Total Fucking Godhead / The Soundgarden Thread

[VinylGuy]

yeah, but they released Live on L5 and then the rehearsals so maybe there are a few more things?

[96583UP]

wen new album

[zeb]

They can take as long as they like as far as I'm concerned.

[VinylGuy]

well, yeah they are not rushing things at all.

Im glad that we know they have been working with Date and the sound could be pretty massive

[armogi]

2027! 10 years gone + new album

[joostone]

Just finished reading Kim Thayil's book. It was a fun and quick read. Some interesting insights, and it still seems a bit weird. This band was never really functioning well. Even after their reunion, when their communications were way better, Chris seems to be kinda less involved socially. He was never really traveling with the band, keeping his own management etc. From reading you kinda get the impression that he reunited SG for the money alone. But that's probably just my take on it. Kim hints at this too in his book.

Kim seems like a nice guy, but still with a lot of insecurities. It seems he never really appreciated Chris to the fullest when he kinda took control over the band. In Kim's mind 'Screaming Life' is still their best release. And he also spoke greatly about all the unreleased tracks from before 'Screaming Life' (it seems that they are plenty of those, including an unreleased album with Scott Sundquist). When SG was still mostly his band. He had few kind words for 'Temple of the Dog', 'Audioslave', or Chris his solo career. He went as far as saying Audioslave's 'Cochise' was just a rewrite from his SG song 'Get on the Snake'. I thought that was a wild claim. As if his riffs are that unique! Cause they are not. Kinda Sabbath derivative too. I thought it was weird reading that. He also made some comments that he didn't thought some songs Chris would bring in were a good fit for SG. It seems he was a bit narrow minded about what SG should be.

Still a great read for every SG fan. You can't really get any closer.

About the new record. He said they received 9 tracks. Cornell added melodies and lyrics to two more songs without them knowing about it. So the 7 in the case:

"Road Less Traveled"
"Orphans"
"At Ophians Door"
"Cancer"
"Ahead of the Dog"
"Merrmas"
"Stone Age Mind"

And in the book he mentions a song called 'X-Mas'. A song he wrote and was probably the last thing Cornell ever recorded.

[VinylGuy]

Kim always say SG as way more heavy oriented band while Chris pushed into a more melodic and with time, pop , sound. Its been well documented around the time of their split. He also never cared much for Chris other career or Matt´s work with PJ.

I wasnt surprised to learn that Chris was travelling alone when he commited suicide. Matt learnt from a Facebook comment!! its clear that Chris´s camp was taking him kinda hostage from Seattle, and thats probably why Ed wasnt even in the funeral.

[wease]

That interview that was posted sounded like he dug Matt’s PJ work.

[VinylGuy]

Im talking more 1998 or when they came back, i remember him saying he wasnt very into i think it was Riot Act maybe? not sure.

I want to get his book tough, i love his ideas and all the stuff he tells in both Grunge is dead! and Everybody Loves Our Town.

[wease]

Damn, I need to read those.

[bada]

I always got the impression Chris had to edit himself to fit in with the Soundgarden. I can imagine those guys being pretty brutal about what they liked and didn't like. I think ultimately that was a good thing for the music but I could see why it could grate on Chris. He wrote the hits. Sting felt the same way about the Police and had a long successful solo career making music for dentist offices (I kid....sorta). Unfortunately Chris's solo stuff didn't take off. He needed Soundgarden. They definitely needed him. Sometimes you need your friends to tell you that sucks. Hard to hear though.

[joostone]

I always got the impression Chris had to edit himself to fit in with the Soundgarden. I can imagine those guys being pretty brutal about what they liked and didn't like. I think ultimately that was a good thing for the music but I could see why it could grate on Chris. He wrote the hits. Sting felt the same way about the Police and had a long successful solo career making music for dentist offices (I kid....sorta). Unfortunately Chris's solo stuff didn't take off. He needed Soundgarden. They definitely needed him. Sometimes you need your friends to tell you that sucks. Hard to hear though.

Yeah, I got that from reading the book too. Kim had a very strict sense of what should and shouldnt be a SG song. He wanted drone Sabbath riffs and Chris wanted more melodies. About King Animal he says that 'Bones of Birds' and 'Halfway there' shouldn't be there. In my opinion those two are far from the worst on that record. 'Bones of Birds' is one of the best songs there, 'Halfway there' is indeed more a Chris solo song

[fyfe79]

Just finished reading Kim Thayil's book. It was a fun and quick read. Some interesting insights, and it still seems a bit weird. This band was never really functioning well. Even after their reunion, when their communications were way better, Chris seems to be kinda less involved socially. He was never really traveling with the band, keeping his own management etc. From reading you kinda get the impression that he reunited SG for the money alone. But that's probably just my take on it. Kim hints at this too in his book.

Kim seems like a nice guy, but still with a lot of insecurities. It seems he never really appreciated Chris to the fullest when he kinda took control over the band. In Kim's mind 'Screaming Life' is still their best release. And he also spoke greatly about all the unreleased tracks from before 'Screaming Life' (it seems that they are plenty of those, including an unreleased album with Scott Sundquist). When SG was still mostly his band. He had few kind words for 'Temple of the Dog', 'Audioslave', or Chris his solo career. He went as far as saying Audioslave's 'Cochise' was just a rewrite from his SG song 'Get on the Snake'. I thought that was a wild claim. As if his riffs are that unique! Cause they are not. Kinda Sabbath derivative too. I thought it was weird reading that. He also made some comments that he didn't thought some songs Chris would bring in were a good fit for SG. It seems he was a bit narrow minded about what SG should be.

Still a great read for every SG fan. You can't really get any closer.

About the new record. He said they received 9 tracks. Cornell added melodies and lyrics to two more songs without them knowing about it. So the 7 in the case:

"Road Less Traveled"
"Orphans"
"At Ophians Door"
"Cancer"
"Ahead of the Dog"
"Merrmas"
"Stone Age Mind"

And in the book he mentions a song called 'X-Mas'. A song he wrote and was probably the last thing Cornell ever recorded.

Yeah, that stuff was interesting. Like how Hiro was so pissed off with Chris for leaving their 4-track master tapes of loads of their early material on the ground in his basement which then got flooded. All they have now are hissy dubbed cassettes, which I guess is why they haven’t released any of it.

Also, the Scott album info was new. Kim and him are still friends so I guess Scott is now too old to care that Kim blames him for wrecking that recording. Kinda strange when I would think it would be almost certainly the 18 year old engineers fault for not mic’ing the kick-drum properly and not spotting the problem straight away.
I’m friendly with a local metal band who recorded a TV studio session and the same thing happened – the next day the engineer rang and said the kick-drum audio track had disappeared. The drummer went back a week later with just his kick drums and re-recorded the parts. So, that Scott album is totally salvageable. All that needs to happen is to get him to re-record the kick, or if he doesn’t want to, just Pro-Tool drum machine kick parts in.

[96583UP]

maybe AI can fix those hissy dubbed cassettes

[VinylGuy]

I think Chris or Kim said they were reworking those songs too or maybe had the plan? when they did Storm with Endino, i think the plan was to continue with more stuff and Matt was going to work on them.

I hope these dudes release the album and continue to make more music together and tour.

[Buby]

Just got Chris’ “Carry On” on vinyl.
Massively underrated imho.
They did a really nice job cramming bonus tracks and “You Know My Name” in there too.

[VinylGuy]

My cd already had You Know My Name and a bonus track, i think it was Today? good song.

I loved it when it came out then i felt it was his worst solo album. I think i prefer Scream over it, but its been so long i should listen to it again someday.

[coptheriotact]

i read Screaming Life over 2 days.. Kim is a great speaker and storyteller so it was easy and enjoyable to read. It cleared up the band breakup in 97, and i enjoyed the childhood stories growing up in Chicago.

some thoughts:
-there was a lot of wikipedia-level soundgarden history that moved on before giving further insight.
-a few Seattle timeline things were added that maybe could have been left out such as TOTD. it was important to soundgarden, chris and the seattle scene, but Kim didn't have anything unique to add except maybe mild resentment. ?

As joostone mentioned he did seem insecure about his activity post-Soundgarden, and made a point to briefly mention all the cameos he featured in (without further insight). After reading the first half of the book, it makes complete sense Kim didn't join an established band to relentlessly tour in 00s, as he and Ben were sick of tours organized by major labels in the 90s.

i was hoping to learn more about Kim in general. some more in-depth insight on album sessions, conversations with producers and band members.etc. i guess its a long time ago and hard to recall. Some of the content added seemed to bring up accolades and achievements to justify being worthy of a biography. Personally, i would have been happy to learn what he liked to have for dinner or what pets he had.

trying to balance a biography with a complete Soundgarden history in one book seems to have made it challenging to go deeper than surface level on a lot of important events, but id still recommend it as there were several good chapters and passages.

[fyfe79]

maybe AI can fix those hissy dubbed cassettes

Yeah, Kim should look into that. It's not AI'ing any of the music, just tape noise.

[fyfe79]

I think Chris or Kim said they were reworking those songs too or maybe had the plan? when they did Storm with Endino, i think the plan was to continue with more stuff and Matt was going to work on them.

I hope these dudes release the album and continue to make more music together and tour.

Yeah, Storm was great but I think we'd all love to hear the original version and all the other stuff they recorded in 85/86. A bit of work would be involved to clean it up, or patch it up in the case of the Scott album, but I think it would be amazing to hear all that stuff we've only been teased with over the years (This Is My Summation, Ocean Fronts, as examples).