"Unplugged" Nirvana (1993)

User Rating:

9.6/10   

Director:

Beth McCarthy-Miller

TV Series:

"Unplugged" (1989)

Original Air Date:

16 December 1993

Genre:

Music

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Rock Star | Band | Rock Band | Grunge | Pop Music

Cast

Kurt Cobain	...	Himself
David Grohl	...	Himself (as Dave Grohl)
Cris Kirkwood	...	Himself
Curt Kirkwood	...	Himself
Nirvana	...	Themselves
Krist Novoselic	...	Himself
Ralph Rieckermann	...	Himself
Pat Smear	...	Himself

Series Cast

These people are regular cast members. Were they in this episode?

Nils Lofgren

...

Himself

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

New York, USA

Company:

Sony Music

Goofs:

Factual errors: In the credits, Dave Grohl's last name is misspelled (as "Ghrol.")

Quotes:

Kurt Cobain: [before the song "The Man Who Sold The World"] I guarantee you I will screw this song up...
Kurt Cobain: [after finishing the song "The Man Who Sold The World"] I didn't screw it up, did I?
[referring to the song "Pennyroyal Tea"]
Kurt Cobain: Okay, but here's another one I could screw up.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Mulgogijari (2000)

All in all, it's all they were

In grunge Pearl Jam had 10, the Stone Temple Pilots had Core, Soundgarden had Superunknown and Nirvana had the classic Nevermind. On 18th November 1993 they recorded an Unplugged video for MTV which became, to my ears anyway, their best - and last – album in 1994.

It was just an acoustic concert showcasing some of singer Kurt Cobain's finest downbeat songs and a couple of downbeat covers. What of course made it so poignant was Cobain's apparent suicide 5 months later at 27 years old – MTV (when it used to play music) reflecting the trauma for a generation of kids ran the video every day for months … years! That generation has moved on and succeeding generations are as little moved by Nirvana as by the Beatles, so fast is fashion. It was a very relaxed professional set and showed an unknown side of the band to the world; highlights include About A Girl, Come As You Are, the sublime On A Plain, and of course the gravely enigmatic All Apologies – which became their unwitting epitaph. I wonder how Smells Like Teen Spirit would've sounded? Drummer Grohl moved on afterwards and surprised us all with the consistent success of the Foo Fighters, while bassist Novoselic went into rather desultory but well meaning politics.

Not everyone's cup of Pennyroyal tea of course, to me this excellent show sums up a musical era and I still watch/listen to it regularly.