Wednesday, May 10: Soundgarden, “Room a Thousand Years Wide”
R.I.P. Chris Cornell (1964-2017)
Badmotorfinger was a landmark grunge record, but mostly in hindsight, since at the time it was marketed and sold as a straight up metal album, and Soundgarden promoted it as such even if they were clearly a pack apart from everything else going around the genre at the time. Their particular gift lay in their ability to bridge the divide between scenes, rocking like a beast with massive riffs, slamming drums and the unearthly rock god wail of Chris Cornell without dumbing anything down and refusing to cater to standard metal conventions around lyrics or image. “Room a Thousand Years Wide” ably played to the band’s many strengths: the Matt Cameron/Kim Thayil composition had the lurching lumberjack riffs and toms that were foundational to the entire Seattle music scene, while Cornell added a swagger that both represented and transcended everything going on around him. Before Soundgarden was one of the big 4 of grunge, they were known as one of the coolest metal bands around, and “Room a Thousand Years Why” illustrated why they didn’t really need the affiliation to be recognized as awesome.