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Nirvana mtv unplugged full12/2/2023 ![]() His rebellion was not without purpose.Ĭharles R. It is hard to imagine “Come As You Are” without that watery effect, or “The Man Who Sold the World” without the buzz on that guitar line. One of the best unspoken transgressions about MTV Unplugged in New York is that not everything was actually unplugged, but it is always done for the music’s benefit. Cobain’s contrarian rule-skirting then comes to the fore on “Come As You Are” when it becomes clear the guitar is amplified. That’s clear from the decision to start with “About a Girl,” which in the pre- Bleach days had been the first sign that Nirvana were destined to be more than Melvins acolytes. Many of Cobain’s phases, tastes, and contradictions are captured here, to the point where it serves as its own kind of curriculum vitae. In the way the set unfolds, it feels as if Cobain had somehow planned as much for this single night’s role in the afterlife of Nirvana. The performance had been recorded nearly a full year prior and had already been aired plenty on MTV, but with an album release it could rightfully take its place in the band’s relatively small but already legendary catalog. The cynical alt-rocker back then (of which there were many, given it was the mid-‘90s) might have said that of course the label needed something out in time for holiday sales, but when you look back at Cobain’s exit from -and the transitional state of -the rock music world in 1994, that year practically demanded a Nirvana capstone. Given the album’s role in the band’s legacy, it is hard to imagine that this had not been the plan all along. Effectively what could have been the first half of that rumored-but-never-released compilation eventually morphed into the live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah a couple years later, while Unplugged was given its own stand-alone release that November. ![]() At one point early on, word was that it would be some kind of double album, and the MTV Unplugged performance would only be part or half of it. In the fall of 1994, after the shock and grief among fans, fellow artists, and the music media over the death of Kurt Cobain had settled, news about plans for the first posthumous Nirvana release started to trickle out. ![]()
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