Wednesday, December 18, 2013

SHIVER:  Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York City first aired twenty years ago this week. For The Atlantic, Andrew Wallace Chamings writes:
For the final line, “I would shiver the whole night through,” Cobain jumps up an octave, forcing him to strain so far he screams and cracks. He hits the word “shiver” so hard that the band stops, as if a fight broke out at a sitcom wedding. Next he howls the word “whole” and then does something very strange in the brief silence that follows, something that’s hard to describe: He opens his piercingly blue eyes so suddenly it feels like someone or something else is looking out under the bleached lank fringe, with a strange clarity. Then he finishes the song. When Neil Young first watched the performance, he described that final note of Cobain’s as “Unearthly, like a werewolf, unbelievable.”

2 comments:

  1. Jim Bell7:30 PM

    I don't own the whole album, but sometimes I listen to "In the Pines" to remind myself of what the human voice is possible of. Potentially the only modern song I don't consider sad that could make a man far less masculine than I cry with the sheer joy of being part of a race that can make art like that.

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  2. Jim Bell7:31 PM

    The end is perfection. MHRIP.

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