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For my last and ultimate Review on this rustic ground, I have decided to face head-on and with no hesitations a topic as thorny as it is urgent: why are there still prickly pears on the spines in the thick of November?
Ah, no... I got the wrong site!
To You, there, I wanted to talk about another arduous matter.
The operations of scraping-the-bottom-of-the-worn-out-barrel for miserably speculative purposes are among the most abominable things to which art in general, and therefore by inclusion music, can be subjected.
It’s also true that sometimes there can be rare and sparse exceptions.
Calm down and take a breath: this is not one of those cases.
The artifact in question, included in some kind of Christmas/Easter/thirtieth-anniversary box set, turns out to be a poorly concealed attempt at barrel-bottom scraping, with a slight but substantial difference: in this specific case, the barrel is qualitatively if not exactly filled to the brim, at least still respectably full.
One thing is certain: knowing that their last “conscious” album they released is that minimal cesspit of MTV Unplugged is a matter that gives me (moderate) annoyance.
Because that anemic little theater, deadly, aseptic, emaciated, toxic but also Austro-Hungarian, was nothing more than the plastic representation of the announced end that wouldn’t take too long to come.
To their misfortune and a bit to ours too.
It’s true that hindsight is a wonderful thing.
But that mortuary atmosphere polished with Topexan is as far from what these three rascals musically truly were.
Because those comfortably seated on stools, with candles and lights as a corollary, are not, were not, and will never be the Nirvana. It was the representation of the famished greed of their label combined with their poor artistic clarity, exploited and vilified to the worst consequence.
I don’t say this because I am nobody: but it can be effectively said, to those who have the patience to listen to it, by the listening of this excellent and abundant archive document that portrays them on stage just a few years before.
I don't argue that Unplugged could also be liked for various reasons, and this is not even about wanting to speak "badly" of someone who is no longer there or to bash beyond the peak time with an album/DVD that sold a hundred billion copies.
However, I find it both necessary and fair: and just to give them the proper merit.
Especially for those who are somewhat leathered like myself and perhaps had the luck to cross their resolute sonic trajectories, thus appreciating them starting from that nervous debut 45 rpm released in semi-clandestinity in 1988, like many of that era, through the semi-unknown Subpop.
This concert dates back to 1991; the album that would shortly become one of the most important watershed records - not so much for the quality of the pieces, but precisely for the role it played, voluntarily or not - of the '90s and beyond has just been released.
In this truly intense and elegantly beautiful concert, the trio offers several urgent versions of pieces from the just-released album, the debut work "Bleach" and the earlier EP "Blew".
Cherry on top: the recording quality is marvelous and decisively borders on excellence.
The older and more edgy material, perhaps because it’s more seasoned on stage or maybe because it happens to be the album I favor, is what provides me with the greatest and most intense satisfactions:
The perfect cover of "Love Buzz", the ultra-paranoid "Blew", the tumultuous "Negative Creep", the absolute monolith "School", and the danceable from Romagna that matches the title of "Floyd The Barber", are just some of the brightest lightning bolts that ruffled the leaden sky of the evening and those that in my opinion best represent what these three unforgettable, ragged, bumpkins from the last millennium were, are, and will always be.
In summary: these are the right Nirvana!
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