1 post tagged “unplugged”

There are very few songs where the cover is better than the original - I have a list in my head, as I'm sure do you, and in all probability they don't match up. And, you know what? I'm ok with that. I really am.

I'm not even sure that this

counts as a cover version, at least in the strictest sense of the word since it's really a traditional folk song which dates back to at least the late 1800s when it was also known as "In the Pines" or "Black Girl". The first popular commercial version was done by the legendary Lead Belly in 1944 but it was Nirvana's astonishing performance in 1993, 5 months before Kurt Cobain's death, that really opened it up.

Some songs transcend brilliance. I like songs - I like songs that move me and that get stuck in my head and make me feel, but I won't pretend that all the songs I like are to everyone's taste. But if you don't like this song, or, indeed, next week's 90s Music Monday (which is incidentally also a cover version that I happen to think is better than the original) then you're just plain wrong.

Unless you subscribe to the conspiracy theories  then something was clearly wrong with Kurt Cobain around this time. It'd be impossible to speculate how he felt at the time. Without getting too melodramatic he was depressed, back on heroin and crushed by the weight the celebrity he despised and the pressures of being a role model and a brand and an icon for a generation.

So I wonder (and I realise this makes me utterly morbid)  how he felt having done this final song at the MTV Unplugged set. If you have the bootleg of the performance doing the rounds you hear Cobain tell the crowd "I take requests" to which various people shout out Rape Me (which I admit I would have loved to have heard), Scentless Apprentice, Bloom. Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl even start to play the opening bars of Sliver before they change their mind.

Instead they play this and it's pretty much perfect - even the muffed start to the second verse somehow highlights the fact that it's a very human song about frailty.  The last verse, screamed in the style of Mark Lanegan (who introduced Cobain to the song and even got him to play guitar on his version), is raw pathos and perfectly blends anger and frustration and sadness. If I sound like I frothing here it's because I am - it's 3am and I'm tired and thoughtful and I'm pounding my tiny fists on my keyboard trying to express quite how much I love this song and how it sends shivers down my spine every single time I've heard it in the last 15 years.

So you've just stood up having played this set and you're wandering into the backstage area. Do you realise that you've just sung one of the most incredible songs ever recorded (never let it be said I don't like hyperbole)? And if you do how does it make you feel? Does self-criticality prevent you from appreciating it? Or are you just so jaded  from, well, everything, that you're just numb to the fact?

If you think I'm over hyping the song - if you think that it's just a good song that nigh impossible to do badly - if you want evidence to how much they killed it in that set then go listen to the Lanegan version again. Go listen to this version by Nicole Atkins at SXSW. They're good, sure, but they're not sublime. They're not life alteringly good. They are not listen to this on repeat continuously for 4 hours good.

When you're done listening to them go sit in a darkened room and listen to the Nirvana version again. Hell listen to the whole album. For maximum effect sit on the floor, preferably wooden, with no one around. Swig from a bottle of whisky eschewing the sordidly bourgeois notion of using a glass. Repeat until you get it. Then do it some more just to be sure.