Scattergarden

Soundgarden, they've hit quite the renaissance lately, haven't they?

I find it fairly important to take this band as a whole, because the whole is much stranger and richer than what most people think of when they think Soundgarden, since most only think of the post-Badmotorfinger era.

Because of my convoluted listening routine, I have ended up listening both the Screaming Life/Fopp and Badmotorfinger today. I don't have much to say about the latter at the moment, other than the fact that I'll probably never get sick of playing it, so let's focus on Screaming Life instead, since this is probably the one out of the band's catalog that I am least familiar with.
I'm already noticing a theme in these posts in that I enjoy talking about my points of entry/points of attachment to bands and albums. This one I don't have a memory for, and maybe that's why it's a little marginalized in my conception of the band.

Other Soundgarden records inspire very vivid memories in me, ones which I'm sure I'll get back to eventually. I can't think of Down on the Upside without thinking of the hours I spent with the tab book learning how to play each and every song on the record (except the solos). This taught be more than any other band about alternative tunings, and nuanced-as-hell riffs. I remember buying Ultramega OK  at the Warehouse (back when that chain still existed) the day the band announced their breakup. I probably love that album a little more than I should for that very reason.

But with Screaming Life all that really comes to mind is that I bought it complete my collection sometime in late high school. I never gave it much of a chance, but since I seem to derive so much pleasure acquiring the complete set of everything, I guess I was always proud of this pickup. Today I'm surprised at how familiar the record is to me since I don't remember ever paying it much attention, but I guess you grow familiar with anything if you've had it for over ten years.

"Little Joe" reminds me that Soundgarden and the Chili Peppers did in fact come about in roughly the same era, though not the same area codes. Pearl Jam's "Dirty Frank," released on their B-Sides collection Lost Dogs but also recorded around this time, inspires a similar feeling in me.

"Kingdom of Come" always make me feel like watching Wayne's World. There's just something about the tune that reminds me of the famous Wayne's World theme, which is certainly not a bad thing.

***

I found this little nugget on YouTube of the aforementioned "Little Joe." I already addressed this concept in my post about the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue, but I think it's important to try to address a band in the context of what they were at the time, not what they came to be known as.

Many of us don't really think of Soundgarden as being a bunch of skinny kids playing in small clubs around Seattle, but that's pretty much exactly what they were for a few years, not the arena-trotting megastars that they developed into. So enjoy the video, and let it remind you that sometimes we need to separate ourselves from everything we've come to know and just enjoy what was.