The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 16: MTV Unplugged in New York --OR-- Live At Reading

No. 16 - Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York (Sony, 1994) --OR-- Nirvana - Live At Reading (Geffen, 2009)

Sometimes it’s about the the black hole gravity of the 27 Club, consuming creative Werthers¹ unaware, wasted sacrifices to…what?

Today, the history of the band Nirvana can be reduced to dates (specifically for this piece):

• November 1, 1988 (release of the first single, Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz" from Bleach (Sub Pop, 1989))

• September 24, 1991 (release of Nevermind (DGC))

• August 30, 1992 (recording of Live At Reading)

• September 21, 1993 (release of In Utero (DGC)

• November 18, 1993 (recording of MTV Unplugged in New York)

• April 5, 1994 (death of Kurt Cobain);

• November 1, 1994 (release of MTV Unplugged in New York (Sony)

• November 2, 2009 (release of Live At Reading (Geffen))

Like Jimi Hendrix, Cobain’s last breath was far from the end. The Romantic and corporate powers that be were just getting started. Both artists became industries, having more recordings released in their names after their deaths than when they were alive recording.

Sifting through the ephemera of 30 years, the Nirvana performances Live At Reading (1992) and MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) emerge as the two recorded performances capturing the gist of the band at the beginning and the end, separated by a short 24 months. Cobain cut his public beginning and end nearly in half when compared to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Live At Reading documents Nirvana’s second performance at the annual music festival and their first since the success of their second album Nevermind. It would also be the band's last appearance in the United Kingdom. This concert catches the band on its upswing with Nevermind being released eight months before the shows.

A user review of the recording offered:

“Granted, there's a lot of great stuff here for fans to enjoy, but overall, it's a bit too sonically raw for anyone else to really stomach. If you're looking for something good to start with, go with Nevermind or In Utero.”

This flies in the face of what live recordings offer. To be sure, Live At Reading is sonically raw, beautifully so. It emanates an energy a studio recording cannot provide. It is not perfect or even sonically sound, it is a kinetic expression, in the moment, fresh, honest, and genuine.

At this point for Nirvana, there is even a sense of humor. The music press had been filled with rumors of discord and illness surrounding the band. Cobain saw an opportunity for dark levity coming on stage a hospital gown and wheelchair pushed by journalist and band biographer Everett True. Cobain weakly took the microphone, whispering the opening lines of "The Rose," before campily falling to the stage. Cheeky, Cobain arose, James Brown-like before tearing into a corrosive performance of "Breed" from Nevermind.

Corrosive could describe the entire show where the crowd could have scarcely drawn a breath for the one long yawn of marginalized angst the 24 selections provide. “Aneurysm,” “Come As You Are,” “Lithium,” “About A Girl,” and “Dumb” are what one would hope in unbridled readings like these. These songs are spread like shrapnel cutting all flesh in the way. But It is the two covers, Fang’s “The Money Will Roll Right In” and the Wiper’s “D-7” burn the house down, leaving little for “Territorial Pissings” to incinerate.

Two years later, how much has changed? Nirvana has consolidated its hold as the “biggest band in the world” with the release of In Utero on September 21, 1993. The next month, the band undertook its first US tour in two years, making their way that November to Sony Music Studios in Hell's Kitchen, New York City to record MTV Unplugged in New York. The show nearly did not happen because of a petulant and dope-sick Cobain who managed to come around to complete the project.

Joining Nirvana were guitarist Pat Smear and cellist Lori Goldston, who had been touring with them. Despite the show’s premise, Cobain performed with his acoustic guitar running through an amplifier using effects pedals. The band performed and recorded the show in one take. The show included one song from their debut Bleach (1989), four from their second album Nevermind (1991), three from the recently released In Utero, and six covers.

Three of the covers were of Meat Puppets’s songs, with MP members Cris and Curt Kirkwood performing with Nirvana. Cobain included David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” and a cheeky take on the Vaseline’s “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam” transformed into “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam” perhaps summing up Cobain’s increasingly deteriorating psyche. The cover of note was a straight treatment of the traditional American folk song“Where’d You Sleep Last Night” first made famous by Huddie Ledbetter, from whom Cobain based his arrangement. Plaintive and resigned, like the entire concert, this was Nirvana certainly growing as a band, but not fast enough to overtake in inevitable.

1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, Weygand'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1774.