November 14, 2007 blogs.guardian.co.uk

In five days, Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York is finally released as a DVD. Does it perpetuate the mythology that surrounds it? Yes. And no

Opinion on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance at Sony Music Studios in New York on November 18, 1993, is divided into two camps.

Some people consider it to be Kurt Cobain, the tortured genius, stripping both his songs, and himself, to the bone in a brilliant, painfully raw performance that amounts to a kind of suicide note.