From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah is a live album by American rock band Nirvana, released on October 1, 1996 by DGC Records.
From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah was intended to show the band's heavier side, in contrast to the acoustic MTV Unplugged album, and was originally meant to be packaged alongside the MTV Unplugged set in a double album called Verse Chorus Verse, although most of what became From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah was eventually recompiled.
The album's title refers to the Wishkah River in Aberdeen, Washington, where Cobain claimed to have spent nights sleeping under the Young Street Bridge as a teenager (as referenced in the song "Something in the Way", from Nevermind).
It also uses "Polly" and "Breed," the latter of which then featured the working title "Imodium",[6] and a slower tempo than the version of the song which eventually appeared on Nevermind.
The London Astoria show was praised by the British music press at the time,[7] with the NME calling the band "Sub Pop's answer to The Beatles".
[8] Only one song, "Negative Creep," appears from the band's performance at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle on October 31, 1991, although the vinyl version features additional stage banter from this show on side four.
[9] The Paramount concert was the band's first performance in Seattle since the release of Nevermind the previous month, and has retrospectively been described by English music journalist Everett True as "the end of an era" that showed that "incontrovertibly, Nirvana was now big news".
The show was part of a four-date Californian mini-tour in late December with American rock bands Red Hot Chili Peppers, who headlined, and Pearl Jam, who were the first openers.
"[13] The full show was released in November 2021 on the 30th anniversary "Super Deluxe" version of Nevermind, which featured the complete concert on CD.
[15] The vinyl version of the album also features additional stage banter from this concert, as well as a brief clip of band performing "Dumb" before stopping it after Cobain accidentally repeats the second verse instead of playing the bridge.
"Heart-Shaped Box" is taken from a show, which benefitted the non-profit media watch organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, at The Forum in Los Angeles, on December 30, 1993.
[20] The vinyl version features additional stage banter from this show, including a clip of Cobain dedicating a song to recently deceased celebrities Frank Zappa, River Phoenix, Fred Gwynne, Dixie Lee Ray and Tip O'Neil, along with "you dumb ass who just threw water on me.
[29] Lorraine Ali of Rolling Stone described From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah as the "emotional, visceral flip side" of MTV Unplugged in New York, and as "riotous and liberating", showing the band "in their most natural state, smashing instruments and inducing irreversible tinnitus.
"[4] Johnny Cigarettes of the NME called it "a gloriously electrifying aural photo-book of a truly legendary rock’n’roll band, the like of which burns across our skies all too rarely in this sterile, cynical and safely post-modern age.
[42] In his Allmusic review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the compilation "a little scattershot" but "still a terrific record" which "finds a great band in top form.
[43] Keith Cameron welcomed the compilation's emphasis on the "positive...versions of 'Polly' and 'Breed' from the Lamefest gig at London's Astoria in December 1989, [the night] Nirvana opened for Mudhoney and Tad at a two-thirds empty theatre, [and] served notice that they were the band destined to redirect the gaze of the pop world onto a town called Seattle.
"[This quote needs a citation] Radio & Records described the 1996 documentary Teen Spirit: The Tribute to Kurt Cobain as the "video scrapbook companion to Nirvana's From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah LP".