Soundgarden

I know some of my friends think I'm crazy, but I had the password and info on buying tickets to Soundgarden's "secret show" at the Showbox on Friday and didn't buy tickets. Don't get me wrong, there was a time when I liked Soundgarden. Their first 7", Screaming Life ep, and about half of their Ultramega OK album on SST are pretty good. But the transition from original sounding underground rock band to updated '70s arena rock was already well underway by the time they signed to a major label. And those 5+ minutes songs with Chris Cornell howling, especially live, didn't quite do it for me. Here's my deal, if the songs are over 4 minutes long and have a guy screaming like a chick, it better be metal. It works for bands like 3 Inches of Blood, but not so much for Soundgarden, who to me became more like Led Zeppelin... watered down, drawn out, hair farmin' arena rock. So I passed on buying tickets, especially at $35 each and then with all the Ticketmaster fees tacked on (probably ended up being over $45 each). Friends that went said it was awesome, but today, listening to the recording, I'm thinking it was more an awesome experience, than awesome musically. Chris Cornell's voice still seems kinda shot and not so good. He's always sounded way better in the studio than live, but the disparity between the two has become more vast over the years. It will be interesting to see how his voice holds up through the full Lolapalooza tour. Oh, if you want to hear Friday's show, a live recording is here.

"This new raging primal grunge band... is called Mudhoney"

British writer, drunk and blowhard Everett True gets a lot of praise from those outside Seattle for making "The Seattle Sound" or "Grunge" famous. I always laughed at that shit because it was the bands and fans of Seattle that made it famous. Sure, True gave the scene some British press, but he was a bit of a Johnny come lately in 1989 when he started covering our music scene for Melody Maker. Case in point with the article below from a 1988 issue of Puncture, a SF music magazine, that did a lead feature about the emerging Northwest rock scene a full year before True came to town. They call Mudhoney grunge in this article... which may have been one of the first uses of the word to describe a Seattle band. But by 1988 the bands coming out of Seattle were definitely already noticed nationally, from Green River, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, to other Washington bands like The Screaming Trees, Girl Trouble and Melvins. Pretty much anything coming out on Sub Pop was getting bought up instantly nation-wide, but labels like K also had a lot of fans even outside of Washington. This article is a pretty good read if you're into NW rock history or want to see how things felt back in 1988 when the whole music scene that got famous was in it's early years... (click on the pix for full size)

TadGarden

I haven't said anything about the Crocodile reopening, mainly because I haven't been interested enough in most of what they've booked to want to go there yet. So I haven't had a chance to check it out. Unfortunately the one decent show I wanted to see was Akimbo/Brothers of a Sonic Cloth and I did indeed miss out that night, because Soundgarden played a few songs with TAD singing. I liked the first Soundgarden 12" and about half the songs on Ultramega OK, but for me I lost interest in the band ironically right when the world started to love them, when they started writing longer slower arena rock ballads and became my generations Led Zeppelin. Chris Cornell's vocals were always a little over the top for me, so I liked the darker and quirkier early Soundgarden stuff and "Hunted Down" remains my favorite song. So check out this vid below of TAD fronting the rest of Soundgarden. They did both "Hunted Down" and "Nothing to Say," sweet! And while TAD's delivery is always rough, growly and a bit creepy, I think it works, and at this point I'd probably rather hear him singing it then Chris Cornell. TAD was and will remain always more representative of what I thought Grunge was, if there ever was such a thing, along with bands like Mudhoney.