Dropped me off at Grandpa Joe’s

“Thoughts on Montage of Heck?” my friend Eric tweeted me the other day. “It might be my favorite rock doc ever — totally overpowering and draining emotionally.”

Load up on grunge

This is very silly, but quite droll*:

Sell the kids for food

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Watching a world through a windshield, there’s no looking back. We’d left everything behind. … We had no idea that the next 16 days were going to change our world forever. But I remember pulling into the parking lot and thinking, ‘Really? This is Sound City?!’

With the release of the new Foo Fighters album, Sonic Highways, just round the corner,* I finally got round recently to watching Sound City, Dave Grohl’s 2013 documentary about the famed California recording studio.

Sound City is dear to Grohl’s heart: it’s where Nirvana recorded Nevermind back in May 1991, and the quote above is spoken by Grohl over the beginning of the documentary, as the camera shows a van replicating Nirvana’s road trip from Seattle down the west coast to Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley.

You could do anything

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The August Bank Holiday has swung round with its usual, startling annual regularity, so that means it’s time again for the Reading Festival (these days strictly the Reading and Leeds festival, doubtless brought to you by some bland and ubiquitous corporate lager – the spirit of alt rock endures). This year’s main stage headliners are Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys and Blink 182. (Blink 182 headlining? For the second time?!?)

Inevitably, as a greying fortysomething nostalgist blogging about music that was most in vogue twenty years ago, without even a madeleine moment my mind drifts back to Readings past. I’ve just spent a few minutes losing myself in these old line-ups, both the festivals I attended (92, 94, 98, 03) and those I missed (err, the others).

First it steals your mind

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Alongside the recruitment of Soundgarden‘s new sit-in drummer and their recent SXSW show, I’ve already made passing reference to the Superunknown superdeluxeboxset* out at the beginning of June, so this is something of a follow-up post. As a landmark grunge album – indeed as a landmark rock album – it can probably just about cope with the burden.

What else should I be?

Nirvana were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Brooklyn, NY, on 10 April. This Hall of Fame malarkey doesn’t typically interest me a great deal (Americans seem to have halls of fame for just about everything – there’s probably a Hall of Fame Hall of Fame tucked away in Poughkeepsie – it just doesn’t cross the Atlantic particularly well), but Nirvana’s induction was a noteworthy one.

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Use just once and destroy

A coda to my recent(ish) posts on In Utero and Unplugged:

Last Thursday would have been Kurt Cobain’s 47th birthday, and this reminded me that Radio Seattle‘s bassist Richard sent me this link a while back. It’s a letter from Steve Albini to Nirvana, discussing the possibility of producing In Utero, as of course he went on to do in February 1993 (at the Pachyderm Studio mentioned in the letter).

Nothing to add, beyond read the letter: Albini comes across as everything you would ask for from a record producer (and a human being, more importantly).

(Depending on where you are, you may have to click on the “watch on youtube” link to access this.)

Shiver the whole night through

Nirvana Unplugged. Check shirts aplenty in the crowd.

Last December saw the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana‘s Unplugged* recording, so, with my customary whippet-like speed (albeit an elderly, three-legged whippet with no sense of urgency or direction), a post on the highly regarded album, the band’s last release before Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide. Or, at least, a few random thoughts. I found this excellent article about the making of Unplugged by Andrew Wallace Chamings in The Atlantic: well worth a read. He even published it on time too.

There’s no time to keep it low

Matt Cameron of Pearlgarden. Or Sound Jam.

Following the release of Lightning Bolt last month, and an autumn tour to support it, drummer Matt Cameron has announced that he’s going to focus on his Pearl Jam touring commitments next year, and temporarily vacate the Soundgarden drum stool. Cameron remains an active member of Soundgarden, so the band will need to find a temp drummer for their 2014 gigs (only six announced to date, three of which are supporting Black Sabbath in Germany,* but more may follow).

Feed my eyes

A quick post about the Borderline gig last month. It was such a blast. Thanks again to Pearl Jammer for giving us the support slot for that night on their Ten Tour Revisited.

Our dressing room door. Too cool for words.

We felt privileged to have the opportunity at such a great venue; quite apart from Pearl Jam themselves playing there in 1992 (I got to stand where Mike McCready once stood! I’m such a fanboy…), Jeff Buckley played one of his first UK shows there in 1994, and Townes van Zandt played his last ever gig there in 1996.* On the way into the venue they have a wall of photos of artists who have played there. It’s pretty daunting, to be honest.