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Originally Posted by foreverasskiss
im not a jock nor do i think Nirvana did it to offend. i just think it's weak and it made them a little money. if they had something to prove they did it long ago by kicking against hair bands and lame music.
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I didn't say offend, I meant more like challenge. Again, Kurt had been writing, playing, and performing acoustic music for many years before Unplugged. It seems clear from the set-list, guest selection, and overall ambiance that as with most things Nirvana, the band was tongue in cheek making fun of the entire thing while also abusing the privilege to present some of their different material and taste in covers.
(a) ALL the material presented at Unplugged had been performed or recorded acoustically previously in stage shows, radio appearances, or demos and (b) all of the covers aside from Meat Puppets had also been recent parts of 1992-1993 tour set lists. In other words, Nirvana wasn't just mailing it in to collect easy money, quite the opposite, they as with so many other instances were abusing the spotlight and MTV hype machine to almost make fun of itself. They did this with their music videos, with their TV spot appearances, with their interviews, with their award show spots.. Nirvana really was like 3 years of double-entendre against mainstream music, and like you said, destroying the hallmarks of the 1980s sound. What you see in the antics and tour footage from 1991: The Year That Punk Broke is our introduction to who Nirvana were, and Unplugged is like the pinnacle of it all. It is clear that even if Kurt hadn't committed suicide, Nirvana was going to break up. Kurt had several other ideas, other projects, even other artistic media in mind to which In Utero was a preview. That, and by 1994 heroin was destroying Kurt and the spotlight was getting to Dave and Krist clearly didn't know where he fit in between..