#279 Nirvana, 'MTV Unplugged in New York' (1994)
Previously #313
This album was my introduction to Nirvana. The first time I had heard of Nirvana was when Kurt Cobain died in 1994. A kid in my class was into them and I remember his telling me that Cobain had died. ‘Come As You Are’ was the first Nirvana song I had heard. The version from this record. To this day, I get chills at the dramatically ironic lyrics “And I swear that I don’t have a gun/No, I don’t have a gun.” And yes, even though I’ve heard this record hundreds of times, when I listened to that song today, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This performance is often mistakenly cited as their last ever performance. In fact, the band would play 43 more concerts following this performance, the last ever being 1 March 1994 at Terminal 1 in Munich.
At ‘MTV Unplugged’ sessions, band were expected to play their biggest hits acoustically. Nirvana preferred to stay away from the hits with Dave Grohl saying “We'd seen the other Unpluggeds and didn't like many of them, because most bands would treat them like rock shows—play their hits like it was Madison Square Garden, except with acoustic guitars.” This set was riddled with covers from artists such as Vaselines, Lead Belly, Meat Puppets and David Bowie (this album was the first time I had heard ‘The Man Who Sold The World.’ I didn’t know it was a cover until years later). The banter on the record illustrates the band’s relationship with each other, just 4 dudes hanging out and making music. Cobain tells a story about how Lead Belly’s estate wanted to sell him his guitar for $500k. He allegedly asked label head, David Geffen directly to buy it for him but he said now. Later in the set they play a haunting version of Lead Belly’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last night.’ The fact that this performance lacks the hits is the actual charm of the record. The originals that were included are just so good; ‘Something In The Way’ & ‘All Apologies’ are two of my favourite Nirvana songs. You can hear the hurt and anguish in Cobain’s voice throughout the record. He was clearly hurting. This album is both heartbreakingly sad to listen and a pleasure. Arguably the greatest live acoustic record ever released and an iconic album of the ‘90s.
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