Whenever It Strikes Me

The music industry has a funny way of changing people. There must be something about the glitz, the glam, and the boatloads of money that really seduces people into becoming the caricature of what we all think of musicians as being: whiny narcissists. 80’s hair bands and Led Zeppelin in their later years really made the debauchery and over indulgence seem like an institution in the music industry. However, all that crap gave rise to grunge rock, my personal favorite movement in music history.

Thanks Whitesnake, we got Nirvana in the end. However, the 4 major grunge bands didn’t exactly make it out of the 90’s intact. We all know how the fame got to Kurt Cobain. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains lost out to drugs. Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, however, managed to live. Finally, Soundgarden disbanded with most of the members fading into obscurity (which is really too bad in the case of Kim Thayil – a guitar great) except Chris Cornell who, after being a major driving force behind both Soundgarden’s success and then subsequent break-up, managed to put together the all-time most disappointing band ever: Audioslave, but I digress.

Audioslave broke up over creative differences, which was eerily similar to the reasons for Soundgarden’s disbanding and Chris Cornell was left to his solo career. I wouldn’t say Euphoria Morning, his first single album, was a disaster but I was definitely a little crestfallen that the grunge pioneer failed to be as interesting as he had been in the past. The problems really started with Chris Cornell when he teamed up with Timbaland to make the most embarrassing record ever released: Scream.

For a guy who fronted Soundgarden, one of the pioneering bands of the grunge movement, which was a movement started as a response to the gratuitous materialism and asinine behavior of 80’s mainstream rock, to try to make club hits is just sad. There’s enough money-hounding crap on the radio and in the clubs right now without a legend embarrassing himself by making a song that’s mediocre even by those standards.

            Nothing really says it better than an easy visual comparison.

Here’s “Black Hole Sun.” This was Soundgarden’s big single and essentially their breakout song. Pay attention to what the song and even what the video is trying to say - there’s a message.

Here’s “Part of Me.” This is Cornell’s latest ‘opus’

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