10 Tunes: MTV Unplugged

Introducing a series where I condense an artist / era / movement / style / genre to a ten song playlist

A few years before my parents relented and we finally got cable TV, I heard songs from Eric Clapton’s Unplugged on the radio, circa 1992. Rod Stewart’s Unplugged…. And Seated was released a year later and became a popular CD in our house. Family friends of ours, who had three daughters around the same ages as my sisters and I, loved 10,000 Maniacs, so it was probably at their house that I first heard “Because the Night.” Arty beauty Natalie Merchant warbling “so take me now” stirred something in prepubescent Josh. (Hear below at 2:32:)