Of all the daring moves that Nirvana made during their
MTV Unplugged performance, bringing on the Meat Puppets was perhaps the most daring.
Legend has it that MTV were really hoping Nirvana would bring out Pearl Jam or another more famous guest, but Nirvana insisted on bringing out Cris and Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets, whose 1984 sophomore LP
Meat Puppets II (released on Black Flag's SST Records) was a clear influence on Nirvana and grunge in general, but who had yet to receive any real mainstream attention. (The following year, Meat Puppets scored their sole hit with "Backwater," and Nirvana are almost definitely to thank.) Meat Puppets were punk in spirit, but they had a psychedelic, country-inspired sound and it's easy to see how that impacted the shaggy, tattered sound (and image) of grunge. So many of the popular grunge bands leaned more towards metal and stadium rock, but the rawer, weirder side can be traced right back to the Meat Puppets, so it couldn't have been more perfect when Nirvana helped introduce them to the mainstream world. They played three songs off
Meat Puppets II with Cris and Curt, and the very best of those performances was "Lake Of Fire." It's among Nirvana's more straightforward covers (part of that likely due to 2/3 of the Meat Puppets playing on the song), but in this case, that was the way to go. Nirvana had to make the Bowie, Lead Belly, and Vaselines covers their own, but the "Lake of Fire" performance proved that the original song should've been a grunge hit in the first place. Since the song had some country/blues influence to begin with, it was no surprise that it sounded perfect with acoustic guitars. And vocally, Kurt killed it. Just like Curt Kirkwood did on the Meat Puppets original, Kurt
almost struggled to reach those high notes, and hearing him strain his voice to hit them makes it all the more charming. People talk about Kurt not being a properly trained singer but still being a powerful one who could win over the hearts of millions, and this song captures how his flaws ended up working to his benefit.