Nirvana Unplugged

It's weird listening to Nirvana's Unplugged In New York album today, in that it's just become so legendary. I remember being a little kid and watching it premiere on MTV a couple weeks before Christmas back in 1993. Back then I was lukewarm on the Unplugged show. I definitely enjoyed it, but I still needed some time to mature and enjoy music outside of the strictly heavy alternative rock circle (things needed to be simpler then...I mean I was six). Still, Nirvana was my favorite band, and every time the performance reran (which was an insane amount of times), I always watched it.

Getting back to my original statement though...about it being weird. It's interesting because as the years have progressed, I've now seen plenty of live footage of the band in full electric mode, and they were a bit of a mess. Watching the recent official release of their Reading Festival performance, you can see even at their peak, Cobain struggles to remember the words, sing in key, and knock through the solos. Still, this all added to the charm of the show, and of to the absurdity of them becoming so huge so fast. They have a sound and attitude that belonged in small clubs, so to watch them perform in such large venues only highlighted the flaws more, because it was uncommon for a band like that to be playing in front of such a large audience. However, on Unplugged, they're in a small studio, and are the most polished they had ever sounded. It opened up a new door for them really. The possibilities of what could have come next were mind boggling and remains, for me at least, as one of the biggest teases in rock history.