Most people don’t own it” (while “Girl” was from their pre- Nevermind debut, Bleach, it later charted as an MTV Unplugged single). For instance, some of the irony has been lost from his opening line before “About A Girl”, “This is off our first record. And much of the power and tragedy of Cobain’s voice is already well known to the viewer. There’s no longer a great surprise at Nirvana so successfully translating into acoustic, or a curiosity at their diverse choice of covers. Of course, the success of the MTV Unplugged: Nirvana record means, to the ear at least, much of the DVD is very familiar. All of that, combined with knowing it all from the album, makes the performance an entity, in and of itself. And picked more for how they would play unplugged (i.e., “Smells Like Teen Spirit” probably wouldn’t have worked acoustic…), they still fit together.
However, that meant that the songs on Unplugged in New York have a life of their own, separate from deliveries on album or by their original bands. Now finally available on DVD, in its entirety, the live concert still stands up strong.Įven before the recording began, the set was sure to be something unusual, as not only was the hard-rocking grunge band going acoustic, but they’d devised a set-list almost completely devoid of ‘big hits’ – and almost half of the songs were covers. It’s release on CD the following year debuted at #1 and won a Grammy.
Recorded just four months before Kurt Cobain’s death, the live performance has long been thought of as a tragic, moving swan song to one of the most famous and influential bands in rock ‘n’ roll. Fourteen years later, Nirvana’s seminal MTV Unplugged performance is as powerful as you remember in its first DVD release.
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