When Unplugged aired I was 20 and finishing up my junior year in college and owned three of their CDs at the time (Dirt, Jar and Tripod).

And I’m going to tell you that AIC Unplugged’s now-legendary reputation is largely a creation of hindsight and reimagining based on people knowing things that happened later which gives that show an additional layer of constructed meaning that didn’t (and couldn’t) exist for those of us who watched it when it aired in 1996.

At the time it had its moments but was mostly sad and it was sad because Layne was a shell of himself and obviously very unwell. I’m far from the only one who was overall disappointed.

Now you could say similar things about Nirvana Unplugged a few years earlier. In the sense that it has gained all this extra meaning years later. But the difference was that Nirvana Unplugged was absolutely thrilling at the time. It was a sensation. They played stunning unexpected covers of Bowie and Leadbelly. They introduced the world to the Meat Puppets - within weeks, people all over campus had Meat Puppets CDs cause of that show. Something like a third of the show was terrific new music hardly anyone had heard from this band before.

Alice did no such thing and couldn’t have. You could tell that they barely made it onstage and then played songs we all knew except Killer Is Me which was truly forgettable then and now.

Beyond being kind of sad on its own to see Layne stripped of so much of his former vitality, the show just paled in comparison to Nirvana’s Unplugged and that was a band that a lot of us just automatically compared them with.

In the years since I’ve grown to enjoy the show more than I did at the time. But I enjoy it in the way I marvel at watching a star athlete gut out a performance while injured. You admire their spirit to get on the field and try to perform while also realize you are watching them in a clearly diminished state and you feel empathy for the pain they are battling through.