Don't know if it's coincidence, fate, destiny, or magic (it's coincidence), but, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged was recorded 20 years ago today--the same day that we are playing a big Unplugged show in Baltimore. I'm not really sure what that means to me. We have definitely borrowed from Nirvana and the 90s because that's when we all grew up. But honestly I wasn't more than a casual Nirvana listener until over a decade after Kurt Cobain died. Today, I really like the unplugged album and love how Cobain added distortion to his acoustic guitar on Man Who Sold the World, "breaking the rules" as he so often did. Also the fact that the album has multiple cover songs was kind of a "fuck you" to the industry types, because most Unplugged shows were softer acoustic sets by bands/acts with heavier/more electronic sounds, and the novelty of it lay in the fact that the band was changing up "their sound" (original songs) so much.
I think Cobain's attitude, more than anything, has influenced me and the music that I make. Last week, I insisted to the Gregs that I use my Holy Grail reverb pedal for this "Unplugged" set so that I could get a warbly effect on a few songs, despite the fact that they said it was "cheating." At practice, drunk and happy, I yelled, "Kurt Cobain fucking did it, so can I!"
Also, it's not a big fucking deal if I use one effect on my guitar. It's just fucking reverb. Coincidentally I learned a cover this weekend (Here Is No Why, by SP), but I don't know if I'll have time to play it. We'll see.
<3
Craig
