Band with Best Unplugged Set.
 

Its one thing to go on stage with a wall of amps behind you, but it takes some real gusto to go on acoustic. What band, in your opinion, has the best unplugged performance? My personal favorite is KISS. While I'm not a huge KISS fan, they do amazing unplugged.


Beth Kiss unplugged - YouTube

Alice in chains without a doubt.

Nirvana

meh. It had a few songs that really worked, and more that just came across as forced.

"Nutshell" "Down in a Hole" and "Over Now" are the 3 main highlights. The rest is good, but not great. a few really awful versions as well kill it, such as "Rooster", "Would", "Brother" and "Killer is Me"... the rest worked better in their original format already.

What made Nirvana's great was that they didn't just try and play the hits, and made it unique and more memorable as a result. The only song on it I thought didn't really work for me was "On a Plain", but the rest did them justice.

Nirvana.

I'll say Daft Punk on condition they finally grow the balls to do it.

Nirvana unplugged is great, just not as good as AIC, to me. I think AIC is the better band all around.

Nirvana's was best in my opinion, but the only others I have heard were Alice In Chains and Lauryn Hill, although I hear they did a Rap one, with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and a few others. That sounds great.

It would be very close between Nirvana and Alice In Chains. Both did a great job.

Both are great in their own right. I think Layne's lyrics were more bleak and depressing... Kurt's were... well.... more like the ramblings of an insane junkie, never really following a specific pattern.

I do love AIC, and their unplugged had it's moments of greatness.... just do yourself a favor, and never watch it on LSD. Believe me, it is frightening.

Nirvana really killed it, even just for their cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."

Wow, no mention of trey songz yet?




:p:

But honestly, it has to be nirvana. It gave me goosebumps the first time i heard it.

I have also really been loving this recently:



Need to see the rest of it.... I know it won't match Nirvana's.... but I still love Chris.

MTV Unplugged: Korn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL!

that one was painful, haha.

but this is good for an occasional (awkward) laugh:



Korn was always dreadful from day 1, but this managed to make them even worse to my ears.

I feel sorry for Robert Smith and Simon Gallup for being part of this freak show.

Haha I think it'd be better on shrooms, considering I tend to have dark trips. But then again, it could be even scarier. :laughing: It is frightening. I love how they achieve such a dark sound. I don't know how they do it. They were great. Even the drumming had this real mellow bleakness about it.

But what made Nirvana's best I believe is they did not follow the usual Unplugged format.. you know, come out play your hits and leave, even if they sound awful (*cough*Pearl Jam*cough*). They took chances, played obscure covers, had an obscure (at least to mainstream audiences) band join them on stage and play even more obscure covers of that bands...

Doing that made their episode an experience, and something unique.

I hear ya. But to me, what made AIC unplugged so good is they showed how damn versatile they were. They tend to do that on record as well, in my opinion.

Hey come on, that's not so bad.

You leave Pearl Jam out of this.

But I also think the difference was:

Kurt Cobain on Unplugged: foreshadowed his own death. So many subtle hints of death. The star gazer lilies, virtually every cover relating to death in some way.... just a few. Many did not see his death coming.

Layne Staley on Unplugged: looked dead already, second he took off his glasses (that was the scariest LSD moment actually watching it for me, seeing him take off the glasses and seeing his corpse eyes). Many saw his death coming.

That gave the AIC one the most darkness. When i saw it I said, he is already dead man... he shows no life, he looks like he is ready to collapse at any second.

but Pearl Jam's unplugged was so lifeless and dull. They just played medicore versions of their hits that seemed so borrrrrrrrring.



The original has one of my favorite guitar solos of all-time.... here it is just massacred.

And fine, Korn's is not THAT bad, but it is still not THAT good.

I wanna see Tool do an Unplugged show, that would be amazing. I think they could do it very well, and make it interesting. Wouldn't rush it, they would spend a lot of time working out the compositions to give the songs a whole new dimension without losing the heaviness of the original.

But that would never happen.

p.s. Unknown, get your ass on AIM sometime...

I actually quite liked that, which is surprising because I'm not a fan at all of unplugged sets, for example no matter how much I liked a band I would probably never buy an unplugged cd of theirs.

it is okay, but lacking that amazing guitar solo of the studio version. They could have at least come up with a good replacement.

Just seems like they got there at the last minute, didn't bother to practice and played the songs on acoustic guitars like they would electrically and that was all. Don't get the impression they tried to do something different with them.

The opinion I always got with unplugged, was that some bands took it more seriously than others. The serious ones gave it some serious thought and planned out their set well, whilst for the others, it was a more come as you are (excuse the Nirvana pun here:p:) type thing.

You think he looked bad then, watch some mad season videos. Sheesh. He looked just as bad if not worse.

I think pearl jam is more evidence of why AIC Is so great. AIC can translates very well acoustically, theyre very versatile. That can't be said for all bands.

I've often thought about a tool unplugged show. I don't think they could match AIC, and I've thought that they might not do so well acoustically. But then again, I'm sure they would have their **** together and wouldn't disappoint. It'd be so interesting to see. Some of their songs would translate to acoustic very well.

Layne Staley's demise has to probably the worst in the history of rock.........hell it was drawn out over several years as the man lost weight, lost teeth and changed to several different colours.

I've always considered Bjorks set the most interesting, just because she pulled it off. Her songs don't really lend themselves to it, but she managed to make them work in an acoustic set. Admittedly she did it by overloading the stage with performers and using odd instrumentation, but I think that's an interesting strategy to deal with the limitations of the show.

Pearl Jam seems to be one of those bands that does things one way and after that one way is set, they keep doing it over and over. This obviously explains the 7 carbon copies that came out in succession of Ten.


A Tool unplugged show would be orgasmic, come to think of it, they seem like the band that Unplugged was made for. There was probably a request sent in for Tool but they turned it down, hopefully they just do one on their own.

I would love to hear "right in two" performed acoustically.

Yeah. Like I say, if Tool took the time to arrange them on acoustic in a unique way it would be amazing. Not just take the songs and do them on acoustics... but re-arrange them and work out the composition in a unique way, it would be amazing.

If they just took songs and did them the same way on electric, it would be good, but not great.

Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam were awesome unplugged.

Incubus did a good unplugged too.

I really believe that Phish do fantastic acoustic sets, but I may be horribly biased. Regardless, they're all extremely talented musicians, play well together, and always look to be having a lot of fun when they perform. That's all I ask of any band.

Page (keys) is the glue that holds them all together. I also legitimately believe him to be the most musically gifted.

There are quite a few episodes of MTV 'Unplugged' that stand out. In no particular order:

The Allman Brothers Band

Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Smithereens

Live

KISS

Queensryche

R.E.M.

Crosby,Stills,and Nash

I think an 'Unplugged' marathon of the ENTIRE series is long overdue on VH-1 Classic. I believe this year is the show's 25th anniversary. It would be a ratings bonanza for sure in my opinion (:wave:)! Great thread.

J. J. Cale

Nirvana, of course

The Pixies ofc



:rofl: