279. Nirvana, "MTV Unplugged in New York"

 

Sometimes the context of a piece of art endows it with a meaning unknown to the artist at the time.  When Nirvana gathered at Sony Music Studios in Hell's Kitchen on November 18, 1993, to tape this set for MTV, Kurt Cobain was less than six months away from killing himself, and this stark, chilling performance feels funereal.

Perched on a stage decorated with black candles and stargazer lillies (at Kurt's request, it was designed to look "like a funeral"), the band made their way through a set of deep album cuts, covers, and a mini-set of Meat Puppets songs, accompanied by members of that band.  It's not actually acoustic; Kurt's plugged into an amp, and using effects, but mostly so.  (Ironic side note - Kurt mentions during the show that Leadbelly's estate was trying to sell him Leadbelly's guitar for $500,000, and he jokes that he asked David Geffen to buy it for him.  Later, the guitar Kurt played for this show - a Martin D-18E - sold at auction for $6 million, the most expensive guitar ever sold.)

If you're Gen X like me, there is a very good chance you either owned this on CD, saw the performance on MTV (where, in my recollection, it was played almost daily for about a year after Kurt died), or have heard chunks of it.  There's a reason why it's now regarded as one of the best live albums of all time.  (#10 on this list; #6 here.)  It doesn't just feel like a band playing their songs, and the songs of others.  It feels like a man uncomfortably baring more than he should, and knowing it.  The weight of that burden would eventually kill him.

Early on, "Come As You Are," from Nevermind, of course, gets a huge reaction - "hey, I know this song!" - and is performed flawlessly, but the real stars here are the lesser-knowns.  "Jesus Don't Want Me for a Sunbeam," a cover of a Vaselines song, gets a cheery read that seems incongruous for what is really kind of a fucked-up song ("Don't expect me to cry/Don't expect me to lie/Don't expect me to die for me").  "Polly," a song about a kidnapping and sexual assault, is one of the most disturbing songs I think I've ever heard.  I can't imagine another band pulling it off without sounding exploitative.

But it's the last three songs that have stayed with me forever.  Kurt gives "Lake of Fire," a sort of silly Meat Puppets song, new weight and heft and that chorus has not left my head since I relistened for the first time a few days ago but really for the last almost 30 years.  That's followed by "All Apologies," undergirded by Lori Goldston's cello, Kurt rasping out his vocals.  And then "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," a song so dark and ancient that no one knows who really wrote it.  It's about betrayal and deceit, and you can see it in his eyes when he looks up at the end.  The man is haunted.

This song, I believe, is one of the most stunning performances ever committed to tape.  As they're leaving the stage immediately after, bassist Krist Novoselic puts his hand on his heart for a second, and while it could be a gesture of thanks to a rapturous crowd, I've always interpreted it as "Can you believe what the fuck just happened?"  I still can't.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.