Monday, January 4, 2010

Me and My Decade 3: The Final Chapter

New Year's took a little bit more out of me than I expected it to (which seems like a gross miscalculation on my part, but I digress...), so this is a few days later than I had intended.  But after thousands and thousands of words to sort it out--and thousands more below, to be sure--we've finally arrived at the end of my attempt to document the music of the decade that mattered the most to me.  It's been fun, but please let me know what some of your choices would have been, or why some (or all) of mine are terrible, or even just chime in with some "Supergrass, hell yeah!" level remarks.  And if you haven't read parts 1 & 2 yet, just scroll down, or you can find them here and here.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Alive in the Superunknown


I had to take a break from all my listing to point out this exciting story I just read: Soundgarden is (probably) getting back together!  Apparently, all that I had to do to make this happen was briefly lament their demise in my Metallica review.  This is the most exciting reunion I could think of, personally, since Soundgarden was one of my first, favorite bands.  When my parents bought me my first CD player back in middle school, Superunknown was the first album I went out and bought personally, and I still listen to it fairly often.  And no kid of about my age could get through MTV or radio without seeing the amazingly creepy "Black Hole Sun" video, or hearing "Spoonman," "My Wave" or "Fell On Black Days" on KROQ (you know, back when KROQ was still good).  Lead singer Chris Cornell recently showed up at a Pearl Jam show, sounding as good as ever, and drummer Matt Cameron is still playing great, these days with Pearl Jam.  I can only assume that Kim Thayil (lead guitar) and Ben Shepherd (bass) still know what they're doing.  If this rumor pans out, I really hope they pop up at Coachella; it would be roughly infinity times more exciting than when the Pixies did it.