In your Jesus Christ POLL: BADMOTORFINGER

i actually never quite dug rusty cage. kind of plods a bit for me, and i always found it a bit of an unrepresentative track to start the album. the closing two tracks are actually outstanding - i normally never make it that far, because i'm so comprehensively pummeled by some of the earlier tracks.

voted 'Face Pollution' for the hell of it.

this was my absolute favorite band in the world from '89 to late '91. must have seen them literally 8 or 9 times during that span (in which they toured CONSTANTLY)

disagree about "Rusty Cage" ... being a massive 'Louder Than Love' fan, I had so much anticipation for this album, first time I heard "RC" i got goosebumps: they were actually getting *better*. rest of the album didn't really maintain that level, except for JCP, for me

i'm going to go back and listen to 'louder than love'. seems there's much more to it than i initially tapped found.

anyone hear a prelude to 'fresh tendrils' in 'mind riot'? or a precursor to 'mailman' in 'holy water'?

no but i hear a precursor to 'holy water' in 'incessant mace'...

the song that starts out with "this is a pig" and "this is the sound the devil makes" is also a good one. This whole thing is great, with special mention to "Drawing Flies". I love when the whole band drops out and its just Cornell and the bass. Very nice.

I feel like "Outshined" is not going to do that well. I love that song, though.

we're way too indie around here for Outshined to win this, but it burns... it's between that and Slaves & Bulldozers for me

more badmotorfinger video lulz

it's worth remembering that Soundgarden got their major label deal years before "grunge" broke, and it would be years more still before "stoner" had a section at the record store. A&M was selling them as a straight-up metal act.

yeah i saw Soundgarden on Headbanger's Ball more than 120 Minutes, even after grunge hit, definitely.

the "Outshined" video always reminds me of Beavis & Butthead, who thought the bearded dude was the singer from the Spin Doctors. still a great song, don't think it'll suffer too much in the poll since it's by far the album's biggest hit.

Drawing Flies

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I adored this album when it came out, but I re-visited it again the other day and it didn't retain the same punch for me. Alas.

That all said, I'll go with "Searching with My Good Eye Closed," as Cornell's voice is unstoppable on that one. Shame about that solo career.

Rusty Cage is a great opener and I love that slow middle section. This album trails off pretty quickly for me after the first few songs.

Searching With My Good Eye Closed is a dark horse. Hope it gets more than a couple of votes:

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I feel like "Outshined" is not going to do that well.

whoops

You know an album kicks ass when every single track gets at least two votes.

I was always partial to the Devo cover on SOMMS.

"You know an album kicks ass when every single track gets at least two votes."

truth^

the song that starts out with "this is a pig"

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SPXP.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The "See 'n' Say"! One of my favourite toys as a toddler

You should have photoshopped a picture of Cornell as the farmer

Loud Love poll?

forthcoming... been crazy frazzled with the working

POLL on Kevin's Mom: LOUDER THAN LOVE

woo

finally bought a copy of this on cd after only having a tape for years. it's held up well. I wish stuff like this had mainstream presence nowadays. so creative.

It's exhilirating to hear Cornell utter every verse lyric in "Outshined", with complete and utter conviction.

Funny thing was as a kid, I never really got the 'stoner' connection, but it's clearly there, perhaps moreso than on their later works....

I'm all about Mind Riot at the moment. I think I currently prefer this album to Superunkown - it's dirtier.

Heard this album for the first time in probably 20 years and thought it had aged quite terribly... until I got to side 2.

Searching With My Good Eye Closed -> Room A 1000 Years Wide -> Mind Riot is a killer run.

Sections of Mind Riot reminded me of a Sun City Girls' "Imam" (musically at least)... #seattle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coqxYzKaopc

Would have voted either 'Outshined' or 'Face Pollution'. Still love this album.

Outshined shouldn't have won. I probably would've gone with Mind Riot, the opening build up is genius.

I can't remember what I voted for. "Jesus Christ Pose" and "Face Pollution" are my favourites but I really think the whole album is amazing.

I just put on "Outshined" and remembered one of the things that made this band stand out. Even though I think of this as one of the more standard post-Zep songs, the verses are in 7, which many heavy rock/stoner rock/grunge bands would not even consider doing. Great verse/pre-chorus/two-part-chorus build-up too (and it's still not close to being my favourite!).

There's a great bit in 'Outshined' during the last "show me the power child", where they keep the "outshined! outshined!" rhythm going... puts a bit of an unexpected slant on that part of the song, IMO.

Wow, I just counted the second half of "Rusty Cage": 5 bars of 3 + 1 bar of 4!

I don't know if you'll agree with me on this, Sund4r, but I always felt there was something about Soundgarden's use of odd time signatures and time signature changes that felt incredibly natural. Like, sometimes when I hear pieces of music that utilise time signature changes, I get the impression that the time sig changes have been shoehorned in just for the sake of it, but with a lot of Soundgarden songs it just feels like the riffs actually came out that way without any planning. I'm sure there was some thought put into that stuff, of course, but with this band it just feels like a lot of their stuff was written naturally and just happened to be in an odd time sig or have time sig changes in it, whether they wrote them in consciously or not.

I remember reading an interview with Thayil in which he said half the time they weren't even aware they were using weird time sigs, they just thought it sounded cool.

Slaves and Bulldozers is the jam from this one. the part where he goes from shrilly screaming NOW I KNOW WHY YOU'VE BEEN SHAKING to pulling back into a more Robert Plant vocal in the chorus is just so awes.

I mean, I'm sure that Matt Cameron noticed when he wasn't playing in 4/4 with snare hits on 2 and 4 but I do agree that Soundgarden's time changes or asymmetrical metres flow in a really intuitive way. (I feel the same way about the Beatles' "Blackbird" and Rush's "Limelight", for example.) I get what Thayil meant: he was just trying to write heavy riffs and wasn't deliberately thinking "I want to do something in 7" or "I want to do something in 6-bar phrases with 5 bars of 3 and 1 bar of 4". Those were just the things he did intuitively to write good songs.

What disturbs me is that Wikipedia states that the second part of "Rusty Cage" is in 19/8. Might have to start doing some Wikipedia editing.

Well, 5x3+1x4=19, but I wouldn't notate it as 19/8. Christ.

Well, yeah, that's what I mean. Counting the whole phrase as a single bar of 19 (!) is pretty ridiculous.

That and it doesn't feel like a single bar of 19!

I think this is the record that has by far survived the grunge era the best for me. This and maybe Meantime.

Fixed it. I wonder if someone will change it back, arguing that they really feel the 19.

xpost

Reminds me of a story my mate told me - he was watching a band with the most amazing drummer who was pulling off all kinds of ultra-technical odd time sig shit. After the gig he asked him what the time signature was on one tune, and the drummer replied, "I always play in 1/1"

Wow, I just counted the second half of "Rusty Cage": 5 bars of 3 + 1 bar of 4!

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, July 2, 2013 10:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear it as three bars of three and two bars of five fwiw

I just played it a few times at low to moderate volume (since I'm at work). I can hear it your way, although right now, I think the guitars support my analysis. I usually try to avoid analysing asymmetrical metres if there's a simpler explanation tbh. I'll listen again at home when I can play it loud enough to hear the drums really clearly.

My problem with counting it as 5 bars of 3 is that then the fourth bar of "3" doesn't have a hit on the 1.

sorry I mean the fifth bar of "3"

so counting the 5's is the only way I can come up with to avoid an awkward bar with no downbeat

jesus christ pose's first minute is everything to me

and you stare at me? (tho). this record is the best

i recently heard a Soundgarden track on the radio back to back with a Smashing Pumpkins track and it was like going from an audiobook narrated by Morgan Freeman to one narrated by Horschack from Welcome Back Kotter.

You hurt me deeply in my heart.

You hurt me deeply in my heart.

i had a squeaky shopping cart recently that sounded exactly like one of the guitars on the intro to jesus christ pose and I was super pleased but sad that nobody in costco would probably share my joy

I love this bit from the oral history <3

Shepherd: I was so honored and freaked out and over my head, but still within a brethren of those three guys, those three mentors taking me under their wing, I was a little brother. I was way younger than them. It made me feel like Charlie getting the Golden Ticket at the Chocolate Factory.

The material and Matt Cameron deserved a better drum sound. The Tupperware box snare sound is awful - given the superior drum sounds on LTL and Superunknown, I have no idea what happened. Every ‘big’ grunge album from the around the time sounds better on that front.

It’s a sore point as imo it really dampens the sound of some killer hard rock drumming

xposting from the SG main thread:

A friend from my freshman year in college was a huge music nerd from Seattle and after returning from a trip home he brought back this warbly tape of 4-track demos from Cornell that was such a massive departure from Soundgarden at the time (Louder Than Love, Flower & the Screaming Life/Fopp reissue)... it was way more in line sonically with The Winding Sheet or what would become the blues/gospel songs off Temple of the Dog, but with lucid imaginative lyrics, experimental song structures and crazy guitar tunings played on his acoustic.

The only song I recognized coming to fruition from that tape was "Seasons" which showed up on the Singles OST. I'd love to hear those spooky, warbly demos again if any old school Seattle folks know what I'm talking about.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, May 18, 2017 12:35 PM (eight years ago)

still looking for this... would have been winter 1990 timeframe, maybe early 1991 at the absolute latest.

also, partially related: found out much later that SEXY DANCER and this friend of mine were schoolmates.

awfully presumptuous for you to speak for the late Albert R. Broccoli

replied in that thread: the Poncier tape, perhaps?