Archive for the ‘Soundgarden’ Category

Black Days

Friday, May 19th, 2017

I had the immense privilege of seeing Cornell with both Audioslave and Soundgarden. And he was probably one of the greatest vocalists I ever saw perform in person. The world has lost an amazing talent and person. And I am heartbroken as I realize that my generation will be sorely lacking in old rock stars.

Soundgarden
Gun (Live ’90)
Get On The Snake (Live ’90)
Superunknown was one of the first albums I bought with my own money to listen to on my own. I didn’t have to buy a lot of music with my own money when I was a kid, mostly because my mom and I had very similar musical tastes. Having a mom who was way into Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana really saved me a lot of money at the time. Thanks mom! My mom is dope.

Anyways, for some reason I can clearly recall buying Superunknown used at a CD Warehouse and playing the shit out of that album. I would listen to it when I played Doom, read comics or mowed the lawn. I honestly think the main reason that album became my default background music was simply because it’s so damn long. That album is 15 tracks and 71 minutes long. And it doesn’t have a single piece of filler on it. That just never fucking happens.  How many classic, amazing tracks are on that album? Six? Seven? Eight? I mean, shit, “Black Hole Sun” might be the worst song on that album, and it’ s one of the greatest rock singles of the 90s. But it can’t hold a candle to “Spoonman” or “Kickstand” or even the title track. It’s downright criminal that Superunknown isn’t spoken with the same reference as Nevermind and Ten. It’s the Thriller or Hysteria of grunge; every song could’ve been a single. And again, at 15 tracks long that’s a holy shit statement.

For the longest time there were countless Soundgarden rarities. Unlike Pearl Jam or Nirvana, there didn’t seem to be anyone keeping track of the Soundgarden archives. Thankfully, that started to come to an end a few years back. Between the deluxe editions of Badmotorfinger and Superunknown, and the 3CD rarities compilation Echo Of Miles, a good portion of the rare Soundgarden tracks worth a listen are now easy to score, and I suggest you do that. Be sure to check out their oddly sedate-but-great cover of Devo’s “Girl U Want” and the amazing Moby remix of “Dusty,” which I prefer to the original.

These live tracks are from the CD single to “Blow Up The Outside World.” To the best of my knowledge, they were never included on any of the various re-issues, but if I’m wrong please let me know.

FYI: the “movie no one saw” that Cornell references in the beginning of “Get On the Snake” is Lost Angels. He’s certainly right, no one saw that movie, but the soundtrack, which included The Pogues, Toni Childs, Soul Asylum and Apollo Smile, was hella dope.

Audioslave
Show Me How To Live (T Ray Remix)
Set It Off (Live From Letterman)
Gasoline (Live From Letterman)
I’ve always felt that Audioslave is an underrated band. At the very least, their first album certainly is. It is such a great record, a fantastic hard rock album that came out at a time when those were few and far between. I got to see Audioslave live three times, and each time they delivered a stand out show. If you’ve never given the band a proper chance, I really recommend that first self-titled record. And while those second two albums don’t hold up when compared to that stellar debut, they both have some solid tracks. Scope them out on iTunes, each have some buried gems. I’m a big fan of “Man Or Animal” and “Somedays,” myself.

Audioslave doesn’t have many rarities to speak of. I think their only commercially released B-side was “We Got The Whip” and you can get that on iTunes no problem. These three tracks were the only ones in my collection that I couldn’t find commercially available.  They’re all from various singles from the first album. The two “live” tracks don’t sound very live. You get zero crowd noise on these. I suspect that they’re rehearsal recordings. They still sound good though. The remix of “Show Me How To Live” is the highlight of the group though. It’s a good remix of a great song that adds some layers of electronic and psychedelic effects. Simple, but it works.

…

Sigh. Why does everything have to suck so much?

Posted in Audioslave, live, remixes, Soundgarden | 1 Comment »

If you’re having hosting problems I feel bad for you son…because I can identify completely.

Monday, November 26th, 2012

Okay, I got my hosting problem resolved, and in case you’re wondering exactly what the hell happened, I’ll explain.

For several years I’ve been using Dreamhost as a hosting service for Lost Turntable. In fact, even before I moved my blog away from Blogspot I was using the Lost Turntable URL and server space provided by Dreamhost to host my MP3s. I chose Dreamhost, quite frankly, because they were cheap.

Well, you get what you pay for sometimes. While Dreamhost is dirt cheap, they’re about as reliable as the Raiders starting QB (oooh a sports reference!). Ever since I signed up with them, not a month would go by without at least some sort of temporary outage or disruption in service. If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don’t you really should – see that button up in the top right corner, why don’t you click on that?) then you’ll know that whenever this happened it drove me nuts.

A few weeks ago someone at Dreamhost must have spilled a cup of coffee on the wrong power cord or something, because my site went down for over 48 hours. That was the last straw for me. Sure, I don’t make money with the Lost Turntable (in fact it costs me money), but I like to keep a reliable site up for my readers, and I do use it as a reference for potential employers sometime, employers who don’t mind liberal use of swear words and casual piracy.

With the help of a friend, I migrated my site to Nearly Free Speech (NFS) another hosting service. I chose NFS for two reasons. One, they have a very hands-off approach to the sites they host, so I would never have to worry about them shutting me down, and two, because of their unique pricing system.

Hosting services like Dreamhost sell their services as a flat rate. That’s great it you need a lot of bandwidth and a ton of storage, but if you just need a little bandwidth and not that much storage, it’s kind of a waste. I thought that my site didn’t take up that much bandwidth or storage, so switching to a service that used a pay-what-you-use model made sense to me.

Okay, that was my mistake.

Turns out that you fuckers download a lot of music from me. How much?

About 7 to 10 GB a day.

That’s a lot of bandwidth. Furthermore, because of my generous nature (I know, I know, I’m great) I typically have about 6 GB of files hosted on my site at any time. With that much bandwidth and storage, I was looking at a monthly bill of about $130 from NFS, that’s more than what I paid Dreamhost for a year of hosting.

Now, I like you guys, but not that much. I needed to change severs and fast. But one problem, ICANN (the governing body of the Internet, yeah there is one! Crazy huh?) says that a site cannot change hosts twice within a certain timeframe, something like 60 or 90s days. Meaning that my site is stuck at NFS for the the time being.

I found a workaround though! Using a third hosting service (which will remain nameless at the moment), I registered LTfiles.com, and then I moved ALL the MP3s I’m currently hosting to that server, which i’s the server I’ll be using for the foreseeable future. So from now on, when you download an MP3 from The Lost Turntable, you’ll technically be downloading it from LTfiles. It’s not an actual site though, so don’t bookmark it or go there. It’s just a placeholder.

It’s kind of a roundabout solution, but it was the best I could come up with. And, actually, thanks to the deal I got at that hosting service, I’m still going to end up saving money on the whole thing. All my hosting combined should only be about $100 for the upcoming year. So while I appreciate the offers for donations, they won’t be necessary  Besides, I’m kind of morally opposed to anyone asking for donations if they run a site like this. I don’t own these songs. No one is making me post them. If I can’t afford to do it or find someway to make it work on my own, then I feel that I really shouldn’t be doing it. But whatever, I’d rather not drag other site’s names through the mud just because I don’t agree with how they operate.

And besides, if you really do want to help me out, may I remind you that I am currently selling some of my records to get some cash for my trip to Asia. Why don’t you check out what I have for sale and make an offer?

See what I did there? I’m clever.

Anyways, enough of this boring nonsense, how about some music? Kind of a lean most musically tonight, but don’t worry, I got some cool stuff planned later this week.

Soundgarden
Come Together
I’ve heard this cover on the radio  since the mid-90s, and it goes back even farther than that. I grabbed it from the 12″ single to “Hands All Over,” which was released in 1989, I don’t know where it first showed up. One thing I do know, however, is that it has never been issued on a proper Soundgarden album, which is fucking crazy considering how great it sounds and how well known it is.

Shelia E
A Love Bizarre (Parts I and II)
Save The People
Let’s take these songs one at a time.

As far as I can tell, there are three versions of “A Love Bizarre.” The album version, which is over 12 minutes long, a brief single edit that runs a slight three minutes and forty-six seconds, and this version, which is smack dab in the middle at seven minutes and sixteen seconds in length. I would assume that this means the full 12-minute version is the three-part version, and that final part is the part that has been removed from this slightly abridged one, I don’t own that uncut version though, so I’m not sure. Regardless the song kicks ass, and is one of Shelia E and Prince’s best (the track is pretty much a duet between the two).

As great as that song is though, “Save The People” really blows it out of the water. Lyrically, the track is very simple, with the only words being the occasional repeated chorus of  “save the people/feed their hungry eyes/save the children/don’t let them die” (surely a Live-Aid inspired message). But the lyrics are nearly inconsequential to the rest of the tune, which is an eight and a half minute funkified epic of face-melting guitar riffs, amazing drum solos and a blistering bassline that would make Les Claypool do a double take. It’s brilliant funk, something right out of a Funkadelic album. Amazing, awesome, spectacular stuff. The kind of track that makes me happy that I collect vinyl, and even more happy that I have a site like this where I can share it with you all, enjoy!

 

 

 

Posted in B-sides, Shelia E, Soundgarden | 2 Comments »

Blogging Till I Puke

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Hey look, I got some music.

Andrew W.K.
Party Till You Puke (Remix)
Party Till You Puke (Shout Out Mix)
Dance Party (Anti Never Ending Music Mix)
I Want To Kill (Build It Up Mix)
Old Man
The first person to figure out and explain to me all this insanity involving Andrew W.K.(s) get a thousand cookies and the New Order MP3 of their choice. Is he a different person now? Is it all a hoax? Is he a clone? My money is on Andy Kaufman-style prank – or maybe he’s part of an ultra-positive, party-happy alien force that is inexplicably big in Japan. These are from a 12” and the mediocre quality is from the source material and not my fault (for once). These mixes make me want to mosh till dawn and on.

Soundgarden
Touch Me
Show Me
Hey everyone! Soundgarden got back together! Wait, where are you going? Hey, it’s not going to sound like Scream, we promise! Actually, I make no guarantees. God, I hope not though. Grunge was already dead enough, it didn’t need Timbaland’s help. These two tracks are from the 12” to “Rusty Cage.”

Posted in Andrew W.K., B-sides, remixes, Soundgarden | 3 Comments »

Grunged 3: Fell On Whack Days

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

No more suicide/death talk this week, unless you count the creative death of Chris Cornell.

Soundgarden
Fell On Black Days (Video Version)
She Likes Surprises (International LP Version)
Like Suicide (Acoustic Version)
Jerry Garcia’s Finger
Cold Bitch
Exit Stonehenge
My Wave (remix)
Rhinosaur (remix)
Spoonman (Steve Fisk Remix)
Dusty (Moby Remix)
I’m not the first person to ask, but what the fuck is wrong with Chris Cornell? Have you heard anything from his new solo record? It’s fucking awful. And it’s not just awful because it’s not “rock” its awful because it’s shitty fucking music. This shit would sound like shit no matter who sung it, whether it be Chris Cornell, Freddie Mercury or motherfucking Curtis Mayfield (random selection I know but you get my point).

I understand that Cornell wanted to branch out and try new things, but this was not the way. Hiring the hack plagiarist Timbaland to put up shitty beats behind some shit songs that he didn’t even write by himself wasn’t the way to go. People have defended him by saying that he should have the right to do what he wants with his music, and yes that’s true, but don’t go say he did this shit because of some artistic belief or cause, the dude wants to make money and he figured this would be an easy way to do it. Thankfully the record is bombing.

Someone should get Rick Rubin on the phone STAT to guide this motherfucker back to the light.

Ah, but Chris Cornell wasn’t always a two-bit has-been, he used to be the frotnman for the bigget, baddest, rockingest grunge band in the world, Soundgarden! I remember an article in Spin that said while Nirvana saved “rock” Soundgarden saved “RAWK,” bad-ass, balls-to-the-wall ass-kicking metal made for bikers and weight lifters. I agreed at the time, Soundgarden was my first favorite grunge band, and Superunknown was my favorite album. I remember thinking that the album had to be the longest record ever, it was over 70 minutes long! No filler! Bad-ass supreme shit featuring Cornell’s heavenly wails! There hasn’t been an epic rock album as good as Superunkown since. I listened the shit out of that album.

Soundgarden also has an epic amount of b-sides, remixes and rarities. And since there is still no box set collecting them all finding them can be quite a drag; here’s what I managed to drag up. The first four tracks are from an EP called Songs From The Superunknown, and the second two are from the CD single of “Spoonman.” The remixes are from various EPs and singles…I think, I really don’t know where some of those are from. These are all excellent tracks, but the Moby mix of “Dusty” is a real standout, he deconstructs the shit out of that motherfucker. Maybe Cornell should call Moby for his next album, could save both of their careers.

Posted in B-sides, remixes, Soundgarden | 2 Comments »