More than 25 years later, the Meat Puppets reflect on Nirvana: Unplugged
Before Kurt Cobain uttered their name during the 1993 taping of MTV Unplugged, most people had never heard of the Meat Puppets. Even fewer people would have recognized brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood sitting on stage with Nirvana, had Cobain not shouted them out specifically. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Curt Kirkwood looks back on the seminal performance, which he surprisingly describes as “pretty casual.”
“I knew it was really good when it was happening,” Kirkwood says. “I was privileged to sit through the whole thing and be able to watch it until I had to go play, myself. It was like a real show with a real vibe. There were no retakes or anything. What you see is what happened.”
What happened was that Nirvana, then at the height of their powers, played an intimate set of fourteen songs, nearly half of which were covers. They were one tour with the Meat Puppets at the time and when the band sat down to plan out their set, including some of their tourmates songs seemed like a no-brainer.
