after playing some unplugged tunes on the guitar this morning I realized just how creative and diverse that album really is..
I strummed through "Oh Me" which is a rather serious, hauntingly beautiful rendition of that tune, very dreary and somber.
Then I said fuck it and played "About a Girl" which when I got into the solo realized was a rather upbeat 50s rock and roll number..
My awareness came because I played in a blues band and we did a lot of jazz, reggae and even ol rock n roll like Chuck Berry numbers and it felt the same..
Now I have been playing About A Girl unplugged version as a warm up tune for years but i never had this epiphany before.. Sure, I knew all the record critics had hailed this album for being groundbreaking and diverse, obscure and artistic, but I had never really comprehended this as a
musician
I mean look at all the diverse styles of music represented in that one performance, and from a punk band no less!
I think that one of the reasons i have evolved into such a diverse musician and guitar player is because I literally learned to play the guitar from this album.. the track list of unplugged was the first tunes I could play on the guitar because duh, it was the only simple acoustic album I had at the time in my then more limited record collection.
I have been in metal bands, chaos punk bands, delta blues, chicago blues, roots reggae, dub reggae, folk, jazz, I even play Ethiopian music on the guitar flawlessly as if it was a damned
masinqo
perhaps Nirvana Unplugged had a big influence on this, because initially I only listened to heavy tunes, Unplugged is the album that softened my ear. The Dead blew it away, but Nirvana ironically softened it..
What do y'all think? I mean this was a Top40 album, playing good coffee shop tunes across the airwaves of america for like 96-99 running.. Surely it influenced a lot of folks to get into more obscure things like old David Bowie albums and Leadbelly records..