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UR002: Unplugged 101, Part 2 (1994-1999)
94 Plays6 months ago
UR002 - "Unplugged 101, Part 2" (1994-1999) is the second of three explainer episodes outlining the entire 35-year-plus spectrum of MTV Unplugged. This episode covers 1994 to 1999 and discusses what exactly MTV Unplugged did with their multi-tentacled creative platform throughout the second half of the decade, as well as how they handled the pre-Y2K dismount of the show’s imperial ‘90s run right before the turn of the century-slash-millennium.
If you dig the show, want to share your own Unplugged memories, ask a question, request a show topic, or connect with the pod for any reason, there are a couple ways you can get in touch:
- You can email me at unpluggedrevisited@gmail.com,
- You can reach out on twitter at @unplugged_pod,
- You can leave a voicemail (that’ll maybe get played on the show) by dialing 234-REVISIT (234-738-4748)
Recommended![UR014: Mark Bryan (Hootie and the Blowfish) [1996 MTV Unplugged] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/66ea0b235fcf51d2c9a0b7cd/43cbefc3-777c-4d93-9915-92abd82876d2.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction to 'Unplugged Revisited'
00:00:00
Speaker
welcome to unplug
00:00:14
Speaker
greetings and salutations welcome back to unpuggged revisit the podcast that celebrates critiques and dives deep into the last three and a half decades of mtv unpug i'm your host music journalists pop culture anthropologist and Unplugged.
MTV Unplugged's 1994 Season Highlight
00:00:32
Speaker
hello by the way thanks for tuning in Please go back and listen to part one of my introductory trio of episodes as this is part two. Okay, everybody here got part one out of the way? You feel caught up from the 89 pilot all the way through to Nirvana's 93 season closer? Perfect. Let's jump into Unplugged 101 part two, covering 1994 to 1999.
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to 1994, which is, in my opinion, the year Unplugged achieved peak pop cultural ascendancy, and the year that provided them the opportunity to creatively cash in on the street cred they'd been masterfully accumulating over the previous couple of years. To me, in a lot of ways, Unplugged's 94 season had some parallel echoes of their 91 season.
00:01:16
Speaker
From a quantity perspective, it was another smaller, tighter season, as only five new episodes were filmed in the States. From a quality perspective, though, it seemed like each episode was practically busting at the seams with dynamic talent, creativity, style, and for lack of a more nuanced qualifier, MTV Cool. There are a couple different ways to approach discussing the arc of the 94 season, But I think for ease of clarity and analysis of cultural impact, a purely chronological storyline might be best. So let's kick things off in February of 1994. The first new unplugged content of the year, the criminally underappreciated Stone Temple Pilots unplugged, was actually a holdover from the 93 season. The STP episode was recorded in the same November 93 session as Duran Duran and Nirvana, but it didn't get broadcast until the following February.
00:02:05
Speaker
Also, because the next batch of 94 Unplugged episodes wouldn't air until June, STP wasn't exactly framed as the season opener or anything like that. It just kind of appeared in this post-93 pre-94 limbo space. That and the fact that it didn't get an official audio release until the 25th anniversary of their debut album Core in 2017 contributes to why I think it's also one of the most slept on Unplugs. But man, is it a good one.
00:02:31
Speaker
In the mid-90s, STP was a band with three singularly cool secret weapons. First, lead singer Scott Weiland had one of the most killer voices in the game, not to mention his undeniably born-to-be-a-frontman aura. Second, guitarist Dean DeLeo tastefully fused the distorted muscle of Grunge with inventive jazz-inspired chord voicings. And third, bassist Robert DeLeo was one of the most melodically cerebral bass players of the entire alt-rock genre.
00:02:57
Speaker
All three of those elements were wonderfully heightened in the stripped down setting of their all too short half hour unplugged.
Nirvana's Unplugged: Emotional Impact
00:03:03
Speaker
Even with such a short set though, they managed to beautifully nail their big hit plush, completely reinvented sex type thing into a swing and lounge number, and they debuted their next soon to be hit, Big Empty, which ended up getting its own unplugged music video that May to help promote the Crow soundtrack, as the studio version of Big Empty was its big lead single.
00:03:31
Speaker
Another great track from that night that didn't make the original broadcast was their cover of David Bowie's 1971 hunky dory album cut Andy Warhol, which really interesting side note on this one. I think the only reason it didn't make the broadcast is because, well, I've already mentioned that Nirvana, Duran Duran, and STP all did their unplugs in the same filming session.
00:03:51
Speaker
But, all three bands, unbeknownst to each other, also all covered David Bowie. What a weird coincidence, right? Nirvana famously did The Man Who Sold the World, Duran Duran snuck a little bit of TVC-15 into Hungry Like the Wolf, and STP covered Andy
00:04:20
Speaker
I wasn't even aware they had played it during their unplugged taping until I bought an import single of Vaseline from their sophomore album Purple and their unplugged version of Andy Warhol was tucked away as one of the B-sides. Long live physical media friends. And shout out to the long gone store media play for always carrying the fancy import singles that had the bonus B-sides that were always hard to find in the States.
00:04:42
Speaker
One more STP Unplugged note, they were also a part of the new rollout of heightened stage setup treatments, and their massive trees, marbled balloons, and front porch rocking chair for Weiland gave the whole set this surrealist, swampy vibe. It's a super great one all around, sonically and visually. Come April of 1994, some new Unplugged episodes were slated to start filming in the middle of the month, but the show would first be heavily utilized for depressingly different purposes.
00:05:14
Speaker
I'm Kurt Loader with an MTV News special report. The body of Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain was found in a house in Seattle on Friday morning, dead of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. In the wake of the massive tragedy of Kurt Cobain's death, countless journalists and outlets pontificated ad nauseam about the hows and whys and what it all meant.
Tony Bennett's Unplugged Gamble
00:05:33
Speaker
But for a generation of grieving fans who were far more concerned with feeling the loss than fabricating a lesson about fame and celebrity, MTV's wall-to-wall repeat airings of the band's barely six months old Unplugged episode provided an incredibly important and un-editorialized emotional conduit for the band's fans that was almost impossible to find anywhere else.
00:05:54
Speaker
This unintended second phase of Nirvana's Unplugged cast a sentimental air over the whole set, which was not an easy thing to conjure within our notoriously guarded Gen X selves. But it also proved to be a surprisingly perfect, self-constructed eulogy delivered in Kurt's own voice. Nirvana's Unplugged would soon enough enter into a third phase as the celebrated creative apex of a band at its most inventive, but in the immediate aftermath of Kurt's death, it first helped to provide the necessary soundtrack to a generation's sadness.
00:06:51
Speaker
When the Unplugged team reconvened at Sony Music Studios to record new episodes in mid-April, the filming session featured a lineup that continued to showcase Unplugged's fearless creative experimentation and its ability to lead MTV's audiences into new spaces. The first artist in the Triple Act filming session was easily Unplugged's biggest gamble to date, the then almost 70-year-old Great American songbook crooner, Tony Bennett.
00:07:15
Speaker
left my heart
00:07:26
Speaker
Now, Bennett wasn't exactly a complete stranger to MTV. He had previously filmed one of the channels I Want My MTV Promo Spots back in 1988. Here's a little bit of that. It doesn't sound like TV. It doesn't look like TV. It doesn't even feel like TV. Sure you love TV, but sometimes you gotta ask yourself, TV or MTV? I want my MTV.
00:07:50
Speaker
Also, at the 93 VMAs, he donned a t-shirt, sunglasses, and top hat to playfully present an award juxtaposed against a tuxedoed Anthony, Keetus, and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is the pinnacle event of the decade, Mr. Bennett, and you have have showed an outrageous disrespect for a tire. Where's your tux? Hey, come on. Now you know, guys, this is MTV. Get a clue. By the way, Flea, you left this at my house.
00:08:17
Speaker
Even so, Bennett, who had started out as a teenage singing waiter in the 1930s, paused his musical pursuits to fight in World War II and then kicked off the 1950s by signing a deal with Columbia Records and taking the song Because of You to number one for his first of many chart-topping hits. He wasn't exactly on the musical radar of most constituents in the MTV generation.
Exploring Spoken Word on Unplugged
00:08:39
Speaker
I mean, sure, this was around the same time as Swing Kids and The Mask, but for the most part, we were still a few years away from that whole swingers, squirrel net zippers, gap khakis, mainstream retro swing revival of it all. In fact, a strong case could probably be made that Bennett's Unplugged was one of, if not the, primary cultural catalyst that really mainstreamed that whole scene. To be clear, Bennett's Unplugged was very much anchored in a 100% authentic Tony Bennett-ness. This was not the knowingly winky novelty that was going on at the time. time. You know, Tom Jones covering Are You Gonna Go My Way for the Jerky Boy soundtrack, or Don Ho singing Sabotage on Conan, or Steven Edie doing Black Hole Sun on that
00:09:39
Speaker
Bennett's 20 plus song set list was mostly built on pre-war pop standards and show tunes written by heavyweights like Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwin Brothers. He was backed by the wildly impressive improvisational jazz talents of the Ralph Sharon Trio.
00:09:54
Speaker
Sharon, who was 70 at the time of the Unplugged filming and still played piano like his fingers were on fire, had been Bennett's de facto bandleader since the late 50s. While there had been an unquestionably tongue-in-cheek nature to Bennett's previous dalliances with MTV, his Unplugged session was a total no winks, full on, fly me to the moon, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing affair.
00:10:15
Speaker
However, in the same manner as when he voiced himself on The Simpsons in 1990 or
Creative Reinterpretations: Lenny Kravitz
00:10:20
Speaker
appeared on the Arsenio Hall show in 93, Bennett understood the power of having a hip cultural conduit that younger audiences could use as their entry point to his music. For his Unplugged, Bennett attempted to achieve this with a really cool mix of special musical guests, Elvis Costello, Katie Lang, Jay Mascis from Dinosaur Jr., and Evan Dando of the Lemonheads.
00:10:40
Speaker
Naturally, Costello and Lang made the most sense. They both have strong reputations as skilled song interpreters, and they completely gelled with Bennett's melodic sensibilities on each of their respective 1930s duets. Costello on the Gershwin's They Can't Take That Away From Me, and Lang on the oft-recorded jazz standard Moon Glow.
00:10:58
Speaker
While Costello and Lange's celebrated performances made the television broadcast and the subsequent album releases, I mean, they even both got standalone physical singles, sadly the same could not be said for Mascis and Dando. Mascis's acoustic guitar playing on Bennett's cabaret take on St. James Infirmary wouldn't see the light of day until 2011, when it was included on a bonus disc of rarities that accompanied Bennett's 76-disc box set called The Complete Collection.
00:11:24
Speaker
However, Dando's duet with Bennett on the Duke Ellington-written Billie Holiday popularized song In My Solitude has never been officially released in any capacity, though a short snippet of it did appear on an MTV News segment.
00:11:45
Speaker
And just because it feels like holding in a sneeze, here's a little bit of the Jay Mascis Bennett duet as well.
Reunion of Legends: Page & Plant
00:12:04
Speaker
Immediately following the Bennett taping was another spoken word unplugged that had so many cool performances they ended up breaking it up over two episodes for broadcast. And they even made a cool inside the spoken word mini-documentary that aired alongside the episodes. This time around there were a couple more recognizable names like M.C. Light, making a second unplugged appearance after the Yo Unplugged hip-hop show, playwright-actor Eric Bogosian, and iconic proto-rap jazz poet Gil Scott Herron of the Revolution Will Not Be Televised fame.
00:12:34
Speaker
The band Huge Voodoo returned to back some of the poets as well. MTV viewers would have also recognized the face and voice of Toby Huss, who at the time was appearing in a bunch of comedic MTV interstitials, including his Sinatra-esque lounge singer, who parodied songs by Pearl Jam, Snoop Dogg, Spin Doctors, and Cypress Hill.
00:12:51
Speaker
Jeremy's spoken in class today That That coop, that nut Jeremy's speaking all over the place You can't shut him up Personally, I was excited to see Huss because I mostly knew him from playing Arty the strongest man in the world from the greatest Nickelodeon show of all time, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, which is getting its second mention in his many episodes. Drink. oh Just as with the previous spoken word unplugged from the year prior, I was enraptured with each performance but was seriously beyond stoked that Maggie Estep returned for another appearance.
00:13:32
Speaker
94 turned out to be a good year to be an S-Step fan as she released her first album, No More Mr. Nice Girl, played the side stages at Lollapalooza and Woodstock, and received some nice airplay on MTV for her Hey Baby music video, which also got one of the most quintessentially 90s You've Made It stamps of approval when it was playfully roasted on an episode of Beavis and Butthead.
00:14:09
Speaker
Quick side note, there's a book I love that came out in the mid-90s that analyzes various aspects of feminism in music videos. It's called Ladies First and it's written by Robin Roberts. Not the famous broadcaster, but an English professor who was at LSU at the time.
00:14:23
Speaker
It's a fantastic book all around, and Robert devotes a great chapter to situating subversion and humor in music videos by artists like Julie Brown, The Real Roxanne, Tina Turner, Jill Sobule, and S-Step. And she gives an additional contextual layer as to why S-Step's Hey Baby music video being played on Beavis and Butthead could be interpreted as a double skewering of the oafish ironic foils versus imitable role model's dichotomy. It's a really killer read, highly recommended.
00:14:50
Speaker
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Estep's untimely passing in 2014, and it's crazy to me how little physical media there is of her work. She did release two albums, No More Mr. Nice Girl in 94 and Love is a Dog from Hell in 97. There's also this really cool Jack Kerouac tribute CD called Kicks Joy Darkness that she appeared on alongside folks like Michael Stipe, Julianna Hatfield, Patti Smith, Joe Strummer, Eddie Vedder, and a bunch more really cool artists.
00:15:18
Speaker
But I think it'd be really cool if someone with a small record label did something cool like press up a seven inch single with each of her unplugged appearances on each side. You know, a fan can dream, right? One final note about the 94 spoken word unplugged. Just like the year before, it also introduced me to a second poet whose work I instantly fell in love with, Jim Carroll. Even though the episode wouldn't air until the summer, it was filmed on April 13th, just a few days after Kurt Cobain's body was first found.
00:15:45
Speaker
So Carol's Unplugged poem, Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain, was extremely fresh, brutally direct, and emotionally inescapable. I can't imagine how those in the audience that day experienced Carol's piece as its broadcast two months later seemed to hold my breath hostage for far longer than its five-minute runtime. It would admittedly be a bit of a parking brake to play the whole beautiful aching thing here, so here's just a snippet of it. Genius is not a generous thing.
00:16:11
Speaker
In return, it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover, and it resents fame with bitter vengeance. Pills and powders only placate it a while. Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse, where the currents of electricity shift.
00:16:33
Speaker
Your body becomes a magnet, it pulls to it despair and rotten teeth, cheese whiz and guns. Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust and timeless illusion.
00:16:48
Speaker
Much as I experienced with S-step, it was a good time to become a Carroll fan. I was able to quickly pick up his most recent poetry CD at the time, Praying Mantis, and the record shop, shout out to Criminal Records in Atlanta, even had an older album of his music, Catholic Boy, that I snagged as well. I lovingly tipped my hat to Unplugged for introducing me to Carroll, because over the next couple of years, he kept popping up in some really cool places. In 95, that film, The Basketball Diaries, based off his 1978 memoir, came out.
00:17:17
Speaker
and its awesome soundtrack featured snippets of his poetry and his re-recorded version of Catholic Boy backed by Pearl Jam. Plus, he showed up reading a poem on the rancid song Junkie Man from there and Out Come the Wolves album. He also appeared on that 97 carawak tribute CD that S-Step was on. It wasn't until years later that I was made aware that I had actually first come into contact with his music as a wee babe, as his song People Who Died plays in the background of a scene in E.T., which I watched and re-watched countless times as a kid.
00:17:47
Speaker
Okay, enough about S. Step and Carol. For now, at least. The third set of that mid-April unplugged filming session was with retro rock revivalist Lee Kratitz.
00:18:08
Speaker
While this session may not have been as novel or unpredictable as the Bennett and Spoken Word tapings, it still proved to be an incredibly solid unplugged performance. He completely reworked his rambunctious Are You Gonna Go My
Bob Dylan's Reinvented Classics
00:18:19
Speaker
Way into a slow-burn blues number, elevated a handful of songs with saxophone and trumpet, and even brought along a gospel choir to freshen up Let Love Rule, his very first hit from back in 1989.
00:18:30
Speaker
This is another pretty surprising one to have never gotten released as an album, but at the time there were all sorts of conversations going on about quote-unquote oversaturating the market with unplugged albums and there was absolutely zero doubt that the next 294 unplugged episodes would be getting the full court press record release treatment. After the Kravitz episode was broadcast in early July, the next unplugged project on the docket was one of the most ambitious ones to date.
00:18:55
Speaker
Other bands may be unplugged, but only one can be unleaded. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, together again. Representing another big reunion style show, once again proving the incredible cultural cachet the show was working with at the time, Unplugged was chosen as the platform by which to unroll a new collaboration between former Led Zeppelin foils Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. While very explicitly not a Led Zeppelin reunion due to the absence of bassist John Paul Jones, it was nonetheless a reuniting of Page and Plant.
00:19:29
Speaker
which was the official moniker the duo used, whose last big one-off performance together had occurred at 1985's Live Aid and the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary Party in 1988. And just to get ahead of any corrective emails, yes, I know they also played together at the 1990 Silver Clef Awards, but that was just Paige joining in on a few songs during Plant's solo set, not an equally billed duo performance.
00:19:51
Speaker
Regardless, not only had it been a minute since they had played together, it had really been a minute since they were united in a single project that was to be more than just a one-off. The page and plant unplugged was eventually branded unleaded and was stylized with a capital L to really muddy the not-a-led Zeppelin reunion point.
00:20:08
Speaker
The 90-minute TV special was filmed in three separate locations, Morocco, Wales, and London, and featured Page and Plant blending a few new songs with some reimagined Zeppelin classics channeled through a few different musical configurations, including performing as just an acoustic twosome, then playing with street musicians in Marrakech, then leading a rock band, and eventually playing with both an Egyptian string and percussion ensemble and the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
00:20:50
Speaker
Due to the nature of the reunion, the ambitiousness of the project, and the plans for it to be more than just a one-off show, there was an incredible amount of interest and press surrounding the unplugged, sorry, unleaded broadcast. They released an album featuring 14 of the performances, but instead of using the unplugged branding, they titled it No Quarter.
00:21:08
Speaker
A somewhat curious choice as, yes, No Quarter was a very popular Led Zeppelin song and one they played beautifully as just a duo during the unleaded broadcast, but No Quarter was also one of the Zeppelin tracks that was mostly attributed to and associated with their revered bassist keyboardist John Paul Jones, who was very much not involved with this specific project.
00:21:30
Speaker
Regardless, the No Quarter album was incredibly well received, quickly went platinum stateside in less than two months, and became a global top ten album across markets in
Unplugged Goes Global
00:21:39
Speaker
the UK, France, Australia, and Canada. Page and Plant also released two physical singles from the Unletted project.
00:21:45
Speaker
a newly pinned track called Wonderful One, and their raucous acoustic romp through the famed English folk tune Gallows Pull, which had originally appeared on Led Zeppelin III in 1970 and whose no-quarter version became a minor rock radio hit for the duo in 1994. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the project in 2004, the duo finally released a long-awaited DVD of their unleaded show with a few bonus cut-for-broadcast songs added in, and it's a seriously stunning audio-visual experience.
00:22:13
Speaker
To see and hear them play when the levee breaks, backed by drums, stand-up bass, banjo, mandolin, and hurdy gurdy against the picturesque backdrop of a North Wales rock quarry at dusk is worth the price of admission alone. Plus, eagle-eyed fans will notice Pearl Thompson of The Cure on banjo, making his second unplugged appearance just three years after their own 91 show.
00:22:36
Speaker
Immediately following the Page and Plant episode was the 94 season closer with the mercurial and mythical Bob Dylan.
00:23:09
Speaker
Now, I have to be very mindful of time here because Dylan is not only one of my favorite artists just for his music alone, but I find him endlessly fascinating as a multi-decade pop cultural enigma as well. I wrote my master's thesis on his uncanny ability to navigate being a traditional folklorist who gets occasionally subsumed into mainstream moments. So I promise I'm gonna try real hard not to parking break this whole section.
00:23:33
Speaker
Dylan's Unplugged came at a really interesting point in his career, the one that is only truly understood in hindsight. At the time, he had no idea that a truly wild, new audience-gaining career renaissance was just around the corner, courtesy of his platinum-selling, multi-grammy-winning 97 album, Time Outta Mind.
00:23:51
Speaker
Instead, going into his mid-November 94 unplugged taping, his two prior albums, 92's Good As I Been To You and 93's World Gone Wrong, had been completely solo acoustic albums of traditional folk tunes with zero self-penned material. And while they were absolutely beautiful studies in Dylan's approach to rearranging older blues and folk material, they weren't exactly hip du jour MTV fare.
00:24:14
Speaker
But Dylan smartly decided to carry that same folk revivalist momentum into his unplugged performance by flipping the reinterpretive lens back onto his older material. Of the almost two dozen songs he performed over his two-night filming session, which itself was another unplugged first, his eight-song broadcast episode and eleven-song album release were built almost exclusively on songs from his early to mid-sixties body of work.
00:24:37
Speaker
Even his surprise performance of the technically not officially released rarity, the 12 verse no chorus anti-war protest song John
Cultural Impact of Nirvana's Album
00:24:45
Speaker
Brown, actually dated back to 1962 when he wrote and recorded it for a Folkways Records compilation under the nom de plume Blind Boy Grunt. The remainder of the set was judiciously seasoned with a couple tracks from his 70s and 80s repertoire as well.
00:24:59
Speaker
Despite the 60s-heavy origins of Dylan's Unplugged Set List, his performance most certainly had a definitively Dylan-esque, don't-look-back sonic posture. With nary an electric guitar in sight, Dylan reworked some of his most notoriously electrified numbers, like Tombstone Blues, Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35, Like a Rolling Stone, into revamped dual acoustic rockers augmented by stand-up bass, drums, dobro, pedal steel, mandolin, and some incredibly tasty B3 organ, courtesy of Brendan O'Brien. who, for any curious teenagers tuning in, would have probably been the most recognizable name in Dylan's backing band. At that point, O'Brien had already produced such 90s masterpieces as Pearl Jam's Verses in Vitalogy and Stone Temple Pilots' Core and Purple, and he had also engineered Red Hot Chili Pepper's Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Black Crow's Shake Your Money Maker, among many, many others.
00:25:51
Speaker
Seeming to understand the fresh-eyed possibilities afforded to him by the culture-shaping position of the unplugged platform, Dylan carved out new context and meanings within his resiliently relevant back catalog. He brought some of his most popular 30-year-old folk anthems, like the times they are a-changin' and the almost nine-minute Desolation Row, forward to a brand new audience, and he also spoke into the current political moment with some of his most poignant anti-war protest songs.
00:26:17
Speaker
Around this period, the United States had heavy military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Kuwait, and other countries, and there were also heated debates going on about whether the US government would send troops to the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which all made the larger cultural conversation extremely ripe for songs like John Brown and the frustratingly still relevant, spine-chilling show-closer with God on our side.
00:27:15
Speaker
We'll start the next war One quick final note about Dylan's fantastic Unplugged episode. While it did generate an official album release in May of 95, for quite a few years I've been lighting a daily prayer candle to St. Bob in hopes that his entire Unplugged outing would get an expanded release as part of his ongoing bootleg series. As I already mentioned, he filmed his episode over two nights with two separate setlists and each day also had a rehearsal sound check that was recorded. So already right there is a wealth of unreleased Unplugged material. Not to mention they could throw in the 4-show, 40-song, unofficial trial run of all acoustic shows he recorded at New York's Supper Club the year prior leading up to his Unplug taping. It would unquestionably be such a stunning set of material and would add quite a unique volume to his bootleg series. Just putting it out there in case the Unplug gods are listening.
00:28:07
Speaker
Alrighty, a few more notes about some unplugged and unplugged adjacent topics that occurred during the 94 season. 1. MTV continued to expand Unplug's global footprint throughout 94 by filming a half dozen shows for its international markets, including MTV Brazil recording an Acoustico MTV episode with Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, MTV Latin America recording two episodes at MTV's Satellite studio in Miami, one with Latin ska band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and another with Mexican rockers Caifanes. And funnily enough, since both bands spring-steined their unplugged sets with electric guitars and electric basses, the show added the word electrico under the familiar unplugged logo, creating quite a funny visual contrast.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then MTV Europe ended up filming three episodes, one with German
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00:28:55
Speaker
singer Herbert Grandmeyer performing just outside of Berlin, a hits-packed standout episode from Phil Collins shot in London, and Bjork's jaw-dropping reinvention of most of her post-Sugar Cube solo album Debut, which was also filmed in London.
00:29:09
Speaker
I'll be doing a standalone episode on the Bjork one pretty early, as I think it's one of the most creatively inspired and musically adventurous unplugged episodes of the whole run, and it's a real shame that it isn't more celebrated when the best of lists get trotted out every few years. At the time, Bjork had only released a handful of her Unplugged tracks on a fan club exclusive EP called Celebrating Wood and Metal. But she eventually released most of the show, first on DVD in 2002, then as part of her five-disc box set Live Box in 2003, and finally as a standalone record called Debut Live in 2004. The one-off Unplugged show allowed Bjork to really reinvent her songs with an array of talented musicians across a variety of unconventional instrumental pairings.
00:29:52
Speaker
For just a quick taste, here's how her techno-pulse dance-pop hit, Violently Happy, sounded on debut versus how she reworked it for her unplugged show on harpsichord, waterphone, stand-up bass, drums, and a deconstructed glass harmonica. That version starts off like this.
00:30:24
Speaker
And beautifully builds into this groove.
00:30:35
Speaker
Ooh, so so good. Seriously can't wait to dig into this one. Second note. Right between the late 94 broadcast premieres of the Page and Plant episode and the Dylan one, Nirvana's Unplugged in New York album was finally released. With the gut punch of Cobain's death six months earlier only just slightly starting to lessen, the album release allowed Nirvana's Unplugged to enter into its third phase. one marked by celebration and enjoyment. It felt great to not only be able to more easily revisit the episode as much as you wanted in audio form, home recorded VHS no longer required, but even just speaking for myself, it felt really really good to hear some quote-unquote new Nirvana on the radio again. About a Girl was chosen as the only official single release to radio, and most stations even chose to keep in Cobain's cheeky, self-deprecating intro. This is our first record. Most people don't own it.
00:31:28
Speaker
The single itself became an international top 5 hit and the Unplugged in New York album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum by mid-January. Plus, it went on to be awarded the band's only Grammy. Also, cool side note, as a big vinyl collector myself, I believe Unplugged in New York was the first full Unplugged album to be released on Colored Wax.
00:31:50
Speaker
as it got a really cool first run pressing on Opaque White. The secondary vinyl market has always been all over the place on this one, but I'm confident one day I'll find the right combination of condition, location, and price to add this gem to my collection and let it join the other three versions of Unplugged in New York I've already got on standard black wax.
00:32:09
Speaker
Nirvana's legendary Unplugged has probably cast the longest shadow of the show's run, as even in recent years it has continued to amass additional platinum selling certifications, most recently certified eight times platinum in February of 2020. Also, two of its most iconic visual elements, Cobain's lefty flip to 1959 Martin acoustic guitar and his fuzzy green cardigan, have sold astoundingly well at auction.
00:32:33
Speaker
In October of 2019, the Cardigan sold for over $330,000, and in June of 2020, his guitar sold for over $6 million, dollars making it the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction.
The Unplugged Collection, Volume 1
00:32:46
Speaker
As far as culturally significant zeitgeist-defining musical instruments go, that's a pretty spot-on price tag in my book.
00:32:53
Speaker
As further evidence of Unplug's growing foothold in the 90s cultural landscape, 94 housed its own collection of super fun pop culture pop-up moments as well. Just to mention a couple of my favorites here. First, when the Grammy winning soundtrack to the Oscar winning Tom Hanks Denzel Washington movie Philadelphia was released in January of 94,
00:33:12
Speaker
Not one, but two of its songs were released as physical singles with official unplugged tracks for their B-sides. The lesser recognized of the two singles, Neil Young's title track, Philadelphia, featured the surprise rarity String Man from his 93 unplugged episode as one of its B-sides. which was also available on his Unplugged album. But the second, Springsteen's Oscar and Grammy-winning global chart-topping monster hit Streets of Philadelphia featured a whopping three B-sides pulled from his 92 Unplugged session, only one of which had been previously released on his Unplugged album. The other two B-sides were exclusive to the VHS release and to this unassociated single. While I don't think there's much of a grander point to extrapolate here, I do think it's a real fun nugget of random party trivia.
00:33:57
Speaker
The other two pop culture pop-up moments from 94 that I'll briefly hit on kind of span the gamut of evidencing the interesting cultural reach Unplugged had during this era. On the um Otter end was a decidedly non-acoustic album by the Muppets called Kermit Unpigged, which, while not exactly acoustic bass by any stretch, did feature 10 Muppet-filled musical numbers and a pretty impressive guest list.
00:34:22
Speaker
including duets with Ozzy Osbourne, Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Buffett, and Vince Gill, along with some comedic interstitials featuring Lily Tomlin. Even as a child of the 80s with an undeniably muppet-shaped branding seared into my psyche, this album is straight-up bananas, and the winky title and cover art featuring Kermit wearing a semi-clapton echoing shirt and jacket ensemble while holding an acoustic guitar are the only things even tangentially associated with Unplug's popularity. It would be kind of bizarre to do an episode on this album, but we'll see how things go. The other one, though, at least for me, certainly pegs the other cool end of the spectrum. If for no other reason, then it's a song I truly love by an artist I really admire. Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues was the hidden track on Todd Snyder's debut album Songs for the Daily Planet, and it's quite a 94 timestamp gem.
00:35:12
Speaker
The song itself is a humorously sardonic, firmly tongue-in-cheek, early Dylan-style talking blues number with a lyrical splash of Neil Young thrown in to season the chorus. The playfully skewering narrative quickly outlines the rise and fall of an unsuccessful alternative band that moves to Seattle to start playing grunge, but instead goes for the gimmick of not actually playing any music at all. Silence. Music's original alternative, Snyder Playfully Sings.
00:35:38
Speaker
As part of the getting signed MTV to Rolling Stone to Grammys pipeline, Snyder sings of a stop off at MTV Unplugged and well, I'll just let him
00:36:17
Speaker
funny. It's a great snapshot commentary on the early 90s alt-rock scene and was even briefly a minor hit on alt-rock radio during the winter of 94. It's really fantastic. You should definitely track down the whole thing and give it a spin.
1995 Season Opener: Hole's Performance
00:36:30
Speaker
four During the 1994 season, Unplugged took a brief pause in their forward-facing, cultural-impacting creative campaign by releasing their first retrospective compilation, The Unplugged Collection, Volume 1. The tracklist was nicely split between some artists who had released their Unplugs as either albums or B-sides, but more importantly, it featured an incredible amount of previously unreleased offerings from acts like Katie Lang, Soul Asylum, Lenny Kravitz, and selfishly most important to me, my beloved R.E.M. This wouldn't be the last time Unplugged offered up some really cool compilations with unreleased non-album rarities. See you next episode in Part 3. But the first one, because it came so early in the run, had some really nice Season 1 gems from acts like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Don Henley, and Elton John that you couldn't get anywhere else. I'll eventually be digging into all of these incredibly cool Unplugged compilations, at least the four official ones, in a separate episode that I think is gonna be a lot of fun. Alright, last note for 1994.
00:37:29
Speaker
I know I've been filling up the uh-uh plugged penalty box pretty quickly, but 1994 brought out, to me, the most egregious of the bunch. In April of 1994, the boomer daydream turned money printing reality of an Eagles reunion occurred via the Hell freezes over concert special that aired on MTV.
00:37:46
Speaker
Now, I'm not exactly sure why this particular show gets constantly framed as an MTV Unplugged show, but it constantly does, and it always bothers me so deeply on admittedly irrational, but no less visceral levels. Yes, I know it was an MTV production, but no one on the MTV Unplugged crew even worked on it. Yes, it was a highly touted reunion show, just like the Rod Stewart Ronnie Wood episode and the Page & Plant Unledded project.
00:38:13
Speaker
but just being a big rock reunion on its own did not make an unplugged show at the time. I mean, only half of the Hell freezes over songs were even played on acoustic guitars, and those were songs that were already originally recorded on acoustic guitars. For this, possibly only to me, Travesty, I place blame equally at the feet of the Eagles and MTV. For the Eagles part, I think they appreciated the extra street cred and didn't necessarily care to correct anyone who made the error at the time.
00:38:40
Speaker
Also, I've read a few interviews with Don Henley and Joe Walsh over the years, where stories about playing MTV Unplugged, which they both did as solo artists, and stories about the popularity of Hell Freezes Over, can be cleverly merged together to give the illusion of being the same thing. For MTV's part, well, just listen to the sly rhetorical gymnastics in this Best of Unplugged Week commercial from December of 1990. It's the best of MTV Unplugged Week, with the MTV Unplugged Collection.
00:39:11
Speaker
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. The Eagles' hell freezes over and the world premiere of Bob Dylan Unplugged. The best of MTV Unplugged week. The event that asks the musical question, what year is it? All this week at eight.
00:39:28
Speaker
Did you catch that framing? While they technically didn't refer to it as an unplugged episode itself, they stealthily sandwiched it between a bunch of other unplugged episodes and intentionally chose to just casually re-air it during the best of unplugged week. I know and am completely self-aware that this is me being the Grandpa Simpson Old Man Yells at Cloud meme, but still, Eagle's Hell Freezes Over is the most blatantly egregious of all unplugged charlatans. So straight to the box with a lot of you guys.
00:39:56
Speaker
Okay,
International Expansion in 1995
00:39:57
Speaker
Shelby, you need some juice. Let's just move on to 1995. The Unplugged crew kicked off 1995 pretty much at the apexed plateau of their street cred cool meets well-oiled machine production style. They started the season by relocating to the scenic Brooklyn Academy of Music to film five separate episodes over two days. The first day, February 14th, featured back-to-back sessions with the Cranberries and Hole.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yes, that's correct. Courtney Love spent the very first Valentine's Day after Kurt Cobain's death recording her own band's episode of the TV show that her recently deceased husband's band had not only perfected, but pretty much redefined entirely. In fact, Cobain's presence seemed pretty inescapable throughout the whole show due to a variety of different reminders, including Cobain's mother and Francis Bean, the young daughter he shared with Love, both being in the audience,
00:40:48
Speaker
as well as Love's decision to play a trio of rarities either written or co-written by Cobain. First, there was the song Old Age, which Cobain initially wrote for Nirvana and even demoed for possible inclusion on Nevermind before setting it aside, after which Love later added new lyrics and released it as a whole song.
00:41:07
Speaker
Surprisingly enough, it was also one of the songs that in Nirvana practiced during their unplugged rehearsal, but didn't end up playing during the show. There was also Drunken Rio, which was later renamed Closing Time, that had originally sprung forth during an impromptu jam session between Cobain, Love, and whole drummer Patty Schimel, with all three getting co-write credit.
00:41:26
Speaker
And third, there was the surprising debut of an unreleased Cobain pen song, Love Was Calling, You've Got No Right, which most folks know as the posthumously released Nirvana single, You Know You're Right, from the 2002 self-titled Greatest Hits album. Love thrilled Nirvana fans with this unexpectedly new Cobain tune, while also giving proper framing that this wasn't a new whole song or anything. Here's how Courtney Touchingly-ish introed it during their unplugged taping. Alright, this song, Gurt wrote last song almost.
00:41:56
Speaker
But and we kind of aren't. You can't do it very well. But we'll try, because it's Valentine's Day, and maybe he can hear it. Needless to say, there will be a lot to get into when I do the whole Unplugged episode, and I think there's a lot of fun stuff to discuss outside of the whole curt of it all. I mean, right off the top, I'm pretty sure this was the only whole show to feature a harpist and cellist. Plus, the mixture of covers by Duran Duran, The Crystals, and Donovan really spiced up their setlist. Plus, Drew Barrymore and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon were there in the audience, and I've already mentioned how much I love that
Kiss Reunion and Pop Culture Impact
00:42:28
Speaker
stuff.
00:42:28
Speaker
The second day of that mid-February taping was slotted for a triple bill filming schedule of Cheryl Crow, Live, and Melissa Etheridge, who brought along Bruce Springsteen as her special musical guest. Her amazing dual acoustic duet of Thunder Road with Springsteen proved to be a cool sneak peek at his forthcoming solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad era that he would kick off later in the year.
00:43:01
Speaker
Live's episode was also one of those quintessential, if you like this band you're gonna love their Unplugged. And I've always really enjoyed how much it showed off A. what an insanely great bass player they have in Patrick Dahlheimer and B. how great their taste and cover songs are via their rapturous Unplugged version of Vic Chestnut's Supernatural.
00:43:29
Speaker
See the natural
00:43:47
Speaker
I'll also make a quick side note here that the truly phenomenal Sheryl Crow episode is probably one of my favorite never released but most listened to bootlegs, and it's a genuine travesty that it's never come out as an official album. I mean, Crow playing an accordion on Strong Enough, her solo piano version of runba Run Baby Run,
00:44:05
Speaker
A reworked quasi-beat poet take on All I Want to Do, a not yet released Love is a Good Thing, covers of Fats Domino, Led Zeppelin, and a little police thrown in. Dude, I cannot wait to do an episode on this one. It's a real grab bag of awesomeness.
00:44:44
Speaker
Of the five episodes recorded during that two-day taping session in mid-February, the Etheridge episode came out first. It aired that March. And the others debuted as part of a really cool four-night run in mid-April that went whole, cranberries, live, and Cheryl Crowe. One of the nights even featured a really cool behind-the-scenes documentary called Inside Unplugged that was hosted by Tabitha Soren. And just in case that might sound like too much unplugged to cram into one week, just know we were all 100% here for it.
00:45:13
Speaker
This week don't worry, we'd never do that to you. It's MTV Unplugged Week, premiering unplugged performances by Hole, Live, The Cranberries, plus Cheryl Crowe, Melissa Athridge, MTV News Inside Unplugged, a behind-the-scenes look at the show's origins and evolution, and Courtney Long, the whole story. MTV Unplugged Week, all this week on MTV. Oddly enough, whether it was due to the fears about flooding the market with unplugged content or various other reasons, it's surprising to me that none of those five episodes, as genuinely great as they all were, have ever been released as proper standalone albums or even as bonus albums attached to anniversary reissues. Alas, there's always hope that we'll get them someday, maybe some future record store day or as part of any 30th anniversary releases coming out in 2025.
00:46:11
Speaker
hint hint, nudge nudge, please please, with sugar on top. Also of note, between the February Filmmings and the April Ayrings, Unplugged had another big moment at the Grammys via Tony Bennett's Unplugged. The surprisingly hip anomaly of an album took home two awards, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance and The Vaunted Album of the Year, just like Clapton had done two years before.
00:46:33
Speaker
The almost 70-year-old Bennett even performed live at the 95 Grammys, bringing out Katie Lang to revisit their stunning duet on Moonglow from his original episode. That same night, Sheryl Crow took home three Grammys, including Record of the Year and Best New Artist, which made for some nice buzz going into her Unplugged episode that aired the month after the Grammys.
00:46:53
Speaker
Unplugged's 1995 season also featured a new batch of episodes recorded exclusively for MTV's international segments that mostly aired across that summer. They included Argentinian singer-songwriter Charlie Garcia, Mexican alt rocker's Cafe Tacuba, Chilean rocker's Los Trac, and the oft christened grandfathers of Mexican rock, El Tri.
00:47:15
Speaker
All four bands had their episodes broadcast either on MTV Latin America or MTV Brazil, and all four even got their own proper album releases in their respective markets. Stateside, viewers would get two more episodes that fall, as the unplugged crew had returned to Sony Music Studios over the summer to film episodes with rockabilly crooner Chris Isaac and theatrical rock gods Kiss. Chris Isaac and his band played an amazingly and deceptively understated set facing each other in the round,
00:47:45
Speaker
which evoked Elvis Presley's 68 comeback special with more than just Isaac's photogenic visage and casually cool slickback dude.
00:48:01
Speaker
Kiss, however, proved to be another widely celebrated episode that showcased just how much power the show had to create outsized moments in pop culture history. Recorded during their first traveling Kiss convention retrospective tour, the band featured a variety of their old outfits and props as part of their stage setup, and they transformed some of their biggest, loudest hits and deep cuts into rarefied acoustic gems.
00:48:25
Speaker
The biggest story of the night, however, appeared in their special guest selections, as Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons shocked fans by eventually bringing out original members Ace Freelee and Peter Criss to play on a couple songs, reuniting the classic lineup for the first time since 1979.
00:48:56
Speaker
The explosive response to Kiss is Unplugged no doubt led to the huge moment at the following year's Grammys when none other than Tupac Shakur announced the original foursome who sauntered out clad in their iconic 70s era makeup and costumes for the first time in 15 years to present an award to Hootie and the Blowfish, Tupac, Kiss, and Hootie, a gloriously 90s fever dream collab if ever there
Iconic Moments: Hootie and Oasis
00:49:20
Speaker
was one. One more cool side note about Kiss Unplugged Not only was it the only US-based 95 episode to get an official album release, but it also became only the second full-length unplugged album to get a gorgeous-looking color wax variant. Back in early 96, Kiss had a special limited edition run pressed on this swanky marbled yellow vinyl, and it's a dream of mine to own one myself one day, just as soon as I can find a clean copy for less than a couple hundred bucks. One day you shall be mine, Kiss unplugged on yellow vinyl.
00:49:49
Speaker
Oh yeah, there's also a cool story in the book All These Things That I've Done by legendary MTV VJ Matt Penfield about how the Unplugged team actually had to call in his assistants to help get the Kiss Unplugged episode greenlit, and how that dominoed into a couple events that ended with Penfield getting to sing lead vocals backed by Gene, Ace, and Peter during a rehearsal session while they were all waiting on Paul to show up.
00:50:13
Speaker
One more quick note about this season before moving on. While there were less episodes overall, the season still felt like it had some substantial level-ups, especially in the individualized stage designs. As I said, the Kiss episode featured a bunch of their old costumes and stage props, Hole had a plethora of baby dolls strewn all over the place. The Cranberries achieved their desired junk shop vibes with old school dress forms, steamer trunks, and kitchen chairs hanging from the ceiling. And Melissa Etheridge underscored being the first artist to play without a band since Elton's show back in season one by keeping the stage as brutally stark as possible.
00:50:50
Speaker
However, I think it was Sheryl Crow's cozy living room tableau of comfy couches, chairs, Ottomans, lamps, and knickknacks that sort of locked in the de facto go-to vibe for a ton of bands who decided to incorporate an unplugged style miniset into their own live shows.
00:51:07
Speaker
I can't tell you how many shows I saw in the mid to late 90s where an otherwise electrified band paused the show mid-set to roll out a rug, plop a thrift store couch down on it, and play a few laid back acoustic numbers. Even the openers would do it. I did it myself countless times. Concerts, church youth groups, school functions, you name it.
00:51:26
Speaker
I'm telling you, all throughout the 90s, literally anything was susceptible to being made either unplugged or extreme almost always without the E and we took no prisoners in either area.
George Michael's Vocal Showcase
00:51:37
Speaker
Alrighty, let's keep it rolling. 1996, here we come. 1996 proved to be another adventurous year in regard to filming locations as the unplugged crew uprooted their whole operation and set up shop and some exciting locales to open and close the season.
00:51:53
Speaker
They kicked off 96 by literally giving it the old college try and traveled to the University of South Carolina to film Hootie and the Blowfish outdoors on a part of their campus quad called the Horseshoe. Along with essentially being the musical embodiment of a college football mascot already, Hootie was also one of the most inescapable bands of the mid-90s thanks to their double diamond certified debut. Friends, that is 20 million albums shipped.
00:52:18
Speaker
For those that don't recall the mid-90s MTV and radio scene, or maybe weren't even around for it, it's kind of hard to explain just how unavoidably ubiquitous Hootie seemed to be. And not just for the typical moment that some bands experience, but for almost a solid two-year period. Even if you weren't a Hootie fan, which I most assuredly was not, you seemingly could not get away from them or their songs.
00:52:41
Speaker
Okay, some real quick, admittedly belaboring contextualization. Hoodie released their first album, Cracked Rearview, and its lead single, Hold My Hand, during the summer of 1994. That's the same summer of Weezer's Blue Album, Ill Communication, Definitely Maybe, Southern Playalistic, Illmatic, singles like Juicy, Regulate, and Fantastic Voyage, Nine Inch Nails, and Green Day at an incredibly muddy Woodstock 94, The Good 90s Woodstock,
00:53:08
Speaker
You get the picture. Hootie had zero chance of getting through all that, at least to my 14-year-old self. By the end of 94, when they released their second single, Letter Cry, which is coincidentally the only Hootie song I do appreciate, thanks in large part to the lyrical shout-out to Michael Stipe.
00:53:25
Speaker
By that time, Cracked Rearview hadn't even gone platinum yet, but things were quickly about to change for them in the new year. Come January of 1995, the album goes platinum. In March, double platinum. By the album's one year mark in July, five times platinum.
00:53:40
Speaker
by October Diamond, 10 million. At the time they recorded their Unplugged episode in April of 96, it was sitting at 13 times platinum and still going. They released their second album, Fairweather Johnson, the day after their Unplugged aired. And you might think, wow, having their debut still skyrocketing must have helped sells on the follow-up release. Um, not exactly. Folks didn't necessarily say, We are hoodied out. No more hoodie please. They just said, no new hoodie please. We have not yet gotten our fill of cracked rear view. While Fairweather Johnson went double platinum pretty quickly, a worthy feat, all things considered, it just as quickly stalled out and fell off before the summer of 96 even ended. But cracked rearview just kept selling. January of 97, 15 times platinum. Okay, you get the point. The last official certification by the RIAA was in 2018, and it was at 21 times platinum.
00:54:35
Speaker
While I am not one of the 21 million people who bought Cracked Rearview, oddly enough, I'm pretty confident I would be one of the folks who'd buy a copy of Hootie's 96 Unplugged concert if it ever got released. I mean, they had incredible special guests like the late Nancy Griffith, Toad the Wet Sprocket's Glenn Phillips, and virtuoso violinist Lily Hayden. They played covers of Tom Waits and Vic Chestnut. Plus, I know they at least played Let or Cry. Okay, enough Hootie talk. Let's keep it moving on the 96 season. um
00:55:09
Speaker
Getting back to the adventurous travel point, the 96 season ended with a stunning pair of shows recorded in London. The volatile Oasis Minus Liam show at Royal Festival Hall and the awe-inspiring, surprisingly underrated George Michael episode filmed at Three Mills Studio. There was a ton of drama leading up to the Oasis show, which, you know, par for the course for the Gallagher brothers. But in a rather surprising move for such an important moment, Liam couldn't slash wouldn't do the show leah ain't go to rivers tonight cause he's got sore throats so
00:55:42
Speaker
stop with the ugly four This move would have caused many lesser bands just to cancel, but not Oasis, especially at that climactic moment of their dual-continent Britpop dominance. I mean, their Unplugged was filmed just a week or two after their legendary two-night Nebworth gig where they played to over 125,000 people each night.
00:56:02
Speaker
Noel, who was the band's solo songwriter and had already handled lead vocals on songs like Don't Look Back in Anger, Half a World Away, and Talk Tonight, flawlessly handed lead vocals the whole night, while a quote-unquote sore-throated Liam heckled him from the balcony.
00:56:24
Speaker
As a huge Oasis fan, I think their Unplugged represents a super unique show in their catalog and I would love to see it get a proper release, somehow, someway. Don't worry though, Liam eventually did get to do an Unplugged show, but more on that in my next episode.
R&B Expansion in 1997
00:56:38
Speaker
Quick aside here, I initially wrote a couple sentences here about how in the 90s Unplugged was the chosen site for more than one big band reunion and since the dreams for an Oasis reunion were only getting more feverish every year that if it ever were to happen blah blah blah. Well, much like with the 10,000 Maniacs vinyl situation I mentioned in my last episode, I also had to hastily but happily rewrite a little bit here because during pre-production it was announced that the Gallagher brothers had buried the hatchet and were going to be touring as Oasis in 2025. While they didn't announce an unplugged show, Yet, it's still, of course, as possible as anything else. I must say that I'm eerily two-for-two in wish-casting some unplugged related magic that seems to be materializing before our eyes. Stay tuned to hear what might get conjured up in the final Explainer episode in two weeks.
00:57:29
Speaker
Back to 1996. Regarding the George Michael unplug that closed out the 96 season, I'm really excited to devote an episode to this one because first, it was a really interesting point in his career. He was promoting the album Older, which was his first album back after a bit of a break following the massively successful period of Listen Without Prejudice, Freedom 90, his Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me duet with Elton John hitting number one, and his appearance at the tribute concert for Freddie Mercury.
00:57:58
Speaker
Also, he hadn't officially come out yet, but his newest singles like Jesus to a Child and Fast Love really had the press ramping up their invasive speculations about his sexuality. Amidst all of that, his Unplugged is just a flawless vocal showcase, and his cover of Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me is an absolute upper echelon unplugged cover on par with Mariah and Nirvana and Ten Thousand Maniacs. Let's hear a little bit of that honey magic now.
00:58:38
Speaker
Now, the middle of the 1996 season featured more conventionally filmed episodes recorded back at Brooklyn Academy of Music, including a really nice, hits-packed set from Seal, the mind-blowingly great Double Barrel Piano Harpsichord Tori Amos performance, and the haunting, deeply emotional Alice in Chains episode.
00:59:06
Speaker
This is another one I really can't wait to dive into because there are so many beautiful and heartbreaking things crashing into each other during the Alice in Chains one. It was the first time the band had played together in two and a half years and the only time they played with a second guitarist. And although Lane Staley's substance abuse issues were clearly at an untenable state, some sort of muscle memory or something took over because he was able to harness his uniquely brilliant vocal delivery in a way that matched the tenor of the band's songwriting perfectly.
00:59:36
Speaker
There's a reason that the Alice in Chains Unplugged album was the last big multi-platinum selling radio hit generating release of the 90s era Unplugged run, which is even more notable because this ended up being the last major performance of their career with Staley. That summer, they played a handful of shows supporting Kiss's reunion tour, but Staley OD'd after one of those shows, and even though it wasn't fatal, they never played another show together before his eventual passing in 2002.
01:00:02
Speaker
There's a lot to mourn, celebrate, and reflect on when I get to this episode, and it's going to be an amazing one to unpack. And yes, I'll of course spend a little time on the load-era Metallica ribbing, friends don't let friends get friends haircuts, brouhaha.
01:00:21
Speaker
One more note about 96. It's a tale as old as time that when anything becomes a pop cultural king of the mountain like Unplugged did in the 90s, it's going to spawn its fair share of knockoffs and copycats. Throughout the decade, and even into the present day, the general term Unplugged itself, with a non-copyright infringing lowercase u, mind you, was generously applied to almost any musical endeavor with an acoustic anchored ethos.
01:00:46
Speaker
But in 1996, MTV Unplugged, the official entity, got its most major, mirror-self quasi-competitor with the launch of the newly intimately live musical performance TV show, VH1 Storytellers. They'd even get another top-notch emulator the following year when PBS launched its equally awesome Sessions at West 54th show that ran for a few seasons.
01:01:09
Speaker
More than just a flash-in-the-pan attempt at catching some of Unplug's residual runoff, VH1's storytellers tried to carve its own niche by loosening up the perceived acoustic-only restrictions, though for the most part the episodes ended up being very much acoustic-based. And they put extra focus on the artists' narrative song introductions and onstage banter, you know, emphasizing the storytelling aspect of the show.
01:01:32
Speaker
While VH1 storytellers naturally never carried that cool kid's street cred that Unplugged generated in spades, I mean, me and my middle school friends used to differentiate between the two rival music channels as MTV and MomTV. It did still churn out some really impressive episodes and even a few albums and DVD releases. Though, once again, they weren't on that same culture impacting, radio hit generating, platinum selling, Grammy winning level of Unplugged releases.
01:01:59
Speaker
Understandably, there was some overlap between the two shows' rosters over the years, and in fact, within VH1 Storytellers' first season of 1996, almost half of their 9-episode season 1 roster, namely Elvis Costello, Sting, The Black Crows, and Melissa Etheridge, had already done MTV Unplugged episodes.
01:02:17
Speaker
I'm sure references to VH1 storytellers will pop up a couple times during my Unplugged Revisited episodes, but I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I'll do a standalone episode discussing its bizarro world relationship to Unplugged. We'll see. More to come on that. On to 1997. The year Unplugged remembered that R and&B was a genre. I kid, I kid.
01:02:38
Speaker
Eh, kinda. But seriously, 8 seasons in, the 97 unplugged season really did feel like an intentional refresh was afoot. Musically, the genre palette got a much needed and very welcomed infusion of R and&B. And aesthetically, they even debuted a new logo. As I mentioned in my part 1 explainer episode, that classic unplugged logo debuted during the 93 season and it ended up sticking around for four years carrying the show all the way through the 96 season. The 97 logo got a shiny new reworking. This one characterized by a metallic sheened red and silver revampining. Okay, let's get into some neo soul singing, Kate Bush covering nine inch nails interpolating couch jumping fun.
Babyface and Collaborative Highlights
01:03:30
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes. Maxwell's geniously funky reworking of Nine Inch Nails closer. Just one of the many standout moments in his unplugged set that contributed to making the 97 season a truly magical, truly inspired chapter in the show's original 90s run.
01:03:45
Speaker
97 actually boasts two of my all-time favorite unplugged episodes. The first being Maxwell, which, while we did get a beautiful album out of it, can we pretty please get a U.S. vinyl repressing at some point because those international pressing prices are scandalous.
01:04:01
Speaker
Also, a fun note about Maxwell's Unplugged couch. It was just rented for the day by the crew specifically for Maxwell's stage vibe, but Unplugged producer Alex Coletti liked it so much that he bought it for himself and had it as his main living room couch for the next 20 years. Who knows where it is now, but I believe an Indiana Jones level of indignancy applies here. My other standout favorite of the 97 season is the mesmerizing Fiona Apple episode, broadcast almost a year to the date after the release of her triple platinum debut album, Tidal, in just a month or so before her unintentionally headline-grabbing Maya Angelou quoting speech at the 97 VMAs. You shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself.
01:04:48
Speaker
Go with yourself indeed, Miss Apple. Thank you very much for the reminder. While her stellar Unplugged has sadly never been released as an album, not yet at least, but one can still hope, there was a promo-only VHS that was circulated around the time that featured four of the night's standout performances.
01:05:04
Speaker
It featured the then-only 19-year-old phenom delivering a seasoned masterclass, an impassioned, no-strings-attached live performance elevation, through a mixture of her three big hits at the time, her top 40 debut single, Shadowboxer, which featured Apple on piano, its phenomenally cool follow-up, Sleep to Dream, and the soon-to-be Grammy Award-winning Criminal, which hadn't even been officially released as a single at the time of her Unplugged.
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Speaker
However, to me the real standout on that unplugged VHS was her ethereal cover of Jimi Hendrix's posthumously released Angel. And although she may have been on the fence about how the audience was going to receive it, I mean, here's how she intro'd it.
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Speaker
okay so if you're a fan of jimmy hendris you're either gonna really like me or really really not like me at the end of this There was clearly nothing to worry about, as Apple and her band gave some serious wings to the song's liquid melodies.
01:06:12
Speaker
The majority of the smaller 97 season was filmed across a couple multi-episode sessions in early May. Alongside Maxwell and Apple, the crew also filmed episodes with Erika Badu, The Wallflowers, Black Street, and Jewel. A quick note about each one.
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Speaker
eica badu Touring on her debut album Baduism that had just been released a couple months before her episode was recorded, this incredibly vibey, vocally enchanting episode 100% deserved an album release. And some folks confusingly thought it did get one, because Badu actually released a chart-topping live album in November of 1997. But it wasn't from this unplugged performance.
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Speaker
From that album, just titled Live, she released a hit single, the wonderfully iconic Tyrone, which sadly was not a part of her unplugged set, or at least the broadcast version of it, but sometimes gets confused as such just because of the timing of it all. But for a taste of her incomparable unplugged, here's a little bit of On and On.
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Speaker
the wallflowers. this is one of those unplugged episodes that i always reference when talking about ones that even though they didn't have any of those larger unplugged moments you know wild special guests surprising cover songs dramatic reinvention of their own material if you were a fan of their music it was a really cool context within which to see and hear them perform live I'm a huge fan of Jacob Dillon's voice and songwriting, so I think this is a really great live performance of the band during their monster bringing down the horse era, and I wouldn't hate it if we were to finally see this bad boy come out on vinyl one day. Also, fun side note, the Wallflower's keyboardist at that time, Rami Joffee, he's been in Foo Fighters since, like, 2005. So along with Dave Grohl and Pat Smear, I think Foo Fighters has the most active members of any current band who appeared on Unplugged with a different band.
01:08:11
Speaker
I totally get that's a random, useless factoid that is maybe only interesting to me, but drop it during your next awkward party convo and see how many new friends it gets you.
01:08:27
Speaker
blackret This one rarely gets mentioned in conversations about Unplugged, but there's some really memorable things about this episode from the massively influential Teddy Riley & Co. From a musical perspective, Blackstreet's four-part harmonies and vocal interplay were astounding enough on their own. But when mixed together with their backing band and 14-member horn and string orchestra, it was like watching two behemoths of musical showmanship doing an intricate dance together. It was insanely good stuff.
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Speaker
They brought out Queen Pen, but sadly No Dre for an orchestra-enriched version of No Diggity. They really nailed the live band sampling of the DeBarge riff in Don't Leave Me, and they slow-jammed the Beatles even better than they did on the original album version of Can't Buy Me Love from another level. Also, throw in the fact they cut a striking aesthetic in their matching cornflower blue oversized blazers, and that they got a proper onstage intro from MTV VJ Bill Bellamy, and you've got a legit all-around classic on your hands.
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Here's a little piece of Money Can't Buy Me Love with Chauncey on lead vocals.
01:09:41
Speaker
Acoustic folk singer Jewel seemed a more than perfect fit for the unplugged stage and even cracked a joke about the foregone conclusion of it all. It's funny, they asked me to do MTV Unplugged and I'm like, I thought I was. Unplugged. Like, how do I get more unplugged?
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Speaker
But instead of just gracing the stage with only her acoustic guitar, she flipped the script and treated fans to a kinda uncharacteristic at the time, full-band jewel show. Her set list was an even bigger treat, as it included fresh versions of all of her big hits from her 12x Platinum 95 debut, Pieces of View, as well as some new, not-yet-released, but soon-to-be hits like Hands and Down So Long that wouldn't come out for another year until her sophomore album, Spirit, in November of 98.
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Speaker
For me, the two big standouts from that night were her acapella cover of Cole Porter's Too Darn Hot and the smoky jazz reworking of Who Will Save Your Soul featuring Joshua Redmond on saxophone. Check this out.
01:10:53
Speaker
The 97th season featured two other non-Brooklyn Academy of Music episodes, both of which were recorded less than a month apart at New York's famed Hammerstein Ballroom in late September. The first was with Canadian rocker Brian Adams, who put together an impressive collection of his 80s and 90s hits backed by a really solid band. A couple of the songs even got spiced up with Irish pipes and whistles and a 16-member string ensemble of Juilliard students conducted by renowned composer-conductor Michael Caiman.
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Adams's Unplugged became a top 10 album in multiple international markets, and it even generated two minor radio hits in the States.
Transitioning to the New Millennium
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His early 80s synth rocker turned orchestral ballad I'm Ready and The Brand New Cut Back to You, which became a top 20 hit in the US and the UK, and a double number one in Canada. Even if you haven't heard this song in a couple decades, I bet you can probably still hum along with its pop-polished, VH1-coded chorus.
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Speaker
The other 97 episode was with Babyface, and let me tell you, Joe Walsh may have not understood the and friends assignment back in 1990, but Babyface totally took the concept to another level. If you're somehow not familiar with Babyface's repertoire, let me just contextualize him real quick.
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Speaker
While he is an artist in his own right, the vast majority of his successes, almost 30 number one hits, over a dozen Grammys, immeasurable impact on 80s and 90s pop and R and&B through artists like Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, Karen White, Bobby Brown, My Beloved Hometown Heroes, TLC, just to name a few, all of that mostly came through his talents as a producer and songwriter.
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Speaker
So instead of approaching his unplugged from only the artist side of his career, he cleverly anchored a show around some of his most recognizable collaborations, and invited a wildly impressive group of guest artists to bring them all to life. Some of Babyface's big name guests were actually making their second unplugged appearances,
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Speaker
including Eric Clapton, Babyface had produced Clapton's triple Grammy-winning single, Change the World, Shawneece, who covered Tony Braxton's first big hit, Breathe Again, which was written and co-produced by Babyface, and Casey and Jojo of Jodeci, who sang on the song, I Care About You, which was written and performed by Babyface on the Soul Food soundtrack as the in-movie band Milestone, which was Babyface, Casey and Jojo, and Babyface's two brothers, Kevin and Melvin, all five of which sang the song together on Unplugged. During the show, Kevin and Melvin also helped Babyface perform a medley of Boys to Men songs that Babyface had originally written and co-produced, I'll Make Love to You and End of the Road. For that medley, Babyface rounded out his brotherly trio with Mark Nelson, a singer-songwriter who was actually an original member of Boys to Men before they got signed, but who couldn't follow the group to Motown due to some contractual chaos with their previous management. But anyways, long complicated story for another time.
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Speaker
Babyface had another special guest for his unplugged that you may have heard of, Mr. Steve Lynn Hardaway Judkins Morris, aka Stevie Wonder, who came out to perform two songs with Babyface. The first was a tender cover of Gone Too Soon, a song that Michael Jackson had originally released on his 91 album Dangerous and had dedicated to Ryan White, the teenager who contacted HIV AIDS from a contaminated blood transfusion in the early 80s and who sadly passed away in 1990.
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Speaker
Babyface dedicated his Unplugged Duet of the song to Princess Diana, who had just recently passed away in a tragic paparazzi instigated car crash just a little over a month before Babyface's Unplugged was filmed. The second Unplugged Duet between Babyface and Wonder was How Come, How Long, which the duo had just released that summer as the fourth single from Babyface's album, The Day.
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Speaker
The single has the odd distinction of being nominated for Back to Back Grammys, the studio version in 98 and the unplugged version in 99, and sadly losing twice. It still became a global top 10 hit on radio though. Oh yeah, Sheila E was also in his unplugged band as well. I'm telling you man, Babyface packed his unplugged to the rafters with hits and guests. Revisit this one if it's been a minute for you. And just in case, here's a little Chinese covering Tony to tie Joe.
01:15:24
Speaker
While we didn't know it at the time, 1997 would actually end up being the last full-on, quote-unquote, season of the 90s unplugged run. There would still be a couple more one-off episodes before the decade ended, but for all intents and purposes, the 97 season turned out to be the official bookend of the proper season-over-season run of the show. Pour one out, end of an era indeed.
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Speaker
1998 began a pretty fallow period for Unplugged. Sure, there were still popular Unplugged songs from prior years getting played on the radio, and MTV was never short of reruns of older episodes. In fact, they were actually making it a little bit easier to revisit some of those older performances by releasing a handful of VHS compilations that thankfully included bands who didn't get albums or video releases, like Indigo Girls, Sinead O'Connor, Sheryl Crow, Seal, Oasis, The Cure, etc.
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Speaker
They released three VHS comps the year prior under the Unplugged Finest Moments banner and then two more in 1998, one called Soul of R and&B and one called Ladies Night, with Miss Mary J. Blige masterfully pulling double duty by appearing on both.
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Speaker
But even so, there wasn't really anything new going on with Unplugged in 1998. In fact, the only new Unplugged content I can even think of from that year turned out to be a hilarious parody that, if you were a fan of this artist, was actually a cruel joke due to how awesome the reality of it all would have been. I'm speaking, of course, of the random little Weird Al Yankovic Unplugged commercial that played on the channel for a minute.
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Speaker
You see, in the late 90s, incredibly popular musical satirist, music video god Weird Al changed up his look a bit from his immediately recognizable glasses, mustache, curly hair, and Hawaiian shirt ensemble that he had been rocking throughout the 80s and early 90s.
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Speaker
By the late 90s, he was first seen without glasses or a mustache in, of all things, a Hanson music video as part of this little Titanic-themed skit. Surprisingly, people really freaked out at this, all things considered, pretty tame aesthetic change-up, and so of course Weird Al decided to have a little fun with it.
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Speaker
a lot of people are wondering about the new look, you know, what it means. And that's not really the point. I've decided to get back to the core of what I'm about. And that's always been the music. The commercial itself was just trying to poke a bit of fun about Weird Al becoming more mature and serious and wanting to use the unplugged platform to, quote, get back to the music. The commercial then continues with absolutely amazing acoustic versions of some of his biggest parody hits. Amish Paradise.
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Like a surgeon. Like a surgeon.
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Cutting for the very first time. And of course his glorious, laylified version of Eden.
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I cannot tell you how much I wanted this thing to be true. I think, had this not just been a meta-parody jokey commercial, that the real thing would have been incredible. Years later, Weird Al would eventually edge closer and closer to an unplugged-style show like this. In 2010, he performed a trio of acoustic songs on NPR's Tiny Desk concert. In 2018, he embarked on the ridiculously self-indulgent, ill-advised Vanity Tour, which was his first tour with just musical performances, no costumes or music videos or theatrics.
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Speaker
And in 2019, he did the strings attached to her, which featured a 40-piece orchestra. But the mind boggles, at least mine does, at how stellar a Weird Al unplugged in the 90s would have been.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
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Speaker
Another brief note about VH1 storytellers here. During the late 90s downtime period for Unplugged, storytellers actually provided a very consistent alternative for getting your mostly acoustic, intimate live show fixed. They ended up running new episodes fairly regularly from 1996 all the way up until about 2002, and then they popped back up again in 2005 with a far more sporadic schedule for another decade or so.
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Speaker
But for me, it was this late 90s period that offered up some of my absolute favorite entries in the storyteller's run. Counting Crows in 97, R.E.M., Sheryl Crow and Natalie Merchant in 98, and Tom Waits, Alanis, and David Bowie in 99. We did get three more official Unplugged episodes in 1999, but again, these certainly weren't framed as part of a new season or anything. They were clearly just one-off specials. Let me take a minute on each one. Decores.
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celebrated Irish pop sibling act Decors were having a bit of a moment in 99 on the back of their sophomore album Talk on Corners which was certified 20 times platinum in Ireland and was the best-selling album of all time in the country for a couple years.
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Speaker
Not being super familiar with much of the band's original material when their Unplugged first aired, I was mostly drawn in by their impeccable choice of covers. Then Lizzie's Old Town, Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing, Fleetwood Mac's Dreams, and of course they totally roped me with their gorgeous, violin-kissed cover of R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts.
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Speaker
Shakira. Latin pop star Shakira also got an unplugged episode in 99, and like the Mariah episode from 92, it proved to be a pretty influential entry in her catalog. Throughout the 90s, Shakira had released four popular Spanish-language studio albums in the Latin American pop market, but had not fully broken out as a mainstream pop act in the States. In fact, it was her unplugged episode and her subsequent Grammy-winning unplugged album that are often credited with helping pave the way for her massive successes here.
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Speaker
From a genre perspective, Shakira's Unplugged is also a substantially influential entry in the discussion of early progenitors in the 2000's Latin pop explosion that followed the 99 class of releases, that included, among others, Ricky Martin's massive live and libido loca global smash hit, J-Lo's If You Had My Love and Waiting for Tonight singles, Enrique Iglesias' chart-topping Bailamo single from the Wild Wild West soundtrack, and Carlos Santana's completely inescapable at the time, Supernatural album.
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Speaker
Throughout the 90s, there continued to be unplugged episodes filmed exclusively for the MTV Latin America and MTV Brazil markets practically every year. I mentioned quite a few in my first episode covering the 89 to 93 years, and after that there had been some other really popular ones, with acts like Soda Stereo and Mana leading into this one.
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Speaker
But it was really Shakira's Unplugged, which was both the first Unplugged to be broadcast completely in Spanish in the US market, and also the first Spanish-language Unplugged that was filmed in New York City instead of MTV's Satellite Studio in Miami. It was her Unplugged that shined the brightest spotlight on this companion lane of Spanish-language Unplugged episodes that were sprinkled throughout the decade.
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Speaker
Alanis. Finally, the absolute pitch-perfect capper to Unplugged's 1999. And without verging too much into hyperbole, possibly the best artistic encapsulation to fully close out the entire 90s chapter of Unplugged was Alanis Morissette. Not only did she have one of the most revolutionary, influential, and best-selling albums of the entire decade with 1995's Jagged Little Pill, she was a vitally creative artist who knew exactly how to make her Unplugged a truly special and truly inspired moment.
01:23:19
Speaker
Not to take too much away from the standalone episode I'm currently working on, but I want to quickly hit on a few things that made her episode such an exemplar culmination of the 90's era run of the show. Musically, she reconceptualized many of her big hits from her first two albums, especially the stunningly reframed You Oughta Know.
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Speaker
Instrumentally, she augmented her band with a string ensemble quintet, and she herself played guitar, harmonica, and flute, which might have been surprising to most who hadn't yet picked up supposed former infatuation junkie. From a set list perspective, she gifted fans a few delicious rarities, like jagged little pills hidden track your house, the b-side only, these are the thoughts,
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Speaker
and previously unreleased live favorites like No Pressure Over Cappuccino and Prince's Familiar. She also dropped a fantastic unplugged cover with a phenomenal take on the police's King of Pain. To also underscore the of the moment freshness of it all, she even seriously nailed her current hit, the top 5 soon to be double-grammied uninvited from the City of Angels soundtrack. I mean seriously, just listen to this.
01:24:35
Speaker
I think MTV could not have picked a better artist to provide the quintessential denouement to Unplug's Imperial era, and they really lucked out with just how special of a performance Morissette delivered. We certainly didn't know at the time that there would be 20 plus more years of episodic Unplugged material ahead of us.
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Speaker
We just knew that if Y2K was in fact going to bring about an apocalyptic dystopian wasteland do-over, Alanis at least gave us one final beautiful unplugged by which the MTV generation could soundtrack their farewell to the 20th century.
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a seven
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three one happy two thousand
01:25:24
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in to Unplugged Revisited. This was part two of my trio of introductory Unplugged 101 explainer episodes. Now that we're officially through the 90s, part three will kick off with the Unplugged 2.0 reboot of 2001, and will take us all the way up to the present moment of this recording in 2024. If it seems kind of odd that part one and part two only covered about five years a piece, while part three will cover almost 25 years, well, it'll all make sense once you give it a listen.
01:25:53
Speaker
As a reminder, if you dig the show, want to share your own unplugged memories, ask a question, request a show topic, or connect with the pod for any reason, there are a couple ways you can get in touch. You can email me at unpluggedrevisited at gmail dot.com, or you can reach out on Twitter at unplugged underscore pod, or you can leave a voicemail that'll maybe get played on the show by dialing 234-REVISIT. That's 234-738-4748.
01:26:21
Speaker
Unplugged 101 Part 3 will be available in two weeks at the same place you're listening to this now. So please take a moment to follow the pod on your platformer's choice so that it'll automatically pop into your feed when it goes live. Until then, my friends, be kind to yourself and look out for each other.