Video Of The Week: Pearl Jam

Remember in 1995-1996, when the Smashing Pumpkins could do no wrong and went full-artistic with a double album (Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness) as well as a five-CD set of b-sides to accompany it (The Aeroplane Flies High), producing high-budget stop-motion videos for off-kilter singles like 33 and paying tribute to the films of Georges Méliès (Tonight, Tonight) to go with the heroin chic of Zero?

It looks like that's what Josh Wakely was going for when he pitched Pearl Jam his idea for a video based on their new single Retrograde - not the safest bet as a single:

There are nice images and familiar themes - the "end of the world" / Global Warming / nature fights back theme of Gigaton is omnipresent, there are waves and water galore, the idea of people mixed with tarot cards is neat - but the animation doesn't rock my boat, unfortunately.

This one's a nice effort but a miss. Still, it's the best new video out this week.

Video Of The Week: Pearl Jam

When I first heard Pearl Jam's Superblood Wolfmoon last month, ahead of their new record Gigaton's release, I felt a tad underwhelmed by the song. It had a decent riff, but the lyrics seemed too juvenile at first glance, and I got to hoping they wouldn't play it too often on their upcoming tour, where I'd be seeing them at least twice (Ottawa and Québec).

I didn't listen to it that often, for that reason, but once in a while I would hear it on the radio - and I never listen to the radio, but sometimes when my kid won't sleep, I'll tune in to CHOM (Montréal's last remaining rock station) and dance with him in my arms for a while, and it invariably played.

It's been stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now. The hook is addictive. And Keith Ross and the Tiny Concert animation crew did a fine job of capturing the band's energy in their primitive drawings and giving them life in the official video:

I always feel kind of bad when keyboardist Boom Gaspar is left out of the picture, though. The poor guy's been playing with the band since 2002 and still hasn't gotten promoted to "band member", instead remaining officially a "session and touring musician". Yeah, for one band.

Video Of The Week: Pearl Jam

It's been getting easier in the past 10-15 years to hear direct influences of Pearl Jam's newer songs, from the b-side Down sounding like a less-distorted version of AC/DC's You Shook Me (All Night Long); many people hear a Talking Heads influence in their latest video out today, Dance Of The Clairvoyants, but if you keep in mind The Heads have also influenced modern bands like Arcade Fire, you might also detect an eerie similarity to the Montréal band's own Reflektor:

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather they wear their influences on their sleeve and be true to it in their hearts, it's just that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Famers are clearly on a path where they are a lot less ahead of the curve than when they led the rock world.

Sure, with Gigaton, a record that dives head-first into political messaging and the urgency of global warming, their message is still on point, but the the edge no longer cuts.

Director Ryan Cory does a good job of merging the band's energy (and the track's dance-ability) with images of the earth's beauty and strength. Notice how guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament - essentially the band's founders and co-conspirators since the mid-1980s in Green River, then Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone - have switched instruments, with Gossard playing (and having come up with) the bass parts and Ament carrying his axe like a rockabilly twanger. 

They're no longer reinventing rock, but at least they're reinventing themselves. And the song's pretty good, too!

Video Of The Week: Chris Cornell

Coinciding with the release of a 64-song eponymous collection spanning his time with Soundgarden, Temple Of The Dog, Audioslave and as a failed solo artist, Chris Cornell's estate released this video of the late grunge star featuring his son, Christopher Jr., as a paperboy, tracing back his father's old route and footsteps in the Emerald City, with some of his lyrics and song titles spray-painted all over town:

It was masterfully directed by Kevin Kerslake (Sonic Youth, Liz Phair, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana) as a tribute both to the man and the city, and in that respect works extremely well.

The song also works as a reminder that Cornell's lyrics were very often sad, depressing and suicidal, which should be both a deterrent and fodder for the conspiracy theorists who think the late singer was murdered ("12 years sober!" is generally their rallying cry).

This wasn't Chris Jr.'s first video appearance, as he was also in Soundgarden's Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart, which was pulled from just about everywhere, as it depicts Cornell as a prisoner in the Old West getting ready to be hung, with one shot of a noose being fitted around his neck.

The boxed set itself contains a lot of live material, including Cornell's One, which meshes the lyrics to Metallica's song of the same name over U2's ballad, a Sirius XM studio rendition of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, a live duet with Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam on Wild World, and a duet with Toni Cornell (Chris' daughter) on Bob Marley's Redemption Song (which Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder famously did with Beyoncé).

Other covers include Led Zeppelin's Thank You and Whole Lotta Love, The Beatles' A Day In The Life, Mother Love Bone's Stargazer, Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, and John Lennon's Imagine.

Video Of The Week: Temple Of The Dog

In the beginning, there was Malfunkshun. It was Easter Sunday in Seattle, in 1980. They owed a lot to Kiss and T-Rex as far as sound and look goes, perhaps with a bit more distortion in their guitars.

They played for years with such Seattle luminaries The U-Men (est. 1981), Melvins (1983), Green River (1984) and Soundgarden (1984); they were all friends. So much so that Malfunkshun's lead singer, Andrew Wood, started playing with Green River's Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard and formed Mother Love Bone, then moved in and became roommates with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. The other half of Green River formed Mudhoney, who went on to have some success of their own.

In 1990, Wood died of a heroin overdose, which deeply affected all of his friends - and Cornell in particular; he wrote twelve moving songs in tribute to his best friend, ten of which made it onto Temple Of The Dog's self-titled record, a project he included Wood's Mother Love Bone bandmates in, including a new singer they'd brought in to front their new unit, then-named Mookie Blaylock in honor of the basketball star but would soon be renamed Pearl Jam, a Chicago-via-San Diego surfer/artist called Eddie Vedder;  Soundgarden's Matt Cameron was on drum duty, having done the same on the Gossard's demo that prompted Vedder to move up North to try out for the new band, and PJ's lead guitarist Mike McCready was invited as well.

It was thus no lie when the Temple Of The Dog CD was adorned with a sticker that read "Pearl Jam + Soundgarden = Temple Of The Dog", and the video for Hunger Strike, which remains one of the best songs of the 1990s, made full use of all members sporting plaid shirts and shorts with underalls. It was directed by Paul Rachman and featured such Pacific Northwest staples as a beach, a "forest" and the West Point Lighthouse:

Cornell didn't actually think much of the song originally, until Vedder came along and added his twist to it:

When we started rehearsing the songs, I had pulled out "Hunger Strike" and I had this feeling it was just kind of gonna be filler, it didn't feel like a real song. Eddie was sitting there waiting for a (Mookie Blaylock) rehearsal and I was singing parts, and he kind of humbly - but with some balls - walked up to the mic and started singing the low parts for me because he saw it was kind of hard (and I was struggling). We got through a couple choruses of him doing that and suddenly the light bulb came on in my head, this guy's voice is amazing for these low parts. History wrote itself after that, (and it) became the single.

In music, history is often made accidentally. Lightning in a bottle.

Video Of The Week: Soundgarden

Well, folks, the third of grunge's Holy Quadrinity has passed away. After Nirvana's Kurt Cobain (suicide or murder) and Alice In Chains' Layne Staley (drug overdose) , Soundgarden's Chris Cornell has killed himself as well. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder remains, alone in sadness.

In the Greater Scheme of Seattle Rock, they themselves all joined James Marshall Hendrix (drug overdose), Mother Love Bone and Malfunkshun's Andrew Wood (drug overdose), The Gits' Mia Zapata (rape and murder) and Hole's Kristen Pfaff (drug overdose), Hendrix, Pfaff and Cobain even making it on the infamous 27 Club list of celebrities who died before their 28th birthday. Cornell was 52.

Much has been and will be said about this, and there will be much over-analyzing. I cut ties with them as favourites after two awful days in 1994 culminating in an awful show at the Verdun Auditorium (a venue where both Pearl Jam and Nirvana had wowed me the year before, among other great shows I've seen there), but they have created fine pieces of music in their careers and were good musicians. And despite Nirvana and Pearl Jam getting the credit for putting grunge on the map, Soundgarden (with Green River, which featured future members of PJ, Mother Love Bone and Mudhoney) was the oldest of its generation, having formed in 1984, with its "classic" incarnation dating back to 1990.

You definitely saw a change in the band's music and Cornell's singing style when Pearl Jam made it big, moving away from their metal roots and high-pitched vocals into more angst-riddled, bass-heavy territory, brooding melodies and a growling baritone. The evolution is extremely clear from the Screaming Life (1987) and Fopp (1988) EPs to Ultramega OK (1988) to Louder Than Love (1989) to the apex of their metal years, Badmotorfinger (1991), to the super-grungy Superunknown (1994) to its rehash/copy Down On The Upside (1996, which did have more Alice In Chains-y tones in the music), but Cornell's PJ-lite-ness really came through on all three Audioslave records. I'm surprised they didn't catch more flak than they did, because it would have been easy to categorize Audioslave alongside Better Than Ezra, Candlebox, Creed, Stone Temple Pilots and so many others as just Pearl Jam wanna-bes.

Still, on this day, I thought perhaps I could rank my favourite Cornell songs. It's hard, because all of his projects except Temple Of The Dog (created in memory of former roommate Wood) - even the solo albums - involved other songwriters, so it's difficult to pinpoint his actual involvement in many tracks, but I will omit songs such as Fresh Tendrils (a Matt Cameron number) and Head Down (written by Ben Shepard), for example, off Superunknown.

10B. BIG DUMB SEX (Soundgarden, Louder Than Love, 1989)
10A. SPOONMAN (Soundgarden, Superunknown, 1994)
9. BLOW UP THE OUTSIDE WORLD (Soundgarden, Down On The Upside, 1996)
8. COCHISE (Audioslave, Audioslave, 2002)
7. THE DAY I TRIED TO LIVE (Soundgarden, Superunknown, 1994)
6. JESUS CHRIST POSE (Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger, 1991)
5. PRETTY NOOSE (Soundgarden, Down On The Upside, 1996)
4. RUSTY CAGE (Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger, 1991)
3. OUTSHINED (Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger, 1991)
2. HUNGER STRIKE (Temple Of The Dog, Temple Of The Dog, 1991)
1. 4TH OF JULY (Soundgarden, Superunknown, 1994)

I'm not too fond of Spoonman's lyrics, but the guitar riff ranks as one of the best in rock history. I'd say the rest are all solid rock songs in their own right, and perhaps TOTD's Say Hello 2 Heaven would have warranted inclusion somewhere in there as well; I'm also surprised two songs from Down On The Upside made it here, seeing as I've always been critical of it in the past 20 years.

And maybe I could have included Black Hole Sun as #10B instead of Big Dumb Sex, as it is their biggest hit, and I still listen to it at times, but I tried to look at it objectively, which ones ring truest to my heart and have done so since they came out, and those are the eleven that came to mind right away.

Here's Black Hole Sun anyway, with the famous video directed by Howard Greenhalgh, featuring a critical view at suburban life in the same vein as David Lynch's Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet:

In any event, R.I.P.

Video Of A Generation: Pearl Jam

To celebrate the band's upcoming induction in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Pearl Jam's official videographer, Kevin Shuss, compiled 25 years' worth of video material set to the tune of their first single, Alive:

There are tons of special guests in there, from Neil Young to members of The Ramones to every drummer in the band's history to Chris Cornell to Ben Harper to the band appearing with or opening for the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Who... it's a neat little compilation/celebration.

Video Of The Week: The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins' 1998 release, Adore, was the band's ode to dark New Wave music, where electronic beats (and Joey Waronker) took over for departed drummer Jimmy Chamberlin; it was also the last to feature any member of the classic line-up save for leader Billy Corgan, as guitarist James Iha left for A Perfect Circle and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky had just had enough (of everything, Corgan in particular).

A lot of people loved the song Perfect - I didn't, feeling that it was an easier-to-listen-to rehash of 1979 - and almost no one understood the The Cure reference of 17; Ava Adore, however, was liked by almost all fans, in the same vein as Eye from the Lost Highway soundtrack, but more radio-friendly and with its own themes and structure. Its video, directed by Dom & Nic (a.k.a. Nic Goffey and Dominic Hawley), was heavy on the "heroin chic" visual theme, one the Pumpkins had been flirting with since 1995 (Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero) but hadn't fully embraced yet:

With Adore considered a flop, Corgan followed it with the extremely hard rocking two-part release Machina: The Machines Of God and Machina II: The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music, thought at the time to be the band's curtain call.

Video Of The Week: The Smashing Pumpkins

"Tomorrow's just an excuse away / So I pull my collar up and face the cold, on my own".
- Billy Corgan, 1995.

Winter's upon us, ice covers the streets and sidewalks - and perhaps even our hearts. The warmth is so far away, a few of us may not even get to experience it again. And in this cold, all I hear are the words to The Smashing Pumpkins' Thirty-Three, the first song Corgan wrote after the seminal 1993 album Siamese Dream which ended up as the final single released from the two-disc epic and so-aptly-titled Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

Mellon Collie sounded tragic, and in many ways it was. It was the last record the "classic" Pumpkins line-up ever recorded, although said line-up was usually just used sparsely in the studio, with Corgan performing all instruments except drums himself, save for a piano or guitar solo here and there, courtesy of James Iha. It was also one of the harshest tours in rock history, as one 17-year-old fan was crushed to death at the Dublin show, and with touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin overdosing on heroin in New York, resulting in Melvoin's death and Chamberlin's expulsion of the group.

The band didn't stop the tour, however, recruiting studio drummer extraordinaire Matt Walker (who also appeared on later studio singles and 1998's Adore) and keyboardist Dennis Flemion; the band played the Molson Centre on September 11th, 1996 (I won tickets to the show by calling in at CHOM, the local rock station), and released the following single and video (co-directed by Corgan and then-partner Yelena Yemchuk), filmed in stop-motion and leading up to a re-enactment of the Mellon Collie album cover at the end:

Video Of The Week: Pearl Jam

As I'm nearing the end of a streak of sadness, I decided to cap it off with Pearl Jam's ''official video'' for Just Breathe from their 2009 record Backspacer, which is actually taken from a TV broadcast of their appearance on the 2009 Austin City Limits show. It's fitting, though, as the band has always preferred either live videos or not appearing in them at all - they have a bit of an issue with any type of middle ground or compromise when it comes to their art and public appearances, and become intense when both get combined.

If it sounds reminiscent of Eddie Vedder's 2007 soundtrack for Into The Wild, it's because it it: there was a chord in the song Tuolumne that he decided to play with and expand on two years later, which became Just Breathe, which is one of the many PJ songs dealing with death and cycles ending. Many people deem it the best at conveying that message, while I'm partial to Man Of The Hour from the Tim Burton film Big Fish.

Still, Just Breathe has now replaced Yellow Ledbetter as the sad Pearl Jam song playing in movies and TV shows that want to end on a teary note.

It was covered by Willie Nelson on his 2012 album Heroes.

Video Of The Week: Soundgarden

Soundgarden had good songs from start to finish. Well, they're still going at it after a decade-long hiatus, but they've still got decent tracks - just not as many as average ones.

But the one I listen to the most (and cover the most live) has to be Outshined, from their seminal 1991 album Badmotorfinger, so I figured I'd feature the video this week, directed by Matt Mahurin (which the band despised, assessing he had phoned it in while concentrating on the simultaneous editing of Metallica's The Unforgiven):

The ladies used to love singer Chris Cornell's long curly hair and often-bare chest, very heavy metal-like. Then again, Soundgarden were the Seattle grunge scene's heaviest act, in that they were the most obviously influenced by actual metal, whereas Alice In Chains were inspired by hair metal first and foremost, Pearl Jam by classic rock, and Nirvana by punk and The Pixies.

I've been listening to Soundgarden a lot lately. Not enough to forget about my encounter with them in 1994, and not enough to forget Cornell's solo output, but enough to remember I really liked them.

Video Of The (Past) Week: Hole

For some reason, I'm still in my Hole trip - it's been a year, these usually last me three or four months at a time, but I'm hearing things I want to hear on every single one of their records these days - well, 1991 (Pretty On The Inside) until 1998 (Celebrity Skin), anyway, I never delve into 2010 (Nobody's Daughter) territory.

This song - Celebrity Skin, the title track off their most commercial release - was co-written by Courtney Love with the band's guitarist Eric Erlandson and Billy Corgan (of The Smashing Pumpkins), whose influence is very distinct (the chord progression is very Siamese Dream, the wordplay very Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness), and the beautifully stylized video was directed by Nancy Bardawil; it's the type of imagery (glowing gowns, bright pink and purple with black) that would also have worked wonders for the band's breakthrough hit Miss World.



The only downer in it is seeing future drummer Samantha Maloney wear a wig to look like Patty Schemel who had not yet been told she wasn't in the band anymore; they didn't even really have to go that route since Deen Castronovo (G/Z/R, Ozzy Osbourne, Bad English, Steve Vai, Paul Rodgers Band) was the actual session drummer they used, but I guess having two men (with Erlandson) appear in the comeback video for what is considered a ''girl band'' - and one that the media put the entire weight of feminism in rock on - may have been seen as a treason of sorts.

Video Of The Week: The Smashing Pumpkins

I could have chosen any of at least 10 videos to feature The Smashing Pumpkins, and I really almost went with one featuring Melissa Auf Der Maur on bass, and also hesitated putting their best song up (Bullet With Butterfly Wings), but ultimately I went with this one, released a couple of weeks following my 15th birthday, for Today, by acclaimed director Stéphane Sednaoui:



Despite the band being from Chicago, the Pumpkins are generally lumped into the ''grunge'' category for mixing quiet verses with heavy and loud choruses, and having lyrics that lean heavily towards the very personal but often incorporating tremendous amounts of sarcasm, such as this track, claiming ''today is the greatest day I've ever known'' and yet dealing with extreme depression (perhaps even to the level of being suicidal).

A sharp contrast to the subject matter is the use of bright colours, and all the extras making out all over the desert throughout the video.

At the time of its release, I remember thinking the Siamese Dream album the track is from to be better than Nirvana's Nevermind, but not as enthralling as Pearl Jam's Ten; both Seattle bands would release tremendous albums later in the year - In Utero and Vs, respectively - that would blow Siamese Dream out of the water, and it took until the follow-up record, the two-disc Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, for me to finally claim the Pumpkins had made a masterpiece.

I liked that the Pumpkins, like Pearl Jam, took their influences everywhere and anywhere, including wearing their love of 1980s alternative on their sleeves. You can definitely hear Billy Corgan channeling The Cars in many overdubs of power chords, as well as 1970s arena rock; on Mellon Collie, you can tell he was inspired by U2's turn to studio doodling (à la Zooropa and Achtung Baby) as well as what Trent Reznor was able to accomplish with Nine Inch Nails, particularly off The Downward Spiral - and Siamese Dream is the low-fi, pre-dating, low-budget version of that. And while Disarm and Mayonnaise may be the best-written pieces on it, Today is the best-produced straight-up rock number on it, and the one that had the most impact - despite my soft spot for Cherub Rock's opening minute.

Alice In Chains, Monster Truck & The Pack A.D. @ Metropolis, August 24, 2014

It was a fine evening of rock last night at Metropolis.

It started with The Pack A.D., who were in fine form. Drummer Maya Miller knows exactly when to simplify things à la Meg White and when to pound an off-beat à la Keith Moon, and as the backing vocalist and master of ceremony, always adequately takes the between-the-songs spotlight off of Becky Black, who uses the 10 seconds she needs to gather up the energy to burst out another garage rock gem. As the first of three bands on the bill, we expected 20 minutes of hard rock from them; instead, we were pleased to get double that.

Next up was Monster Truck, who have been in town and in our province often since winning the Best New Artist Juno in 2013, most recently a couple of weeks ago at an outdoors festival - I forget whether it's Osheaga or Heavy MTL, which both take place at the same venue and are organized by the same people. If Lynyrd Skynyrd had a child with AC/DC, the music it would produce would be pretty much what Monster Truck provides; get that child a godfather like Mark Slaughter or Chris Cornell for the range of vocals, and you're dead-on.

By itself, their songs are ok. It's riff-based Southern Rock with lots of ''girl'', ''baby'', ''love'', and maybe some ''driving'' in the lyrics; the type of stuff that's fine as background music while listening to a rock station on a road trip, but maybe not something I'd buy in CD or MP3 format. However, these guys can play, and their live sets have an energy I've rarely seen anywhere else before. They are confident, in control of their instruments, and most of all, happy. All four of them sport smiles that could end a forest fire and impregnate all the birds and squirrels. They're more fun to watch than a barrel full of monkeys on acid (*please don't give acid to monkeys). I might eventually be tempted to buy a DVD of theirs.

But the main event managed to remind everyone in the room whose show it really was. Alice In Chains, despite the death of two founding members (vocalist and part-time guitarist Layne Staley, and bassist Mike Starr) are as good as they ever were. If anything, they now have the consistency to give high-quality shows night in and night out, which may not have been the case when at least two of its members were heroin addicts.

Jerry Cantrell remains a pitch-perfect guitarist (though I don't agree with those who consider him a guitar god/virtuoso), and Sean Kinney is also one of the most reliable drummers to come out of the 1990s Seattle scene, so that went according to plan; Mike Inez - who also played with Ozzy Osbourne, Slash's Snakepit and Black Label Society - might be an improvement over Starr for the sheer fact that he's enjoying every second of it (huge smiles, interacting with the crowd, throwing picks - think of Suicidal Tendencies / Metallica bass player Robert Trujillo); and William DuVall is a heck of a frontman.

He can hit Staley's notes, but he's also energetic, doing rock-star poses and moves like a cross between Beck and Scott Weiland - but with a much larger vocal range: there's some Corey Glover (Living Coloür) deepness and richness in there, there's that sardonic Axl Rose voice from Mr. Brownstone at times, but the Staley-meets-Freddie Mercury thing really hits you. And he can play guitar well - he took a few solos during the evening, and when he felt he may not have hit a note right, he didn't play it. He stayed within his means and rocked the fuck out.

Photo: Éric Robillard

Here's the setlist, and album each song was from:

1. Dirt (Dirt, 1992)
2. Them Bones (Dirt)
3. Dam That River (Dirt)
4. Hollow (The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, 2013)
5. Again (Alice In Chains, 1995)
6. Check My Brain (Black Gives Way To Blue, 2009)
7. Your Decision (Black Gives Way To Blue)
8. Man In the Box (Facelift, 1990)
9. Grind (Alice In Chains)
10. Nutshell (Jar Of Flies, 1994)
11. Phantom Limb (The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here)
12. We Die Young (Facelift)
13. Stone (The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here)
14. Sludge Factory (Alice In Chains)
(encore break)
15.  Cold Gin (Kiss cover) tease
16. Got Me Wrong (Sap, 1992)
17.Would? (Singles soundtrack, 1992; Dirt)
18. Rooster (Dirt)

In addition to the quality of the show, I'd be remiss to not point out that three feet to my right was the largest and most violent mosh pit I've seen since 1996. Kudos to no one getting killed. Keep it classy, kids.

Alice In Chains: 8/10
Monster Truck: 7/10
The Pack A.D.: 8/10

Video Of The Week: Hole

I've been on a Hole tear lately, and decided to share with the rest of the class...

The band was formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson, after Love had spent the better part of the decade parlaying her way into and soon getting thrown out of a multitude of bands (Faith No More, Pagan Babies, Babes In Toyland), either because of her personality or the fact that she didn't really know how to play an instrument at the time.

A sweet talker, she convinced Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon to produce their first independent record, Pretty On The Inside, dated The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, married Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and got signed to Geffen Records, which released their major-label debut Live Through This in 1994.

By the time touring for the record came about, Love had lost her husband, and the band had lost their original drummer as well as four bassists, including the most recent, Kristen Pfaff, to a drug overdose. The line-up with Melissa Auf Der Maur on bass and Patty Schemel on drums (14994-1998) is widely considered the quintessential Hole, though, perhaps because they appeared in the most videos and played more shows as a unit, but I like to think it held the best combination of balls and brawn, grit and softness, fury and beauty. (And I think Auf Der Maur has a lot to do with it).

Rumours have always floated around Hole that their best songs had been ghost-written by either Cobain or Corgan, and for their third album, Celebrity Skin, Corgan's actually credited as a co-songwriter on five separate songs, so at least the ''ghost'' part was eliminated. One of those songs is this one, Malibu, directed by Paul Hunter:

Video Of The Week: Pearl Jam

I've been holding back featuring this video for two reasons, mostly: one, it's relatively plain - just a performance video - and also, I don't usually want to showcase Pearl Jam songs where the lyrics aren't top-notch.

In this case, the power-ballad called Sirens, lead singer Eddie Vedder says the line ''Hear the sirens'' three times before saying anything else - and it isn't even the chorus, it's just a verse. Well, technically, he doesn't say it at all during the chorus, but the more he says it, the less I want to hear sirens.

Still, it's a good slow song, and if it can mean it will replace such songs as Daughter (a song now just barely tolerated just to see what classic Vedder will tag at the end rather than for the song itself), Betterman or Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town in their setlists, it'll have made the world better place.

Video Of The Week: The Breeders

It's hard to know exactly what to make of The Breeders: Pixies side-project (leader/singer/guitarist/songwriter Kim Deal was the Pixies' bass player and her twin Kelley Deal was almost their drummer), twin sisters' excuse to take drugs (Kelley went to rehab for heroin in 1995; Kim went to rehab in 2002, mostly for alcohol, but she also had drug issues), or one-hit wonders with other interesting - albeit less catchy - tracks?

 The term ''breeders'' comes from the gay community: it is how they refer to heterosexuals; this has led to a wide acceptance of the band in their circles. Kim Deal is often said to be ''a straight man and lesbian woman's ideal girl'', although personally, I find Kelley to have aged much better.

In any event, Last Splash may have been their big hit record, but I'll always remember purchasing Pod, their first, in a bargain bin at a record store in 1993, at a mom-and-pop record store somewhere in Connecticut, near a rest stop where we stopped for some Burger King (I asked for "ham-boogers and French flies"... I thought I was hilarious, the cashier didn't care for my brand of 14-year old comedy) on the way back from winning a hockey tournament in Boston.

This song, Divine Hammer - which refers either to heroin or a wonderful penis - was the third single from Last Splash, and its video was co-directed by Spike Jonze, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, and transgressive filmmaker Richard Kern.



Kim Deal also tried to start a movement with All Wave, a means of returning music recording back to a time without computers, auto-tune, and all that digital crap. She even got a logo made for it, which I'll have to put on one of my releases someday:

Video Of The (Past) Week: Pearl Jam

Off their eponymous (a.k.a. ''Avocado'') record comes this very good rock song called Life Wasted, by Pearl Jam, directed by Fernando Apodaca, based on facial casts which ended up being part of the album's artwork. The riff is loosely reminiscent of The Ramones' Rockaway Beach, which is fitting considering its lyrics came about to singer Eddie Vedder while driving home from (his friend) Johnny Ramone's funeral.

The video was actually released with a license to be shared, copied, and distributed, the first time a major-label-distributed song (although owned independently by the band's Monkeywrench Records).

Video Of The Week: L7

''What's up with what's going down?
In every city, and every town''

These words rang in my yellow Sony walkman from 1992 until... well, until it broke, then in every subsequent device I've had, including my current iPod. There's no separating me from L7's Pretend We're Dead (also, from the same album, Shitlist), of which I even purchased the CD single - which also included Shitlist.

L7 (50s lingo for ''square'', as seen in Pulp Fiction) were often lumped into the ''grunge'' category, because they toured with Seattle bands and participated in the 1994 Lollapalooza traveling festival (with The Breeders and Smashing Pumpkins), but they were punk. In fact, when they formed in 1985, there was no such thing as grunge, and no one knew what a Kurt Cobain would look or sound like. Good times.

L7 are also notable for starting the Vote For Choice movement, later endorsed by the likes of Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Video Of The Week: Soundgarden

Sure, they're the worst live show I've ever seen, but on record, they rocked as hard as dry shit.

I don't know about their comeback, but in their heyday, Soundgarden were a force to be reckoned with from Fopp to Louder Than Love (featuring a track even Guns N' Roses covered, Big Dumb Sex), to the ear-shattering Badmotorfinger.

And even the hit-packed sellout Pearl Jam-wanna be record, Superunknown - from which this was the first single back in 1994 - has its moments.

I didn't think much of this track, especially lyrics-wise, back in the day, but the riff has survived and now finds its place among (The White Stripes') Seven Nation Army and (Led Zeppelin's) Heartbreaker and Whole Lotta Love as songs I warm up with by playing in rehearsal before my own shows.