Trivia / MTV Unplugged in New York

• Approval of God: David Bowie publicly gave Nirvana's rendition of "The Man Who Sold the World" his approval, stating that it provided his first real indicator of how important he was to the American musical landscape as well as the British one. He did, however, express annoyance with the number of people who mistook it for a Nirvana original.
  "I was simply blown away when I found that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and have always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering 'The Man Who Sold the World' [...] it was a, good straightforward rendition, and sounded somehow very honest. It would have been nice to have worked with him, but just talking with him would have been real cool."
• Colbert Bump: The band's covers of The Vaselines and the Meat Puppets as well as the performances with the latter on the special reinvigorated interest in both bands.
• Swan Song: At the time, no one knew that only two months later, Nirvana would play their final American concert, nor that Cobain would commit suicide five months later. On a more literal note, the set-ending cover "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" was this, according to Coletti, who asked the band to do an encore.
  Coletti: I was just doing my job for MTV at that point, trying to get that one extra song in the can, to see if the night could produce one more gem. The pleading went on for about five minutes. Finally Kurt said, "I can't top that last song." And when he said that, I backed off. 'Cause I knew he was right.

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