Nirvana plots 25th anniversary reissue of ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’ record

Nirvana’s acclaimed “MTV Unplugged in New York” album will be reissued this November to commemorate 25 years since the record’s original release, it was announced Friday.

Labeled one of the top 10 best live albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, the record is being reissued to include five outtakes previously available only on DVD.

The new version will be available on vinyl and through digital music platforms starting Nov. 1, precisely 25 years since the original version was first sold in stores.

Recorded in late 1993 for MTV’s “Unplugged” cable television series, the performance was among the band’s last prior to frontman Kurt Cobain’s death the following April. The album version of the show subsequently debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart when it was released nearly six months later, and in 1996 it won the band’s surviving members the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

“Unplugged” marked a drastic departure from the grunge band’s comparatively noisier earlier album, and the performance contained only a handful of the band’s better-known songs at the time. Instead it was rife with renditions of tunes originally performed by artists Nirvana admired — namely David Bowie, The Vaselines, Lead Belly and the Meat Puppets — and featured members of the latter performing several of their own songs.

The forthcoming reissue includes the same 14 tracks as the original “Unplugged” record in addition to outtakes that were recorded during rehearsals for the taping and previously made available on a DVD version of the show released 2007. They include Nirvana originals “Come As You Are,” “Polly” and “Pennyroyal Tea,” as well as “Plateau” by the Meat Puppet and Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World.”

The original album version of “Unplugged” sold roughly 3 million copies within three months of being released. Nirvana was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nearly 20 years later in 2014.