Today’s the day, people. After more than 10 years of work, catastrophe, blood, sweat, tears, and other substances, “Pantemonium!” is available everywhere. Spotify, iTunes, and other streaming services if that’s how you roll. Or you can buy downloads at Bandcamp.
We are quite proud of this long-overdue release. It includes many of the songs you’ve heard us play for the last 10 years, plus a few you’ve never heard before. Guest appearances by Darow Han, jh0st, and Pants old and new.
The amazing photography was done by Lauren Tabak. The striking album design is by Iran Narges.
The album is done. Audio is mastered (thank you, Xopher!) and in the can. Album art is underway. It's looking so good. WE are looking so good.
I cannot wait. Enough time has passed that when I listen to the record, I do not hear all the mistakes and seams and compromises.Well, I do, but it's not the only thing I hear.
I hear 12 years, longer than the actual 80s. I hear then, and I hear now. I hear the past and present and future. I hear US.
So while I wait for the Wheels of Industry to slowly turn, I am keeping myself busy. Training. Maintenance. Writing new songs for the next record. If there is a next record. Who knows?
The last couple years have been rough on everyone. But as I say in "One Life", the first track on Pantemonium!...
"You're alive tonight
and we're alive tonight
You've got one life
Play it well
Jeebus. When did this website turn into a bunch of reminiscences about dead musicians and friends? Life seems to be gunning for all of us. You'd think we're all not going to make it, in any sense.
Chris Cornell was the Real Deal. This is a guy who had a voice like a dirty Los Angeles angel, could play guitar like Ziggy, and wrote songs that managed to be both hooky, weird, and heavy. Even Rush couldn't manage all that.
Cornell's band Soundgarden went from indie darlings to major-label successes. Cornell's good looks gave the band the final thing they were missing, allowing them to roll on with the rest of the Grunge Class of The Early 90s: Nirvana (singer Kurt Cobain, dead), Alice In Chains (singer Layne Staley, dead), Mother Love Bone (singer Andrew Wood, dead), and Stone Temple Pilots (singer Scott Weiland, dead). PS Most of them are dead from drugs and/or complications from same. Don't do drugs.
But like pretty much every act that manages to "make it" to the big time, the big time eventually runs out on you. You can dodge the Smack Reaper, but you can't dodge the fickle Fan Reaper.
One day your new records stop selling. Eventually your old ones stop selling, too. Your band breaks up. Maybe you go solo. If/when that doesn't work, maybe you try to start a new band. To prove that it wasn't a fluke, or that you've still got it, or just because you're bored and have no idea what else to do with your life.
Then the entire genre you work in stops being cool. The kids are all listening to some new shit you don't understand. Maybe you try to update your sound with a hot producer. This almost never works, but again, what are you going to do? This is your career. You have people to take care of.
And I tell you what, it feels really, really good at first. When you get back on stage and start ripping through the hits, you remember how good it can be. There are still some hot people out there in the audience, and they seem reasonably interested in hearing a new song or two. Everybody's excited. YOU'RE BACK, BABY.
But after every show comes the Big Letdown.
It's well-known among performers. Being on stage is like a drug, and the comedown is terrible. It's depressing, hollowing, dark. Part of why bands string out long tours is to push off that comedown as much as possible. Sooner or later the show ends, or the tour ends, or both.
After the show, you're back in your hotel room, sweaty and tired and alone. Once you're at a certain age, you're almost certainly too smart, too married, or too scared to get tangled up with groupies. You just want some food and maybe a drink and a good night's sleep.
So you're there in your hotel room, by yourself. Maybe you look in the mirror and notice your thinning, graying hair. Or wrinkled skin. Or your paunch, which just don't seem to be going away no matter how much cardio you do or how few carbs you do. You wonder if your fans notice, too.
Your back hurts. You wonder if you're going to make another record, and if the best you can hope for is that people say it is "better than they expected" it to be.
That's all on top of whatever other damage you're carrying around by then, whether it's bad tattoos or bad memories or a bad childhood or bad relationships or all of the above.
Most people don't become musicians and artists because they're well-adjusted folk with stable lives and mental well-being. They do it because they're messed up in one or more ways, and making the art and finding validation in crowds of strangers is how they get by, if not get paid.
I can't say for sure why Chris Cornell took his own life. Or why my friend Gary did. Or Michael Hutchence. Or Michael Jackson. Or (arguably) Prince. Or any number of other people and musicians and artists you've never even heard of.
But I can imagine some scenarios, and I may have had a few long nights of staring into that black mirror myself, hoping that something would change in me or that someone would change me. And realizing it just wasn't going to happen.
The Show Must Go On. Until one day it just can't.
Thank you for the music, Chris. I miss you already.
***
Soundgarden's best qualities are all on display in "Fell On Black Days", perhaps my favorite song by them, and sadly prescient. And by the way, this is a live in-studio performance, not a recording. Hear how great Chris was:
Whatsoever I've feared has come to life Whatsoever I've fought off became my life Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile Sunspots have faded and now I'm doing time Now I'm doing time 'Cause I fell on black days I fell on black days Whomsoever I've cured, I've sickened now And whomsoever I've cradled, I've put you down I'm a search light soul they say But I can't see it in the night I'm only faking when I get it right
'Cause I fell on black days I fell on black days How would I know That this could be my fate? So what you wanted to see good Has made you blind And what you wanted to be yours Has made it mine Don't you lock up something That you wanted to see fly Hands are for shaking No, not tying, no, not tying I sure don't mind a change 'Cause I fell on black days How would I know That this could be my fate? I sure don't mind a change
...and here's Chris doing one of his solo songs, the deep and powerful "Can't Change Me". People think this is a song about resilience. But it's really about resignation. He's NOT happy that he can't be changed. He's lamenting it. Again, solo, live, one take. There aren't too many people with these kinds of skills.
