Best of Grunge Tournament: 1991-1996- Hail Hail wins

[stip]

Welcome to round 3

Alice in Chains: 7
Nirvana: 9
Pearl Jam: 23
Smashing Pumpkins: 6
Soundgarden: 11
Stone Temple Pilots: 6
Chris Cornell: 1
Temple of the Dog: 1



Alice In Chains

Sap
Brother

Dirt
Rooster
Angry Chair
Would?

Jar of Flies
Nutshell

Alice In Chains
Heaven Beside You

Misc
Man in the Box

Nirvana

Nevermind
Smells Like Teen Spirit
In Bloom
Come As You Are
Breed
Polly

In Utero
Serve the Servants
Heart Shaped Box
All Apologies

Misc
Sliver

Pearl Jam

Ten
Alive
Black
Jeremy
Release

Vs
Go
Animal
Daughter
Blood
Small Town

Vitalogy
Last Exit
Not For You
Tremor Christ
Nothingman
Corduroy
Immortality

Merkin Ball
I Got Shit

No Code
Sometimes
Hail Hail
In My Tree
Smile
Red Mosquito

Misc
Breath
Crazy Mary

Smashing Pumpkins

Siamese Dream
Soma
Geek U.S.A.
Mayonaise
Silverfuck

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
1979




Soundgarden

Badmotorfinger
Outshined
Jesus Christ Pose


Superunknown
Let Me Drown
Mailman
Head Down
Limo Wreck
The Day I Tried to Live
4th of July

Down on the Upside
Pretty Noose
Burden In My Hand
Bootcamp


Stone Temple Pilots

Core
Piece of Pie
Plush
Crackerman

Purple
Vasoline

Tiny Music...Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop
Lady Picture Show
Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart

Misc
Seasons - Chris Cornell
Hunger Strike - Temple of the Dog

[stip]

and, in honor of round 3

[stip]

Company is over, and I won't be able to finish doing videos

[wease]

Company is over, and I won't be able to finish doing videos

Damn! They're there awfully early.

[Birds in Hell]

This tournament reminded me of this hall of fame Corgan anecdote (from a 1994 Soundgarden piece in SPIN):

A couple of days and a harrowing plane flight later, the band makes it to a resort town called Surfer’s Paradise, which is more or less the Miami Beach of Australia, a skinny coastal town about an hour south of Brisbane, pounded by waves and plagued with jellyfish, crowded with high-rise hotels popular with Japanese honeymooners. Surfer’s Paradise is the jumping-off point for the Big Day Out tour, a sort of Australian Lollapalooza that Soundgarden will headline this year. In the lobby bar of one of the tallest hotels, Cornell and Thayil are settling back with a couple of beers when Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins wanders through, and decides to join them for a strawberry margarita. Corgan chatters about the pain of his life, the supposed incompetence of his band (everybody rolls their eyes), the lifesaving virtues of Jungian therapy, bands that suck. Cornell gets up to leave. Corgan tells Thayil how important Soundgarden used to be to him, and he baits him by saying that the Pumpkins sometimes do a cover of Soundgarden’s “Outshined” that segues into a Depeche Mode song or something.

“I’m think of making my next album really new wave,” Corgan says, “like ’83-’84 new wave, not like Berlin. I spend all my time doing things that may be a bit tangential, but I think I’m going to go back to the core, the heart music. Echo and the Bunnymen.”

This is standard stuff to anybody who has read even a single Billy Corgan profile, the basic curriculum of Pumpkins 101. But Thayil isn’t buying. He’s sore.

“Don’t you see,” Thayil says, “you’re this incredibly talented guy. People like your music. You have a good band. You sell a lot of records. You don’t need all this…stuff.”

“What sign are you?” Corgan asks.

“What do you mean, what sign am I?” Thayil says. “What difference could that possibly make?”

“C’mon,” wheedles Corgan, “when is your birthday?”

“All right, goddamn it: September 4th.”

“Aha!” Corgan says. “A Virgo. You’re argumentative.”

“Damn right, I’m argumentative,” Thayil says, and takes a long, angry pull at his beer, “which you should know because I’ve been arguing with you for half an hour, not because of any sign.”

“I’m a Pisces,” Corgan replies. “We pick up on those things.”

A minute later, Corgan, still probing, finally finds the key to Thayil’s heart: “I hate how in magazine pictures, they always stick me somewhere in the back.”

Thayil explodes: “What do you mean? You write all the songs, and you do all the interviews. You play the instruments on the album. You control the band to the extent that most people think of Smashing Pumpkins as the Billy Corgan Experience, and all you care about is some photography?”

“But I hate it,” Corgan says, “it means they don’t think I’m the cute one.”

“Ooh,” Thayil says a little too loudly as Corgan walks away, “I’ll bet he’s going to call his therapist in Chicago, wake her up at four in the morning, and tell her about that big, mean bear who made fun of him.”

The next day at the Big Day Out festival, Thayil is talking to Kim and Kelley Deal in the Breeders’ dressing room when Corgan walks past wearing a long-sleeved Superman T-shirt like the one your four-year-old nephew probably owns.

“You hurt me deeply,” Corgan says, touching the giant S on his chest and pouting. “You hurt me deeply in my heart.” The Pumpkins go on to play the best set anybody has ever heard them play, their usual passiveness and precision overlaid with an unfamiliar scrim of anger that throws their music into brilliant relief.

[evenslow]

The moral of that story: Thayil rules.

[evenslow]

Wait where the fuck is Drown?

[wease]

The moral of that story: Thayil rules.

That big bear. He sure does.

[chewm]

I can't believe Core has 4 songs and Purple only 1.

[Jammer XCI]

That story always cracks me the fuck up, Corgan is such a cunt.

Also that this is going to be the Pearl Jam vs. grunge hit singles tourney in the final rounds is lame as fuck.

[PHATJ]

"This is MM lite"

[evenslow]

We gotta thin the herd on some of these Pearl Jams.

[stip]

how is a mid tier song like smile still here?!

[stip]

crackerman almost pulled off a huge upset

[evenslow]

how is a mid tier song like smile still here?!

it's all about the matchups.

(also, smile is a great song.)

[Jammer XCI]

Smile is probably the worst song still in this.

[LoathedVermin72]

Did I rank my top 25 favorite songs in this whole tournament? Of course I did.

1. Go
2. Hail, Hail
3. Once
4. Scentless Apprentice
5. Animal
6. Tremor Christ
7. Oceans
8. Interstate Love Song
9. Milk It
10. Heart-Shaped Box
11. Smells Like Teen Spirit
12. Where Boys Fear to Tread
13. Rearviewmirror
14. Mayonaise
15. Daughter
16. Bodies
17. 1979
18. Vasoline
19. In Bloom
20. Garden
21. Big Empty
22. In My Tree
23. Even Flow
24. Last Exit
25. Come as You Are

[evenslow]

Did I rank my top 25 favorite songs in this whole tournament? Of course I did.

1. Go
2. Hail, Hail
3. Once
4. Scentless Apprentice
5. Animal
6. Tremor Christ
7. Oceans
8. Interstate Love Song
9. Milk It
10. Heart-Shaped Box
11. Smells Like Teen Spirit
12. Where Boys Fear to Tread
13. Rearviewmirror
14. Mayonaise
15. Daughter
16. Bodies
17. 1979
18. Vasoline
19. In Bloom
20. Garden
21. Big Empty
22. In My Tree
23. Even Flow
24. Last Exit
25. Come as You Are

Challenge accepted.

Scentless Apprentice rules!!

[Iholdthepain]

"This is MM lite"

I was afraid this would happen.

[Norah]

shouldn't have included pearl jam