LOW VOLTAGE, HIGH POWER

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

The show is about to start, but the bickering seems unstoppable. Courtney Love and her punk-rock group, Hole, are on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in mid-February, preparing to tape a performance for MTV Unplugged--the hugely influential show in which rock bands cast aside their electric guitars and amplifiers in an attempt to demonstrate their musical talents on old-fashioned acoustic instruments.

The pressure is getting to the band, which has been through difficult times lately--Love's husband Kurt Cobain committed suicide last April, and the group's bassist, Kristen Pfaff, died of an apparent heroin overdose last June. During rehearsals, Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson snap at each other. "Shut up, Eric," Love says at one point. "You're the one with the girlfriend on the cover of Playboy." (Erlandson is dating actress Drew Barrymore, who recently appeared nude in that magazine.) The testy exchange makes one wonder, Can this band pull it together in time to perform?

It does--and with impressive results. "Welcome to MTV Unglued," Love says jokingly at the start of the show. Her voice is raw, but the band's ragged sound is perversely charming in this folksy format. They rip through a few songs from their current CD, Live Through This, as well as an unreleased Cobain tune, You Got No Right. The performance is unexpectedly loud, and not completely unplugged--Love and Erlandson gamely pluck away at acoustic guitars and are backed by a harpist, but their instruments are wired to not strictly kosher onstage electric amplifiers. Still, the show has grit and guts. Love, relaxing later at a local club with comic Sandra Bernhard, is upbeat: "I thought it went well." Erlandson is less sure: "That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do."

MTV Unplugged has become the place where boys strive to be men, women to be divas, and rockers of any gender or persuasion can become megastars. Unplugged albums are showing up ever more frequently at the top of the charts, and the unplugged ethos has influenced much of pop music. The very term unplugged has entered the language, connoting that something or someone has stripped off the gaudy trappings of the disinformation age and gone back to basics. MTV this month is launching a new series of Unplugged concerts, featuring some of the hottest acts in pop music. Among them: Grammy winner Sheryl Crow, the tart but sweet Irish pop group Cranberries, the spiritualistic rockers Live and singer-guitarist Melissa Etheridge--whose show, featuring a duet with Bruce Springsteen, airs this week. Says Crow: "Getting to perform in this format, which is taking your music and honoring the song as opposed to blowing up amps and stuff--I think that's a cool way to reach people." Adds Live lead singer Ed Kowalczyk: "It's become an important show for bands in their career now."

Unplugged has come a long way since its humble, low-budget beginnings in 1989 with a concert featuring the band Squeeze, Syd Straw, Elliot Easton and Jules Shear. The aim then was high concept, not high ratings: a return to unvarnished, straight-from-the-artist rock after years of high-voltage, high-volume entertainment. Says Unplugged producer Alex Coletti: "There were no tricks, no effects. It was a whole reaction to the '80s and the [disgraced lip-synching pop duo] Milli Vanilli mentality. We wanted Unplugged to be as straightforward as possible."

The program gradually began attracting better guests and a bigger following. Irish vocalist Sinead O'Connor was featured in a 1991 show, and progressive rockers R.E.M. appeared later that same year. Other A-list musicians--Sting, Eric Clapton, Arrested Development--soon followed. Older performers went on Unplugged to revive careers, younger rockers to boost new ones. When Pearl Jam paid a visit in 1992, it was largely unknown; its Unplugged appearance was an important milestone in the band's drive toward megastardom. Aging soulman Rod Stewart's acoustic set spawned an Unplugged album that sold 3 million copies. Coming full circle, folk-rock trailblazer Bob Dylan, who enraged music purists when he plugged in his acoustic guitar 30 years ago, will release an Unplugged CD in April. (In 1993 Dylan released an acoustic CD that hardly anyone bought, but the new, brand-name effort should sell better.)

The performers are growing more eclectic, the sales booming. Tony Bennett's Grammy-winning MTV Unplugged has been the No. 1 album on Billboard's jazz charts for nearly 40 weeks. Although the punk-band Nirvana became defunct after the death of lead singer Cobain, the group's posthumously released MTV Unplugged in New York has sold 3 million copies so far and remains in the Top 20 of Billboard's pop-album charts. "You can't get around the fact that some people are just put off by certain genres of music, be it jazz or grunge," says Danny Bennett, executive producer of his father's Unplugged album. "But when they hear Kurt Cobain or Tony Bennett stripped down, all they hear is the talent. And then they can connect with it."

Merely an association with the Unplugged name has become an important marketing tool. No Quarter: Jimmy Page & Robert Plant Unledded, an MTV-supported reunion of two Led Zeppelin members, is a tired album--the musical equivalent of microwaved leftovers--but it has nonetheless sold more than a million copies. And the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over, a wimpy, coldhearted reunion album that was put together, in part, by Unplugged staff members and heavily promoted on MTV, has sold a robust 4 million.

To be sure, the folks at MTV did not invent acoustic music. But by championing the sound, Unplugged has had widespread impact throughout the music industry. Radio stations have sponsored Unplugged-type concerts, and pop stars who have never been on Unplugged--soul singer Vanessa Williams, for example--have released albums that echo the show's soft-pop, pared-down sound. Andre Harrell, head of Uptown records, sees the unplugged style spreading. "Jodeci, in its upcoming album, is doing an acoustic song," he says. "Babyface did an acoustic-guitar song, When Can I See You. I'm sure some of that was inspired by Unplugged." Even the Rolling Stones, the nearly fossilized progenitors of eardrum-rending rock, are rumored to be planning an acoustic album.

Not everyone is plugged into the Unplugged sound. Steve Albini, the combative producer of Nirvana's last studio album, In Utero, says record companies have seized on Unplugged as a way of repackaging old, previously recorded material. Already own the original? Now buy the unplugged version. "From an artistic standpoint, it's a total joke," says Albini. "You take bands that are fundamentally electric-rock bands and put acoustic guitars in their hands and make them do a pantomime of a front-porch performance. It's not an authentic reading of that music at all. It's like watching a water ballet crossed with an N.F.L. football game."

The homogeneity of the performers on Unplugged has also come in for criticism. With a few exceptions, such as Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige, the acts invited to come on the show have been white rock 'n' rollers. A few months ago, the New York City-based Black Rock Coalition held its own nontelevised "unplugged" in New York City to showcase minority talent ignored by MTV. Coletti defends his show's record and argues that rhythm-driven genres such as rap, R. and B. and reggae are often better suited for dance floors than for an acoustic showcase. "It's kind of hard, but not everyone is right for the show," he says. MTV officials point out that a Stevie Wonder appearance on Unplugged is being planned. But critics charge that the show's racial makeup reflects a persistent double standard at the music channel: black musicians are seen mainly as entertainers, while white musicians are more likely to be regarded as "artists" deserving of a serious showcase on Unplugged.

Unplugged is not a perfect show. MTV helped create the glitzy, surface-over-substance music-video age, and sometimes Unplugged succumbs to the very values it once reacted against. At points, the show's naked emotionality feels as false and forced as an arena full of headbangers holding their lighters aloft during a power ballad. Often enough, though, there are flashes of excellence. The best and most transporting performance in the new series of concerts was turned in by Etheridge. She walked onto a bare set with no string section, no drums, no backup-just her and her acoustic guitar filling up the stage.

The concert hit its peak when Springsteen joined her for a tender, mournful rendition of his classic rock anthem Thunder Road. It was a magical moment-spontaneous, liberating, passionate. At one point, Etheridge fumbled the words near the end of the song. So, to the delight of the crowd, she and Springsteen performed the song again-flawlessly. It proved, once more, that you don't need to be plugged in to generate electricity.