, which hits stores on Feb. 27, will also feature cuts from The Stooges, The Pixies, Wolfmother, Death From Above 1979, Cities In Dust, Editors and others.

The company will also use "Breed" in a commercial for the game, making it the first-ever Nirvana track licensed for advertising purposes.

Courtney Love, the wife of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain (who would have turned 40 on Tuesday if he hadn't committed suicide in 1994), sold 25 per cent of her huge majority share of Nirvana's publishing catalogue last year to Lawrence Mestel of Primary Wave Music Publishing to try and create more value for it.

In an interview with Forbes magazine last October, Mestel said that the company would consider licensing Cobain's compositions to advertisers "if the right partners [were to] emerge.

"You will never see Kurt Cobain's music in a fast-food hamburger advertisement — that won't ever happen. We're looking at things that relate to cutting-edge technologies, products that are green and eco-friendly, products that Kurt would have liked to have his music represented by."

The jury's still out on Cobain's penchant for gaming and/or baseball, though a quick trip to Wikipedia reveals that he apparently hated "America's favourite pastime" as a kid. Nirvana fans, meanwhile, have yet to witness 2K's handling of their hero's work. The ad featuring "Breed" hasn't yet hit the internet. The two trailers currently on the 2K Sports site feature The Walkmen's "The Rat" and Les Savy Fav's "Hold On To Your Genre," both of which are also on the game's soundtrack. All of the songs on the soundtrack are streaming on the site.

Last year's MLB 2K6 game featured a Matador Records-saturated soundtrack. The developers then tapped 12 Sub Pop acts for the recently released NHL 2K7. Among them were The Thermals, whose "A Passing Feeling" will be included on MLB 2K7.

Tapes 'N Tapes and Harlem Shakes will take part in a 2K-sponsored North American tour this spring where attendees can play MLB 2K7 and have a chance to win prizes. Vancouver's Ladyhawk will be added for these Canadian dates:
May 6 Vancouver, BC @ Plaza Club
May 14 Ottawa, ON @ Barrymore's
May 15 Montreal, QC @ Le National
May 16 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace

Here are the tracks on MLB 2K7 in alphabetical order:
311 — "Down"
Bishop Allen — "Middle Management"
Cities In Dust — "Emergency"
Death From Above 1979 — "Little Girl"
Dixie Witch — "Set The Speed"
Editors — "Munich"
Five Horse Johnson — "I Can't Shake It"
Greatdayforup — "Man's Ruin"
The Jealous Sound — "Naive"
Les Savy Fav — "Hold On To Your Genre"
The M's — "Plan Of The Man"
Nerf Herder — "High Five Anxiety"
Nirvana — "Breed"
The Pixies — "Mr. Grieves"
The Specials — "A Message To You, Rudy"
The Stooges — "I Feel Alright"
Sublime — "Summertime"
Tapes 'N Tapes — "Insistor"
The Thermals — "A Passing Feeling"
The Walkmen — "The Rat"
Wolfmother — "Woman"