Nirvana's performance on the already-growing-rather-wearisome MTV Unplugged show was a proper jaw-dropper when it first aired on Dec. 16, 1993. And it's still a proper jaw-dropper when you listen to it now, more than 30 years after the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain and the premature demise of Nirvana as an active band just four months later. 

Rather than simply trotting out an hour's worth of acoustic versions of their own hits, Cobain and bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl used their MTV Unplugged In New York special to pay homage to some of the songs that helped turn Nirvana into the band it was: David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World," the Vaselines' "Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam," blues belter Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" and three Meat Puppets covers -- "Oh Me," "Plateau" and "Lake Of Fire" -- that invited Kurt and Chris Kirkwood of the actual Meat Puppets onstage to perform alongside Nirvana. Coming as MTV Unplugged In New York did after 1993's caustic In Utero, the transfixing TV show and the album that would eventually be spun from it were a tantalizing window into what might have come from Nirvana had Cobain not chosen to end his own life in April of 1994. The most punk-rock thing about it was how punk-rock it wasn't. But that's what makes this delicate, heartfelt and utterly indelible performance one of the most punk-rock things Nirvana ever did.

The expanded 25th-anniversary edition of MTV Unplugged In New York adds five alternate takes of songs recorded during pre-show rehearsals to the immaculate original: "Come As You Are," "Polly," "Pennyroyal Tea," "Plateau" and "The Man Who Sold The World." 

TRACKLISTING:

1. About A Girl
2. Come As You Are
3. Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam
4. The Man Who Sold The World
5. Pennyroyal Tea
6. Dumb
7. Polly
8. On A Plain
9. Something In The Way
10. Plateau
11. Oh Me
12. Lake Of Fire
13. All Apologies
14. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
15. Come As You Are (Rehearsal)
16. Polly (Rehearsal)
17. Plateau (Rehearsal)
18. Pennyroyal Tea (Rehearsal)
19. The Man Who Sold The World (Rehearsal)