Before I became GO! Magazine’s nerdy, nebbish, neighborhood music reporter, I was a nerdy, nebbish, scared-of-his-own shadow preteen growing up in Okinawa, Japan.

My mom had just given me a stereo for Christmas (either my 11th or 12th, I don’t remember), and I bought some of my first CDs: I remember wearing out a CD of Third Eye Blind’s eponymous first album. Cool rock ’n’ roll guy I was not.

Third Eye Blind’s pseudo post-punk-isms awakened a yearning in me for something … louder. Distorted. Ear-bleeding. Third Eye Blind was fine, but not the gut-punch I sought. Green Day got closer, Metallica even more so. But something was still missing.

Every morning I’d show up to school about an hour before everyone else. (My mom was a single working parent, and we lived off-base and off the school’s bus route at the time.) One day, wandering the empty halls in sheer boredom, I stumbled across two of my classmates. One had an electric guitar with a small amp plugged into the wall; the other played an acoustic.

I became their annoying, silent shadow, hanging out and soaking up riffs every morning before school started. I don’t remember much of what they played, but I do remember one riff. A searing, four-chord chug that grabbed me by the throat and the heart, and has seemingly not let go since.

“Dun-da-dun, chicka-chicka dun-dun-da dun-da-dun, chicka-chicka dun-dun.”

This was my first exposure to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the lead track and single off the band’s influential album, “Nevermind.” This was around 1998 or 1999, and I was certainly a sheltered kid to grow up through most of the ’90s and have no idea what that song was.

I still wouldn’t know the band or the title of the song until some months later, when I borrowed Nirvana’s 1996 live compilation, “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah,” from my best friend to this day, Stephen Nycek. There was the riff, kicking off track five on the CD. I couldn’t stop playing it.

In 2021 — the 30th anniversary of “Nevermind” — “Smells Like Teen Spirit” feels overplayed, overdone, old hat. Its riff sits alongside “Smoke on the Water,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Iron Man” and “Enter Sandman” as one of the most recognizable in rock history (and one you’re guaranteed to hear if you spend enough time in a guitar store).

But its visceral power still stands out. To 12-year-old me it felt like the start of my life, and I’m sure many rock fans who lived through the early ’90s can relate.

If that sounds hyperbolic, well, it really isn’t. Nirvana made me want to start a band. Nirvana made me sell my skateboard and buy a guitar when I reached high school.

Nirvana — and particularly interviews with frontman Kurt Cobain, which I gobbled up online, in old magazines at the library or in the numerous Nirvana-related books I bought — introduced me to the grunge scene, classic rock, punk rock, weird outsider rock. About 90% of what I listen to now can be directly or indirectly traced back to Nirvana: The Beatles, Black Flag, Black Sabbath, The Knack, Daniel Johnston, Shonen Knife, The Ramones … the list goes on and on and on.

Cobain also didn’t shy away from sharing his opinions in these interviews, especially when it came to his feminism, anti-racism and support for the LGBTQ community. I already had a sense of what’s right and what’s fair and what’s equitable, but reading it coming from my biggest musical hero proved influential to my own world view.

My obsession with reading about all things Nirvana made me want to write about music. I’d always had an interest in language, but now I had a purpose and a reason to write beyond my own narrow experiences.

Nirvana will always be my favorite band (well, alongside The Beatles). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to their records, official and unofficial, or how many copies I’ve owned of each. Each time I listen, I discover something new. (On a recent walk relistening to “Nevermind,” I heard Cobain tapping on his acoustic guitar to keep rhythm during the pauses in “Polly.” I had never noticed it in more than 20 years of listening .) At one point I had a different Nirvana T-shirt for every day of the week with plenty to spare.

“Nevermind” turns 30 in September. Drummer Dave Grohl, now leader of the Foo Fighters, told NME in February that he hasn’t discussed plans with bassist Krist Novoselic for a celebration or reissue, yet. The album did receive a massive reissue campaign in 2011 for the 20th anniversary.

The album and band’s influence on music today cannot be overstated — radio and the music industry recognized an entire genre of music, alternative rock, in large part thanks to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” becoming a left-field hit.

I could go on about that, but so have many others. I wanted to share how much Nirvana meant, and still means, to me. Thanks Kurt, Krist, Dave and Pat Smear — life wouldn’t be the same without you.