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.

Chester Bennington Suicide

Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington committed suicide by hanging a few hours ago... on his idol Chris Cornell's birthday, making his death go from "sad" to "tragic".

I was never a fan of his art, and mostly snubbed those who were. LP's collaboration with Jay-Z is probably the only recordings of the rap mogul's that I never listen to.

Still, may he Rest In Peace.

Video Of The Week: Audioslave

Well, mentioning this song in last week's post about Soundgarden and Chris Cornell kind of put me in a bind, in terms of having to showcase Audioslave's best song - the one that doesn't fall into the Pearl Jam-imitation tropes so much as just tries to give a good rock show.

In theory, Audioslave was the perfect mix: musicians who had been in the game-changing band Rage Against The Machine, a mix of rap and hard rock that tackled issues of race and politics, whose riffs were reminiscent of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, with some N.W.A. attitude thrown in to add fuel to the fire; and the frontman from Soundgarden, a hard rock machine whose riffs were inspired by those of Sabbath and Zeppelin, with some Beatles sensibility thrown in for good rock measure.

In practice, though, the Rage musicians may have wanted to kick back and make "normal rock albums" for a while, but since becoming friends with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and witnessing his rise to stardom, Cornell's traded away his wailing high-pitched classic rocker's voice for a Vedder-like smoother baritone that seems more like copycat than homage for the slower numbers, which really drags Audioslave's otherwise-decent output from the best it could have been (say, a Stone Temple Pilots level) to something barely more palatable than Candlebox, Creed, Bush and the like.

When they went rocking, though, such as on Cochise, seen here, they showed they could be a fine guitar-driven unit:

The video, featuring a shit-ton of fireworks, was directed by Mark Romanek, a leader in the art form, the director with the most Grammys to his name (3), as well as over 20 MTV Video Awards. He's directed clips for the likes of The The (Sweet Bird Of Truth), En Vogue (You Don't Have To Worry, Free Your Mind), De La Soul (Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)), Keith Richards (Wicked As It Seems), Teenage Fanclub (What You Do To Me), K.D. Lang (Constant Craving), Lenny Kravitz (Are You Gonna Go My Way, Is There Any Love In Your Heart), Madonna (Rain, Bedtime Story), David Bowie (Jump They Say, Black Tie White Noise), Iggy Pop (Beside You), Nine Inch Nails (Closer, The Perfect Drug), R.E.M. (Strange Currencies), Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson (Scream), Sonic Youth (Little Trouble Girl), Eels (Novocaine For The Soul), Weezer (El Scorcho), Beck (Devil's Haircut), Fiona Apple (Criminal), Macy Gray (I Try), Mick Jagger (God Gave Me Everything), No Doubt (Hella Good), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Can't Stop), Jay-Z (99 Problems, Picasso Baby), U2 (Invisible), Taylor Swift (Shake It Off), Beyoncé (Sandcastles), and Justin Timberlake (Can't Stop The Feeling), but his biggest contribution to the art form will forever remain his sober ad somber direction for Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's heart-wrenching Hurt.

He also directed the terrific features One Hour Photo (2002, starring Robin Williams) and 2010's Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield.

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 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.

Soundgarden: Professional Assholes

I was waiting so impatiently for August 19th, 1994 to arrive. 364 days after the best show I've ever seen (Pearl Jam, 1993-08-20, Verdun Auditorium), it was Soundgarden's turn to rock the Auditorium.

Those two bands had so much in common, they were practically sister bands: Pearl Jam had come to be only after the death (by overdose) of Andy Wood, lead singer of Mother Love Bone, when half the band (Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard) went looking for something new. As ''luck'' would have it, Chris Cornell, leader of Soundgarden, was his roommate. When Wood died, Cornell, his bandmates and a few friends who had known him got together to record the Temple Of The Dog record, 10 songs released in 1991 in tribute to Wood, most written entirely by Cornell, except three where Gossard created the music to accompany Cornell's words.

One of those songs, Times Of Trouble, was later re-made by Pearl Jam, keeping the music, but with Eddie Vedder creating new lyrics and vocal pieces for a track now named Footsteps.

And Soundgarden's drummer, Matt Cameron, was actually behind the kit for the demos Pearl Jam recorded when they were shopping their songs to labels; he has also been their permanent drummer since a 1998 accident caused Jack Irons to forfeit the Yield tour, never to return.

So when 1994 came around, Soundgarden were touring what turned out to be their most successful record, Superunknown, a record on which they seemingly abandoned their previous ''heavy metal'' sound in favour of a more subtle and subdued approach reminiscent of Pearl Jam's sound, while Cornell himself, at the time known for his high-pitched squeals, like most of his contemporaries, took on a Vedder-like low growl where lyrics were now mumbled instead. But the songs were very strong.

They had lost some originality but were following some pretty solid footsteps, as PJ, at the time, could do no wrong: consecutive record-breaking release dates, taking over airwaves for pirate radio shows, fighting for low concert ticket prices, and a reputation for being the best live act in the world.

It was a no-brainer when came the time to purchase my show tickets. The show's date and the place where it was set to happen made the coincidences look like an alignment of stars any fortune teller would call ''fate''.

All summer long, as the sounds of Black Hole Sun took over from the riff-mania that was Spoonman on the radio and on TV music channels, as interest grew for this sold-out show, I looked forward to a night of awesomeness. I was even more excited when they announced the Reverend Horton Heat was going to open for them; we were getting top-notch talent, the same show Americans were getting, which to this day is still a little unusual. There are still acts who can't make it through the border and have to be replaced by local talent, which dims the overall spectacularness of the evening more often than not.

The day before, I had gone to the local HMV record store as I had a habit of doing when downtown, and purchased a CD (I forget which one) and a poster - that I still have. A typical band poster where all members can be seen from head to toe in front of a generic landscape that seemingly never ends. The band was Jesus Lizard, who are coming back in town this Fall, as it so happens, after perhaps a decade on hiatus.

After that, I went to see a movie at Place Alexis-Nihon, which no longer exists, but there's an AMC theater accross the street from where it used to be... where our hockey team used to play (Le Forum, the Temple Of Hockey in the Mecca of hockey, but I digress). I forget which movie, and who I was with, but I'll never forget what happened there.

An usher, having realized I was wearing a Soundgarden T-shirt (basically the Badmotorfinger album cover) came up to me to tell me ''hey man, 'The Dude from Soundgarden', your shirt, he's HERE, he's watching a movie right now, you want to meet him? His movie ends in like 5 minutes, I'll catch him when he gets out''.

And catch him he did. There was Kim Thayill, lead guitarist and one of the hairiest humans on the planet, accompanied by two, uh, ladies (one on each arm), stepping out of the screening room, and the usher forcing himself onto him like a bulimic running for an empty toilet stall, knocking other people on his way there. He points to me, in the distance yet at the front of my lane, and he (the usher) looks like a hyperventilating Britney Spears fan who wants her to be ''left alone'' - you know the type.

And there comes Thayill, with his two, uh, escorts, walking over to me.

''I guess you want an autograph?'', he asks, a black Sharpie pen already on him.

''Uh, yeah, sure, why not'' I answer, looking in my pocket for him to sign my movie ticket stub since I didn't have anything else to write on, really, when he takes my poster from out of my hands and signs its back, the white part, behind where the picture is, and he leaves.

I turn to the person I was with and tell her: ''the bastard! He ruined my Jesus Lizard poster!''

Indeed, what kind of motherfucker signs a poster without checking if he's on it first? He could have killed two birds with one stone just by attempting to sign the picture at least, where he'd have seen it wasn't his band on it...

So I left the theater angry after seeing a movie I don't even remember anymore (possibly Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but who knows, really?) and went home to dream about how great the next day's performance was going to be. Because if there's one thing I've learned from television, it's that stars can sometimes be total jerk-offs all the while doing their job (be it acting, singing, playing music, directing, or ''being Paris Hilton'', whatever she does) very well.

The day went by pretty quickly and can be summed up pretty easily: a bunch of friends and I, separately or together, at some point, were all getting ready to go to the show. Verdun Auditorium is situated on the island of Montréal, close to downtown, and is two blocks away from a subway station, in a district called Verdun. In 1994, it was its own city but has since been incorporated into Montréal, so they could have a reason for their streets to be filthy, and to pay higher property taxes. The Auditorium is one of the warmest amphitheaters in the city for rock shows, which is ironic considering it's a small-to-mid-size hockey arena (sitting upwards of 5000 people per game).

Reverend Horton Heat rocks the house and, indeed, brings the heat in. We all resort to drinking beer because it is cheaper than water but also because the place is boiling; the walls are wet from sweat and condensation, people are fainting, it will be a night to remember for those of us who will stay awake to see all of it.

Soundgarden takes the stage and, as is to be expected, girls go wild for Cornell and a frenzy develops up front, where most of the people I know are, including my friend Sylvie, who hopes to be as lucky as last year, when she spent most of Pearl Jam's show making out with a total stranger whose name she never got and whom she never saw again. I'm at the right-hand of the stage, crowd-wise, left-hand side for the band, right in front of bass player Ben Shepherd.

By the fourth of fith song in, the heat is unbearable. I get a flash that sometimes, at Verdun, firemen hose people when it gets too hot, but none of them are in sight. Shepherd, however, has over a dozen water bottles on his bass amp, and drinks from them often. At song six, he feigns giving one to an audience member, then proceeds to just empty it out on the fucking stage. Just like that, wasting the water, taunting us. And he does it again and again.

Thayill is at the other end completely, totally ignoring the crowd, more often than not facing drummer Matt Cameron, the rest of the time looking at the floor. Cornell, for his part, tries to be the rock god he's always dreamed of being, what with Bono-like arm extensions to the ceiling and to the crowd and, of course, the inevitable Jesus Christ Pose.

But rock stars attract teenage girls, and apparently Cornell, true to his indie/street-cred reputation of a real and faithful and loving married man wanted nothing of it, so when Black Hole Sun started and little girls were throwing their hands up to Cornell who had let go of his guitar and was strutting at the edge of the stage pretending to mingle with fans, all he could think of doing was hitting them on the hands with his microphone, not in a ''high-five'' kind of way, but more like a ''I will break your fingers'' kind of way... which was so wrong.

After two hours of bad-sounding half-assed rocking in an arena that was too hot, Cornell and co. left the building - and so did 5000 of us, most of us extremely disappointed, some of us angered, at least one of us thinking Soundgarden were nothing but Professional Assholes.

P.S.: Matt Cameron, hidden behind his drum kit for the whole of the evening, did nothing asshole-y, I must admit. But I think I still begrudge him his former bandmates because as of today, 2009, he is still the only member of Pearl Jam I wouldn't follow blindly. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that he replaced my favourite drummer (Irons) in my favourite band...