Derek Bodner’s Blog

Or, perhaps better stated, Grunge Is Not Dead.

For the record, I used that word (grunge) while grinding my teeth. I generally dislike it, and use it more to describe a time period and geographic rock movement (RE: Seattle) than I do an actual musical genre. If Alice in Chains became popular 3 years earlier before the mainstream media coined that term they would have been a metal group. If Nirvana became popular two years earlier we’d refer to them as a punk group. If Pearl Jam became popular earlier we’d be talking about their similarity with The Who and a splash of Neil Young rather than lumping them in with Nirvana. Grunge was always a media buzz-word to create hype about the Seattle movement.

(That’s not to take anything away from what grew up out of the underground Seattle scene at that time, I just don’t consider it a musical genre).

That being said, those bands comprise some of my absolute favorite, and certainly my favorite “contemporary” (can they even be called that anymore?!) music.

Anyway, Alice in Chains (or, at least as much as you can call it Alice in Chains without Layne Staley) released an album last fall, as did Pearl Jam (and it was actually a Pearl Jam release that, months later, I still enjoy. That hasn’t really been the case since Yield over a decade ago). STP has re-united, with a new release expected this year. And the big news? On New Years Day Soundgarden has announced they will be re-uniting.

Soundgarden is, perhaps, my second favorite group from my the early 90’s, someone that perhaps didn’t affect my childhood as much as Pearl Jam or Nirvana (but they’ve age better than Nirvana has for me), but who really grew on me on high school and college. Unfortunately, by the time I had come to fully appreciate the group they had disbanded, and I never got the chance to see them live. Now hopefully that will change. The chance to see Jesus Christ Pose live is a great thing. A little worried about Chris Cornell’s vocals? Yeah, I wasn’t all that thrilled with Audioslave, and I have no idea what was up with his solo stuff, but he’s sounded good the few times I’ve heard him recently (mostly re-doing Temple of the Dog tracks with Pearl Jam).

How will Matt Cameron (original drummer of Soundgarden who has been with Pearl Jam the past 12 years)? Guess that’s a minor concern, but a small price to pay to see this group re-unite.

We need a Soundgarden/Pearl Jam combined tour. You can then throw in Temple of the Dog songs. Ask Mudhoney to open and you have a full fledged Seattle invasion.