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UR009: MTV Unplugged Compilation Albums (Hits & Rarities) [1994, 2002-2004]
79 Plays2 months ago
Revisit some of Unplugged’s greatest hits and under-the-radar rarities as Will dissects the four “official” Unplugged compilation CDs that came out between 1994 and 2004. Not only do these albums contain some of Unplugged’s most well-known moments (10,000 Maniacs, Alanis Morissette, R.E.M., Alice in Chains, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart) but also some of its most magical performances to have never been released as albums (The Cure, Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow, Elton John, Oasis, The Cranberries, and so many more).
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 Bluesky at @willhodge.bsky.social,
- 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 unpllu
00:00:10
Speaker
Unplugged. Unplugged. Unplugged. Revisited. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Unplugged Revisited, the podcast that celebrates, critiques, and dives deep into the last three and a half decades of MTV Unplugged.
Host's Move to Chicago
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm your host, music journalist, pop culture anthropologist, and unplugged obsessive, Will Hodge, now transmitting from the fantastically frigid wonderland of downtown Chicago.
00:00:33
Speaker
Everything went smooth with the move. Producer Amanda, Intern Jeff, and myself are getting settled back into our favorite city, and I genuinely appreciate all the well wishes and nice notes you all have extended my way during the multi-month shuffle. Thankfully, we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Cultural Impact of Unplugged Compilation CDs
00:00:49
Speaker
For today's episode, I've got another fun solo deep dive, and I hope it's as interesting to you all as it is to me. For my interview shows, I get the opportunity to earnestly dig down into a single unplugged performance. But for shows like this, I really relish the opportunity to take a more expansive look at Unplug's cultural footprint by finding a topic that allows me to discuss and juxtapose a bunch of unplugged performances from a variety of different years alongside each other through a single cohesive lens.
00:01:17
Speaker
On today's show, I'll be dissecting the four official Unplugged Compilation CDs that came out between 1994 and 2004.
00:01:39
Speaker
Now, right off the bat, I am aware of and even own a few of the unofficial Unplugged compilations that have come out over the years, but I won't be including any of those today. I also won't be getting into the multiple video compilations that Unplugged has released on VHS and DVD over the years, but maybe
Analysis of Unplugged Compilation CDs
00:01:56
Speaker
some other time. Who knows.
00:01:57
Speaker
For the purposes of our show today, I'll just be examining, commending, and critiquing the four proper unplugged compilation albums and letting you know what's special about them, where they might have dropped the ball a little bit, and what cool rarities that have only seen the light of day on these specific albums are hidden within their track listings.
Corrections and Announcements
00:02:30
Speaker
But first, a couple quick announcements. Announcement 1. As a follow-up to last episode's 40 Artist Induction Ceremony into the MTV Unplugged Two-Timers Club, I have a correction to issue. According to my notes here, this update comes from, oh wait, it's from me. Like a true doofus, I immediately thought of a Two-Timers Club inductee I neglected to mention pretty much the very next day after I published the episode.
00:02:55
Speaker
So just let me grab another double neck acoustic guitar adorned moon man out of the box here. Glad I ordered a couple extras. And welcome our newest MTV Unplugged two-timers club inductee, Huge Voodoo. For all three spoken word unplugged episodes that aired in 93 and 94, the band Huge Voodoo provided improvisational background music behind some of the poets. Here's a snippet of them having some fun during Edwin Torres's passacho.
00:03:27
Speaker
And of course I can't mention spoken word unplugged without blessing the air with a little magiesta. So here's Huge Voodoo providing some instrumental oomph behind her unplugged performance of the stupid jerk I'm obsessed with.
00:03:47
Speaker
My apologies to Huge Voodoo for the oversight, and congratulations on your induction into the exclusive and ephemeral MTV Unplugged two-timers club. As always, if you know of any other folks who may have played MTV Unplugged more than once, either as an artist, special guest, or instrumentalist, please reach out and let me know so we can get them properly inducted. I'm super excited to announce that we're getting some new slash old Unplugged material.
Eric Clapton's Unplugged Special
00:04:13
Speaker
Here, let me ah let me just play the trailer.
00:04:15
Speaker
One of the most imp impactful concerts of all time and winner of six Grammys, including Album of the Year, is Cummings of Paramount+. In an all new extended and remastered edition, Eric Clapton unplugged over 30 years later. With bonus performances.
00:04:38
Speaker
And on aired interviews. I wanted to do it as if it was brand new. Experience this legendary performance in a brand new way. This is a great opportunity for me to play those things that originally influenced me.
00:04:53
Speaker
eric clapton unplugged over thirty years later streaming february twelf exclusively un paramount plus Yes, indeed. Eric Clapton's monumental Unplugged episode from early 92 is getting a really cool expanded video release called Eric Clapton Unplugged over 30 years later. The 90-minute special features his hour-long Unplugged performance, remixed and remastered, interspersed with unaired interview snippets that were recorded the day of the filming.
00:05:19
Speaker
So it's not Clapton today retrospectively looking back on the performance with 2020 hindsight. It's 92 Clapton completely unaware of the explosive, multiple Grammy-winning, 26 million selling unplugged Acoustic Blues masterpiece he and his band were about to deliver. There's also some opening narration to properly contextualize the whole thing and a couple bonus songs that weren't in the original broadcast.
00:05:43
Speaker
The special was first aired in select movie theaters on January 27th and 28th, which of course has already passed by the time you're hearing this. But more importantly, it's available for streaming on Paramount Plus starting on February 12th. That's today if you're listening on the day this episode drops.
00:05:59
Speaker
The screener they sent me looks genuinely amazing and I love the vibe of shifting back and forth between the performances and Clapton's casual interview snippets. I'm really happy that so much time and effort has been put into repackaging and celebrating this performance anew and I can only hope it's a sign of good things to come from Unplugged, both in making the archival material more accessible and also for maybe making some new Unplugged episodes.
00:06:22
Speaker
I will say, even if you're not particularly a fan of Clapton's Unplugged individually, if you have Paramount+, you should really consider streaming this one, even if only as a vote of confidence and wanting to see more Unplugged material overall. If this one gets a good enough response, maybe they'll pick some more standouts to get this same treatment. Mariah, Nirvana, 10,000 Maniacs, Pearl Jam, The Yo Unplugged Show, or at least maybe they'll consider putting all the old episodes back up for streaming. An Unplugged nerd can dream, right?
00:06:51
Speaker
So TLDR, February 12th on Paramount+, Eric Clapton Unplugged over 30 years later. Let's let the folks currently in charge of Unplug's legacy and future know that we appreciate the effort and we'd like to see more, much more, from the last 35 years of its amazing existence. Especially the full 90s run. I mean, please MTV, just be a buddy and put the whole archive up for streaming.
00:07:14
Speaker
Okay, onto this week's show analyzing the four official unplugged compilation CDs released between 1994 and 2004.
Unplugged Collection Volume 1 Analysis
00:07:24
Speaker
The Unplugged Collection Volume 1, 1994. So let's start with the very first official Unplugged Compilation. The Unplugged Collection Volume 1, released on December 6, 1994. This CD came out during an important moment in Unplugged's history. we We're at MTV, where some of the world's finest musicians are performing. What they don't know is we're making them play acoustic. Best of Unplugged week. Monday, Tony Bennett. Tuesday, two all new spoken words.
00:07:54
Speaker
Wednesday, Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam Thursday, Nirvana They love the unplugged experience. Why don't you try it at home? All next week at 8 on MTV By the end of 94, the show had already been experiencing a couple years of heightened popularity and mass ubiquity in the cultural zeitgeist, both critically and commercially, with multiple radio hits, platinum albums, and Grammy Awards, including an Album of the Year win. And they were coming off that stellar 94 season that featured standouts from Stone Temple Pilots, Bjork, Bob Dylan, Paige and Plant, Future Album of the Year Grammy winner Tony Bennett, and others.
00:08:36
Speaker
They were continuing to help mainstream the art of spoken word poetry, with two more episodes airing during that season, and Nirvana's seismically cool Unplugged in New York album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart just a month before this compilation came out. While by no means getting wistfully nostalgic or embarking on a cruise controlled victory lap, at this point, only four years in, the show was certainly deserving of a quick moment of creative retrospection. especially when taking stock of some of the early episode magic that transpired before the concept of unplugged episodes turning into album releases and the whole Clapton Carrie explosion that occurred during the 92 season. Oftentimes, compilations like this can get saddled with the not always accurate cash grab qualifier, seemingly just for existing. I mean, Entertainment Weekly called the unplugged collection Volume 1 long on tasteful renderings and short on innovation. while Spin Magazine closed their mixed bag album review by flatly concluding that all it wants to do is prove that these songs happen. Well, I disagreed when I got the CD for Christmas that year, sandwiched in a brick of albums between Pearl Jam's Vitalogy, TLC's Crazy Sexy Cool, and that Woodstock 94 compilation, and 30 years on I disagree with the sentiment even more deeply. While I would have definitely had my own set of selections had I been tasked with making an unplugged compilation covering its first four years, I still think the collection we got did a pretty good job of crafting an interesting mix of familiar selections and under the radar, or let's face it, most likely missed entirely early unplugged performances. So let's take a look at how the tracklist shakes out. But instead of just going track by track, I'll break it out thematically into already released songs and singles.
00:10:20
Speaker
Eventually released tracks, meaning the artist hadn't put out an official Unplugged album at the time of the compilation, but did so later, and still unreleased rarities, meaning that this compilation is the only official release it can be found on. As always, I strive for deeply researched accuracy, but you know, feel free to let me know if I'm incorrect with any of these categorizations.
00:10:41
Speaker
Out of its 16 total tracks, 1994's The Unplugged Collection Vol. 1 only contained seven already released songs that could be found elsewhere. But even saying that, really only four of those seven were from easy to find unplugged albums, and the other three, while still technically available elsewhere, took a little more effort to track down because they were tucked away as B-sides on single releases.
00:11:05
Speaker
As far as those four songs that could already be found on Unplugged Sessions released as albums, this comp includes Eric Clapton's cover of Bo Diddley's Before You Accuse Me, Paul McCartney's revisiting of We Can Work It Out, Neil Young's hauntingly ethereal pump organ version of Like a Hurricane, and 10,000 maniacs delicately pulled back Don't Talk.
00:11:33
Speaker
So right off the bat, any claims of this being an uninspired cash grab just don't stick. Not only did Unplugged have other huge releases that weren't included here, like Mariah Carey and Nirvana, but also for the popular Unplugged albums that were represented, like Clapton and Ten Thousand Maniacs, they didn't try to lure in casual buyers with just the big name hits. There's no Layla or Because of the Night here.
00:11:56
Speaker
So legit kudos on how they balanced all those big unplugged album choices. As far as the already released but harder to find tracks, this comp has three of them. First up is Annie Lennox's Why.
00:12:19
Speaker
While Spinn's review of this comp wasn't exactly glowing, they did single out Annie Lennox's unplugged version of Y as the best thing she's ever done. And while Lennox has a seemingly bottomless catalog of musical majesticness to pick from, they're not exactly wrong in that assessment.
00:12:34
Speaker
The song itself is wonderfully dreamy on its own, but Lennox's unplugged version really elevates that genuinely enchanting melodic dichotomy between the percussively verbose verses and that syrupy mono-syllabic chorus. While Lennox never released her unplugged session as a cohesive single album, she did put out 9 of the songs from her unplugged performance in a really cool way.
00:12:56
Speaker
In the fall of 1992, she released the song Cold as the fourth single from her debut solo album Diva, and she crafted three separate versions of the CD single, called Cold, Colder, and Coldest. And she included three different songs from her Unplugged session as the B-sides on each one. Y appears on the first version of Cold, but you should really do yourself a favor and try and track down all three singles to get as much Annie Lennox Unplugged goodness as is currently available.
00:13:23
Speaker
Next up is Soul Asylum's string ensemble infused take on Somebody to Shove, the blistering lead single from their double platinum mainstream breakthrough, Grave Dancers Union.
00:13:47
Speaker
While their Grammy-winning top 5 hit runaway train was blowing up on radio and MTV at the moment of their unplugged broadcast in the summer of 1993, this instrumentally recentered version of Somebody to Shove proved that the punk-informed intensity found within the grittier side of their catalog didn't have to be restrained when quote-unquote going unplugged.
00:14:08
Speaker
This unplugged version appeared as a B-side on a few different variants of a few different singles, Black Gold, Without a Trace, and The Somebody to Shove single, and three decades later it became available again when they finally released their entire 93 unplugged performance as a full album for Record Store Day 2023.
00:14:27
Speaker
Finally, there's Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley. Wait, wait, wait, I hear some of you saying. Didn't Stewart have a big multi-platinum unplugged album in 93? And yes, you were correct, he did. However, Gasoline Alley is one of the tracks from his unplugged episode that didn't actually make the album cut.
00:14:44
Speaker
It ended up first being released as a B-side on his big AC chart topping cover of Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately and then was later added as one of the bonus tracks to the 2009 reissue of his multi-platinum Unplugged and Seated album.
00:15:09
Speaker
Even though I included the Soul Asylum and Rod Stewart songs in the already released category, they also served Double Duty as a nice segue into the eventually released category. On this 94 comp, there are two tracks representing acts that didn't release their Unplugged episode as an album or as single tracks until much later. The first is REM's Half a World Away from their enrapturing 91 Unplugged.
00:15:51
Speaker
This enthralling live version of the song features the band's core trio of players all flexing their multi-instrumentalist muscles. Bassist Mike Mills swaps over to Hammond B3 Organ, guitarist Peter Buck picks up the mandolin, and drummer Bill Berry plays the acoustic bass, and it perfectly lands the plane as the comps closing track.
00:16:10
Speaker
For a while, surprisingly, this comp was the only official release to feature any of REM's truly breathtaking unplugged outing. However, they thankfully released both their 91 episode and their 2001 return performance as the double album unplugged the complete 1991 and 2001 sessions for Record Store Day 2014.
00:16:31
Speaker
The second is a bearded, bespeckled, and pony-tailed Elvis Costello doing deep, dark, truthful mirror from his Unplugged, which also aired in 91. And even though he's never released the full show as an album, he did include three Unplugged tracks, this one, The Other Side of Summer, and Hurry Down Doomsday The Bugs Are Taking Over, on the bonus disc of rarities and b-sides that accompanied the 2002 reissue of his 91 album Mighty Like a Rose.
00:17:13
Speaker
And that brings us to the still unreleased category, which for this specific comp features seven songs that haven't been officially released on any other albums or singles. That I'm aware of at least. It would certainly be too much to try and play clips of all of them, especially when scaled across the discussion of four separate compilations. So I'll group them together a bit. Of the seven still unreleased tracks, three of them are from that anomalous first season in 1990.
00:17:39
Speaker
And that's one of the high points of this compilation in relation to the other three. It has the most Season 1 representation. And while it's not much, again, only three tracks, it's still a pretty cool mix. Those three tracks are Elton John's arresting solo piano version of Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me,
00:17:57
Speaker
Don Henley smoothed out cover of the Johnny Mercer jazz standard Come Rain or Come Shine, which wouldn't get an official studio version until the Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack in 95, and Bonafide Blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan filtering his own pride and joy quite impressively through a giant 12-string acoustic.
00:18:33
Speaker
While the Herculean performance is dazzling enough on its own merit, SRV's Unplugged episode, an early Season 1 shared-bill show with Joe Satriani, is also notable for being broadcast just a few short months before his untimely death in late August of 1990.
00:18:50
Speaker
Two more of the still unreleased tracks are from some of the solid but much less discussed episodes of the 9192 era. They are Paul Simon's lively romp through Graceland and John Mellencamp's subversive social commentary on Pink Houses.
00:19:18
Speaker
In my opinion, the final two entries in this still unreleased category are two of the comp's most stellar cuts. The first is Katie Lang's Barefoot, a track that she originally co-wrote for the 91 German film Salmon Berries in which she played the lead role.
00:19:36
Speaker
The song itself is already a bit of a rarity, with the studio version only getting released as a standalone single in Germany and Europe, and then also showing up as the B-side on a few select versions of her constant craving single.
00:20:05
Speaker
This live version from Unplugged is even more of a rarity, as when Lang released eight of her Unplugged songs on a bonus disc attached to the 25th anniversary reissue of her multi-platinum Grammy-winning ingenue record in 2017, Barefoot was not one of the tracks she included. The other one is Lenny Kravitz's bluesy reimagining of his massively popular rock radio staple, Are You Gonna Go My Way?
00:20:42
Speaker
Kravitz broke the song's retro rock roar down to its bass elements and refashioned it around a steamy juke joint groove adorned with bluesy slide guitar and wailing harmonica. While Clapton often gets the lion's share of the discussion around artists who use their unplugged moment to completely rewire a song's musical core,
00:21:01
Speaker
Kravitz's clever transformation of one of his most immediately identifiable hits beautifully underscores his song's timeless malleability, his own creative instincts, and the show's own secret sauce for summoning the proper context within which to experiment, innovate, and elevate.
00:21:18
Speaker
Okay, here's my quick hit review of the Unplugged Collection Volume 1. The pros include a nice balancing of hits versus rarities, a half dozen or so really amazing cuts that you can only get on this compilation, and some nice representation of the evolving foundation setting that occurred during that wildly interesting first season.
00:21:37
Speaker
Also of note, the liner notes on this one feature a cool essay and song-by-song story blurbs from series producer and unplugged flame keeper Alex Coletti. The biggest con to this one, in my opinion, is the myopic genre mix. It's extremely rock-heavy with zero hip-hop or R and&B representation. And let's not forget, even this early in its run, it had a lot of killer performances to choose from.
00:22:01
Speaker
Mariah Carey, Arrested Development, Boys to Men, Shawnees, Joe Public, the entire Uptown Records episode, and the entire Yo Unplugged show. Where's LL Cool J? Where's Mary J. Blige? Not to mention, not even one poem from the three phenomenal spoken word unplugs.
00:22:18
Speaker
Okay, you get the point. And of course, I'm sure there were probably some licensing issues or other considerations that prohibited some of those performances from even being available to pick from. But overall, that's my biggest critique of missed opportunity on this otherwise extremely enjoyable compilation.
2002 Compilation Analysis
00:22:34
Speaker
Alrighty, let's get into the second unplugged compilation.
00:22:38
Speaker
the very best of mtv unplugs two thousand and two While the 94 compilation carried the sometimes jinx-inducing qualifier of Volume 1, there were sadly no other official Unplugged compilation albums released in the 1990s. However, in 2002, around the same time the Unplugged 2.0 reboot was wrapping up, a new compilation was released called The Very Best of MTV Unplugged, notably with no curse inciting volume identifier to pin it in this time.
00:23:06
Speaker
At 18 tracks overall, this compilation was a little bigger than the prior one, and again only half of the tracks, 9 of them overall, could also be found on other albums and singles when this compilation was first released. In the already released grouping, 7 of the songs were from artists with official unplugged albums.
00:23:24
Speaker
That rundown, by year of release, includes McCartney's Every Night, Clapton's Tears in Heaven, Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night, Page and Plant's Gallows Poll, Bryan Adams' is Summer of 69, Decor's What Can I Do, and Alanis Moore's Set's Ironic.
00:23:54
Speaker
The other two already released tracks were again of the hidden on B-Sides variety. They are Annie Lennox's solo version of her Eurythmics classic, Here Comes the Rain Again, which can be found on the Colder single, as well as some versions of her Walking on Broken Glass maxi single, and Sting's solo version of his chart-topping police hit, Walking on the Moon.
00:24:29
Speaker
Since Sting also did his absolutely top tier Unplugged prior to the episode turned album Boom, he initially only released the video on VHS and Laserdisc. However, a couple of years later, when he released his top 20 If I Ever Lose My Faith In You single from his triple Grammy winning 10 summoners tale record in early 93, he put out two versions of the single with three tracks from his 91 Unplugged episode for each of the B-side, so six total Unplugged tracks.
00:24:58
Speaker
As far as the eventually released tracks, this O2 comp has two of them, one being another stunning selection from REM's 91 episode, this time their mainstream cementing Uber hit, Losing My Religion.
00:25:13
Speaker
which, as I've already stated, finally got an album release for Record Store Day 2014, and the other one being Katie Lang's mainstream cementing uber-hit Constant Craving, which, unlike Barefoot from the 94 comp, did get included in the 8-song unplugged bonus disc that came with the 25th anniversary reissue of Anjanoo in 2017.
00:25:47
Speaker
And now for the still unreleased grouping, which for this comp includes seven tracks. Of the seven, only two are from episodes that had aired when the 94 comp was originally released. Those are Paul Simon doing his old Simon and Garfunkel chestnut, Mrs. Robinson, and Lenny Kravitz's Are You Gonna Go My Way. Yes, an exact repeat of the exact same Kravitz track from the 94 comp.
00:26:10
Speaker
It also features almost a half dozen still unreleased tracks from that stunning 95-96 era that featured a lot of my favorite alt-rock unplugs, but that barely any of which got proper album releases. The three songs from the 95 season, All Ballads Weirdly Enough, are Linger from the Cranberries, Lightning Crashes from Live, and Strong Enough from Sheryl Crow, which is not only one of my most listened to unplugged bootlegs that I deeply wish would eventually get a proper album release one day, but is also an extremely cool version of the song that features Crow playing accordion.
00:26:57
Speaker
The two songs from the 96 season also ballads, though admittedly a bit more on the massive bombastic chorus side of that spectrum. Are Seals Kiss From a Rose and Oasis Doing Don't Look Back in Anger. Which, it's interesting to note that while yes, this is from that infamous Liam-less Oasis unplugged, on some international versions of this comp, the track isn't credited to Oasis at all, but instead to just Noel Gallagher. Which, you know, fair play I guess.
00:27:37
Speaker
Okay, my quick hit review of the very best of MTV Unplugged. The pros include massive kudos for the selections representing the back half of the 90s. Crow, Live and the Cranberries from 95, Seal and Oasis from 96, Alanis and the Chorus from 99, and also for including so many unreleased gems, nine at the time it came out, to really expand on the show's musical archive outside of the original broadcast.
00:28:04
Speaker
The cons include repeating an exact track from the 94 comp, they could have at least given us a different Kravitz cut, and then my same genre mix complaint from the first compilation. Again, there is absolutely zero hip hop and R and&B on here. Not only did they still have all the exciting episodes I already mentioned for the 94 comp to choose from, but they also had added even more recent ones. George Michael in 96, Maxwell, Erika Badu, Black Street, and Babyface all from 97, Even the 2.0 episodes with Lauren Hill or Jay-Z and the Roots were available to sample from. Again, just a huge missed opportunity to me, especially when compilations like this allow you to have a hand in crafting the accuracy of your own historical record. Okay, let's keep it moving into the third official unplugged compilation. The very best of MTV Unplugged 2, 2003.
00:28:56
Speaker
The very next year Unplugged followed up their 2002 comp with a quick successor, the very best of MTV Unplugged II. This one was just a tad lighter in quantity, only 16 tracks to the 18 offered the year prior, but I think it may rank just a smidge higher in overall quality. It's tied with the 94 comp for least amount of already released album tracks, and it's got a half dozen artists that only appear here and aren't repeated across the other three compilations.
00:29:26
Speaker
For this 2003 album, the already released grouping only encompasses six songs in the CD's overall tracklist. Four of them could be found on official Unplugged album releases, and three of those four were also pretty big radio hits. That trio includes Clapton's massively popular, Grammy-winning re-imagining of Layla, Rod Stewart's U.S. adult contemporary number one hit, Have I Told You Lately?, and Bryan Adams' Canadian adult contemporary number one hit, I'm Ready.
00:29:55
Speaker
The other already released album cut here is Bob Dylan's phenomenal unplugged version of Like a Rolling Stone, which was not released as a single but is notable for featuring Uber producer Brendan O'Brien on Hammond Organ.
00:30:14
Speaker
The other two already released songs from this comp could first be found as B-sides. Sting's Every Breath You Take from his criminally underrated 91 episode, which came out as a B-side on the first version of his If I Ever Lose My Faith In You single that came out in 93, and Phil Collins' iconic drum fill avoiding piano-led regrooving of In the Air Tonight from his 94 Unplugged that was filmed for MTV Europe.
00:30:39
Speaker
which also appeared as the B-side on some versions of his No Matter Who single that came out in 97.
00:31:02
Speaker
This 2003 comp also features a pair of songs that land in the eventually released category. The first is REM's pop-infused Imitation of Life, not from their 91 episode, but instead from their 2001 session, which, as I've already said, was finally released as a double album in 2014.
00:31:30
Speaker
Come on, no one can see you try
00:31:36
Speaker
And the second is Bjork's harpsichord re-centered romp through human behavior from her entrancing and musically adventurous 94 Unplugged, also filmed for MTV Europe. She eventually released most of her Unplugged session, first as a video-only offering in 2002, then as an album that was part of her five-disc live box collection in 2003, and finally as a standalone record called Debut Live in 2004.
00:32:14
Speaker
In an effort to be exhaustively accurate, she technically released a handful of her unplugged tracks, including Human Behavior, in 1997 on a fan club-only EP called Celebrating Wood and Metal. But for our purposes today, I'm using the 04 debut live record as the standard against which to judge the eventually released qualifier. But you know, if you're keeping score at home, your mileage may vary.
00:32:38
Speaker
For the still unreleased category, this O3 comp is heavy with standout unplugged rarities, eight in total, that have still never seen the light of day on any other official releases. Two of the eight are from the first season in 1990. Elton John's don't let the sun go down on me. Yes, another exact repeat from the 94 comp, and crowded houses four seasons in one day, which was recorded in the same three episodes in a single day filming session out in Los Angeles that also captured the great white damn Yankees shared bill show and the unknowingly monumental Don Henley episode.
2003 Compilation Discussion
00:33:20
Speaker
This comp also has five still unreleased tracks from that killer but underrepresented 95-96 era that saw very few unplugged album releases. There's three from the 95 season, the Cranberries adding a cinematic string ensemble to Zombie, Sheryl Crow crafting an exhilarating solo piano version of Run Baby Run, and Chris Isaac delivering a smolderingly pitch perfect rendering of Wicked Game.
00:33:55
Speaker
The pair from the 96 season are Seel's slinky rumble through his breakout hit Crazy and Tori Amos' mesmerizing piano guitar duo version of Cornflake Girl that always proves a bittersweet reminder of how truly enrapturing her unplugged was and what an absolute travesty it is that we've never seen an official release of it.
00:34:28
Speaker
The last still unreleased track from this O3 comp is Midnight Oil's signature land rights protest anthem, Bedzer Burning, from their 93 episode.
00:34:48
Speaker
Let's give it back
00:35:00
Speaker
The Australian rockers turned out a pretty fantastic unplugged performance all around, including their song, The Dead Heart, which I believe features the only unplugged appearance of a didgeridoo, that tubular Australian woodwind instrument that creates an otherworldly droning-meat circular breathing coolness that sounds like this.
00:35:29
Speaker
So far Midnight Oil has only released a trio of Unplugged songs on their live compilation album The Real Thing, which was released in 2000. They also included a DVD of their entire 17 song Unplugged performance in the sizable 4 CD 8 DVD limited edition box set titled Overflow Tank that came out in 2017.
00:35:50
Speaker
Alright, for my quick hit review of the very best of MTV Unplugged 2, the pros are that this comp is light on already available unplugged album cuts and rich with artists from some of the lesser discussed unplugged gems like Tory Amos, Bjork, Midnight Oil, and Crowded House. I also love that there's another nice chunk of 95-96 era offerings here.
00:36:13
Speaker
The cons are essentially the same as the prior comp. Once again, this one oddly repeats an exact song from the 94 compilation. And just like Kravitz, since Elton didn't get a full album release, they could have varied up which of his Unplugged tracks they gave us.
00:36:28
Speaker
Plus, my broken recordness continues with complaining about the lack of hip-hop and R and&B artists. It genuinely genuinely baffles me how there's not even one track from the Yale Unplugged show or from any of the multiple R and&B anchored episodes we got in 1997 alone. And I'll just go ahead and say, spoiler alert, that does not change with our fourth and final compilation to be discussed on today's episode.
2004 Compilation Exploration
00:36:52
Speaker
The very best of MTV Unplugged III, 2004.
00:36:55
Speaker
That's right, the third entry in this very best of MTV Unplugged album run came out in 2004. That was three unplugged compilations in three years. We didn't know how good we had it. As far as total tracks, this one clocks in at 17 songs, precisely splitting the difference between the prior two compilations. This one also came with an extra special visual component, but I'll save that for my quick hit review.
00:37:20
Speaker
Alright, let's get into the tracklist breakdown. Of its 17 entries, the 2004 compilation features 8 already released tracks. Eric Clapton's cover of the Jimmy Cox Bessie Smith Blues Standard, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out, Alanis Morissette's Head Over Feet, which she played guitar on,
00:37:38
Speaker
Paige and plants, hurdy gurdy infused Battle of Evermore, Kisses sure knows something, Bryan Adams is the only thing that looks good on me as you, the Corps' runaway, and Alice in Chains' absolutely devastating version of wood.
00:38:00
Speaker
Also in this group is another killer sting performance from his 91 Unplugged, this time the infectiously polyrhythmic message in a bottle, which means that all three of his Unplugged compilation appearances are reworked police songs. Unless you think he only played police songs during his Unplugged taping, of the ten songs he performed that night, only four of them were from his police days. He also did five songs from his solo catalog, plus a cover of Bill Withers Ain't No Sunshine.
00:38:27
Speaker
Again, six of those phenomenal Unplugged songs can be found as B-sides on two separate versions of his If I Ever Lose My Faith In You single from early 93. And Message in a Bottle can be found on the second version.
00:38:55
Speaker
As far as the eventually released tracks, this 2004 comp has only won. REM's whimsically verbose It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine from their 91 Unplugged, which of course, Say It With Me Now, was finally released as an album for Record Store Day 2014.
00:39:18
Speaker
Now let's talk about the eight still unreleased beauties that appear on the very best of MTV Unplugged 3, because this one really has the goods. From the first season, Elton John having an absolute blast playing through a six-minute plus solo version
00:39:50
Speaker
From 91, The Cure's blissfully perfect, Boys Don't Cry.
00:40:06
Speaker
From 92, Paul Simon gospelizing Bridge Over Troubled Water, courtesy of some astounding piano playing from the incomparable Richard Teague.
00:40:34
Speaker
From 1993, Katie Lang's enchanting cover of Roy Orbison's Crying, which was also curiously left off the unplugged bonus disc, attached to her ingenue reissue in 2017.
00:40:54
Speaker
There weren't any tracks from 94, but they did include four from that 95-96 era. Live's Eye Alone, Chris Isaac's Blue Hotel, Hootie and the Blowfish's Hold My Hand, and Sheryl Crow's Flawless Open Mic Night at the Coffee House version of Leaving Las Vegas, in which the deeply charming vocal rasp that so bewitchingly characterized her first couple years is magnificently front and center. These days it seems like nowhere's part of the way
00:41:29
Speaker
My quick hit review of the very best of MTV Unplugged 3. The pros of this one are, first, the batch of still unreleased tracks on this one is just really stellar. And it features some of my all time favorite Unplugged episodes to have never gotten proper albums. The Cure, Sheryl Crow, Elton John, Live, and Katie Lang.
00:41:49
Speaker
Second, remember how I said this one had a special visual component with it? Well, this compilation was actually a double disc set that came packaged with the DVD of all 17 performances. With all of the album releases and radio hits, I think sometimes it's easy to forget that at the end of the day, Unplugged was first and foremost a television show of intimate and unedited live musical performances. And the Unplugged crew did such a remarkable job of making sure the show looked as good as it sounded. This amazing DVD really drives that point home beautifully, and it's a genuinely enjoyable watch. Or, if you're like me, a frequently revisited rewatch. As far as the cons, you know, fourth verse, same as the first. Across four entire Unplugged compilations, there's not a single hip-hop or R and&B performance to be found.
00:42:37
Speaker
And again, there were quite a few absolute jaw-dropping options to choose from. Where's a tribe called Quest tastefully elucidating the art of live acoustic sampling with Can I Kick It? Or LL completely leveling the room with Mama Said Knock You Out? Where's Mary J. Blige taking flight on Real Love? Where's Maxwell covering Kate Bush's This Woman's Work or interpolating Nine Inch Nails' as Closer?
00:42:59
Speaker
Oftentimes Unplugged can get inaccurately oversimplified to the old rocker's-go-acoustic legacy that some critics still lazily employ when summing up the show's cultural footprint. And MTV doesn't exactly help to dispute that fallacy when they fumble the opportunity to tell their fuller story by releasing multiple compilations that completely ignore large chunks of their most magical performances.
00:43:22
Speaker
I should note that MTV did a little bit better of a job at this on some of their unplugged video compilations, but these four CDs would have greatly benefited from and told a better story by, including some hip-hop, R and&B, spoken word, and even some of their international tapings to really flesh out the expressively creative historical record that Unplugged carved out over many, many years. so Okay, for all the numbers nerds out there, let's hash out a few fun stats. Across the four official unplugged compilations, there were 67 tracks performed by 38 different artists. Which, yes, that means there are quite a few artists that appear on more than one compilation. There were two artists who appeared across all four compilations. Were you keeping track? Can you guess which ones? They were Eric Clapton,
00:44:10
Speaker
naturally, being the unplugged ambassador to the masses, and my beloved R.E.M., who were precisely the kind of band who knew exactly what to do with their unplugged moment. Seven artists showed up on three of the compilations, in alphabetical order, Bryan Adams, Sheryl Crow, Elton John, Katie Lang, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, and Sting. And ten artists had spots on two of the compilations,
00:44:34
Speaker
Also in alphabetical order, the Cranberries, the Coors, Chris Isaac, Lenny Kravitz, Annie Lennox, Live, Paul McCartney, Alanis Morissette, Page and Plant, and Seal. As far as representation by season, there were six songs from the first season, though half of those were from Elton alone. Ten songs from 91, three of which were from R.E.M. and three from Sting. Ten songs from 92, four of which were from Eric Clapton and three were from Paul Simon.
00:45:03
Speaker
Also ten songs from 93, three from K.D. Lang and three from Rod Stewart. Seven songs from 1994, ten songs from 95, only one of which came from an unplugged album, which was Kiss. Six songs from 96, also only one of which came from an unplugged album, which was Alice in Chains.
00:45:22
Speaker
Three songs from 97, all of which were Bryan Adams, four songs from 99 split evenly between Atlantis and the Cores, and one single solitary song from 2001. The earliest performance in the bunch was Stevie Ray Vaughan's Pride and Joy, which was filmed in January of 1990, less than three months after the pilot was filmed, and the latest performance was R.E.M.'s Imitation of Life, which was recorded in May of 2001.
00:45:48
Speaker
Overall, these compilations are extremely fun and inviting to listen to. And in the case of the 04 comp, super enjoyable to watch as well. And even with all of the missed genre opportunities and frequent artist redundancy, I feel like they tell a good story, if only a partial one, of the unique magic Unplugged was consistently delivering throughout the entire 90s.
Compilation Recommendations and Future Hopes
00:46:10
Speaker
If you're looking to pick any of these up yourself, my foremost recommendations are the very best of MTV Unplugged 3 from 2004, mostly because it has that killer DVD with it, and the Unplugged Collection Volume 1 from 1994, because that one feels the most quintessentially unplugged of the bunch, since it came out right in the midst of the show's pop cultural dominance. However, maybe the other two contain a better mix of your own favorite artists,
00:46:34
Speaker
So you know, just keep your eyes peeled next time you're thumbing through the used CDs at your favorite secondhand record shop or hop onto one of the online secondary markets and pick up whichever ones most strike your fancy. In any case, you're in good hands with these unplugged compilations and hopefully one day we'll get some more of them, especially if they feature some of the more recent highlights from the last 20 years or so since the 2004 comp came out.
00:46:58
Speaker
And there we go, another Unplugged Revisited episode in the books. I hope you've enjoyed these last two solo deep dives, and I don't want to say too much just yet, but I'm working on another stellar batch of artist interviews that I'm extremely excited to roll out over the next couple
Conclusion and Sign-off
00:47:13
Speaker
months. If you've got any questions or corrections or anything else that you'd like to contact me about, you can email me unpluggedrevisited at gmail dot.com or leave a voicemail by calling 234-REVISIT or reach out on social media.
00:47:27
Speaker
As a reminder, if you're a Paramount Plus subscriber, be sure to check out the new Eric Clapton Unplugged over 30 years later special that just dropped today, even if just to encourage the powers that be to give us more unplugged goodies. And as always, please take a moment to follow the pod on your platform of choice so that it'll automatically pop into your feed when it goes live. I'll be back in two weeks with another brand new episode lovingly transmitted from the frozen shores of Lake Michigan. Until then, my friends, be kind to yourself and look out for each other.