{"id":4040,"date":"2017-05-19T02:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T02:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=4040"},"modified":"2017-05-19T17:03:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-19T17:03:57","slug":"chris-cornell-1964-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=4040","title":{"rendered":"Chris Cornell 1964-2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wow, I am in absolute, unadultured “punch in the gut” shock\u00a0 and have been since midnight last night when I first heard Chris Cornell had killed himself.<\/p>\n

He was an amazing talent, both as a vocalist and lyricist. His songs were powerful, obscure, thought-provoking. He was a high-school dropout but a genius.<\/p>\n

The reason I think his death hit me so hard is that I basically blew off music for many years. Other than Stevie Ray Vaughan and U2’s “The Joshua Tree,” the 80s to me were mostly a lost decade. I mostly listened to Led Zeppelin, the Who or old blues through that whole decade. It was a genuinely depressing Death Valley of Bad Journey, Bad Foreigner, Overrated Bruce Springsteen and Astonishingly Bad Flock of Seagulls. There hadn’t been anything worth listening to for me since Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”<\/p>\n

Then, when I was living in Mammoth Lakes, through our cable service, there was a secret way to pick up radio stations. And one of those radio stations was a Fresno State college station. I started hearing this band called Nirvana on that stations MONTHS before anyone else outside of Seattle. and I loved them.<\/p>\n

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About the same time, a friend of mine gave me a tape of a band called Primus. I didn’t take to them as quickly as I did Nirvana, they were much more of an acquired test. But, I did find them strangely compelling despite Les Claypool’s weird vocals. The more I listened to them, the more I became a fan of their incredible musicanship.<\/p>\n

About that same time, Pearl Jam started hitting it big. Pearl Jam’s “Ten” was one of the first CDs I ever bought. I liked it, a lot at first.<\/p>\n

So, with Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Primus under my belt and this burgeoning music scene exploding out of the Seattle, I moved to the Pacific Northwest. At that time, all three bands literally erupted into megastardom. Finally, after 10 years of feeling like I was wandering through the musical wilderness, listening mostly to my older brothers’ music, I felt like I had music *I* could relate to. Angry, alienated, disconnected people railing against the wind.<\/p>\n

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My Soundgarden, Audioslave collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Around this time, a band called Alice N Chains came forward. They were OK, too many of their songs were about heroin and everyone in the 90s just HAD to do songs about heroin because, wow, people in the 60s didn’t find out the hard way how much it sucked.<\/p>\n

Kind of following in the tailwind of all this musical revolution was a loud, yet weirdly quiet Seattle band with a really stupid name — Soundgarden.<\/p>\n

I thought Soundgarden was all right at first, but they weren’t Nirvana or Primus. I bought their CDs, listened to them, then went back to the ol’ reliables, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Like Primus, it took a while for Soundgarden to grow on me.<\/p>\n