Showing posts with label Chris Cornell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Cornell. Show all posts

Jul 21, 2017

In Defense of Chester Bennington




 by Robert Dean

Today’s culture is weird. There’s this underlying, grim face of reality that people feel like they’ve got a license to be an unrelenting fucking asshole because they’ve got a keyboard.

I’ve done my fair share of shit talking, trolling, or arguing with strangers because I like provoking the idea that not all “snowflakes” need a safe space. But, for once this isn’t about politics. It’s about common decency.

Today, Chester Bennington from Linkin Park committed suicide. That’s sad. This isn’t a defense of Linkin Park’s music. It’s a defense that someone who is rich can be troubled, too. Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’ve got all the answers. Because surely Chris Cornell, Marilyn Monroe, or Robin Williams, or Kurt Cobain didn’t have them, either or they’d still be alive. 

Suicide isn’t something to make jokes about, or talk about how bad Linkin Park sucked. I don’t like Linkin Park. I’ve always disliked their music. But this isn’t about my musical tastes or me: it’s about the need for proper mental health care and the stigma of depression to finally have a place in the public arena.

Chester Bennington left behind millions of dollars, a career that was still very active, and a family. Six kids and a wife now have to pick up the pieces of his death, and all some dork from Iowa who works at a 7/11 can do is think they’re witty by offering some inane perspective on bad music.

I hope some of you think better when cracking jokes. Not too long ago, it felt like a knife to the soul of rock and roll when Chris Cornell did the same thing. Now, it’s cheaper because the consensus of music-obsessed people doesn’t like the guy’s tunes? That’s a selfish way to process information.

Mental health needs to be addressed in this country. From school shootings to people hurting themselves because no matter how many people know their name, they feel alone. That’s not funny to joke about. Plenty of folks deal with things every day, and for a lot of those elitists who piss on this news, a lot of people you’re probably friends with got their start on Linkin Park. Why would you laugh about that? It’s cruel and not funny.

Being flat out mean is a pedestrian, asshole move. Millions of people found joy in Linkin Park’s music, no matter how irrelevant it may be to some of us. Robbing someone of those minutes of joy is sad because we all have our heroes who inspire us.  

Give Chester Bennington’s family time to grieve. And really, no one thinks your comments are funny. Chances are, Greg from Ohio, there’s plenty of shit wrong with you and just because your favorite obscure band is alive and kicking, doesn’t give you the thumbs up to be a cunt.

If Chris Cornell’s family respected this guy enough to let him sing at the memorial, that ought to lend him a little credibility. Even Stone Temple Pilots saw his abilities, despite public opinion.

Don’t wish ill on the dead. It’s not a good look, and no one thinks you’re cool.

May 23, 2017

Ryan Adams' Tribute to Chris Cornell

While I do wish all these tributes had varied their source material a bit, I'm not complaining. 
This is a particularly nice take on "Black Hole Sun."

May 18, 2017

Break That Cage, Chris


by Robert Dean

I remember the summer of 1994. I was 13. I was stuck in an emotional paradox of figuring myself out in this kaleidoscope of so many feelings, and so much going on internally. My grandmother had passed away and coupled with the death of Kurt Cobain. My world was on its goddamned head.

My grandmother had passed away from ovarian cancer at 54, and because we were so close, the loss shook the foundation of my being. Losing Kurt Cobain was my 9/11 – my favorite singer was gone, and it made the death of my grammie feel that much more real. To this day, I compound the two as the same loss, and both of their memories are inter-connected. Everything I saw, felt, and experienced was internalized, processed through a childhood rage that didn’t manifest in ways that were destructive, but bled out through what I consumed.

I’d already been a kid into rock and roll, metal, grunge, punk – but, because no other music captured that spirit, the tangibility for emotion, there was no going back. The sound of a guitar cranked to the ceiling with booming drums and a singer wailing their hearts out became the lynchpin to how my emotional process.

At 35, losing Chris Cornell hurts because he’s a mile-marker for that time, for my generation. We had front row seats to his rise. We watched the band become a part of the lexicon. Losing some of the other incredible artists of our lives hurts in their own, signature ways. We process death with a sense of ownership in relationship to our lives and personal experience with that person. Soundgarden’s music was a part of my childhood and remains a part of my culpability as a growing human. There’s poetry in those phrases – they stick with you, they imprint the bones with an aloof suffering. It’s not on purpose. It’s just symptomatic of the generation. There’s always a little tinge of suffering for the Gen – X that’s inescapable, no matter how happy someone may be.

Losing Chris Cornell feels odd. We didn’t expect his death. Losing Layne from Alice in Chains or Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots was sadly not surprising. We wanted them to get better, to regain their forms as idols and icons. But, that would never come to pass.

We mourn him because he was someone we were excited was back with Soundgarden, keeping the flame of rock and roll alive. Despite being elder statesmen in the game, they’re a meat and potatoes band that everyone can carry in their pocket as uniquely “theirs.” Losing Cornell is another showcase of mortality, but also that when our icons die, the feeling like you lost a page of your personal narrative is just too real. For a lot of us, we include the songs we love as psychological footnotes in our greater story. Soundgarden carries that weight for me.

Soundgarden was and is different. They’re a band who crossed the lines of so many styles and categories. Those riffs are powerhouse, sludgy masterpieces. From the vocal range to the destructive, bombastic drums, or the in the shadows, but totally amazing bass playing, Soundgarden was a band of pure players. They’d dabble in metal here, or define a notion of grunge, and I may be mistaken, but I think one song might have some banjo.

There’s an inescapable presence to their music. It’s timeless, and kids will always be into them.

One memory though, it sticks out anytime I think of Soundgarden. I remember they’d dropped Superunknown and the world was at their feet in the wave of Black Hole Sun. While I saved my pennies to buy a cassette, some of my friends weren’t so keen. I remember one of the first experiences in diversity was connecting with a Mexican friend because his world was hip hop and mine was rock and roll. We had the cultural exchange of him showing me Warren G and Nate Dogg’s Regulators and me showing him Soundgarden.

It seems small, but I remember that time of innocence where things like the music you liked didn’t define your friendship, like so many do. I’m a nerd. I obsess about music, about records, about every aspect of the artform. I connect with people who feel the same.

In this memory, the exchange was pure. We took something from one another and accepted it. We defined that summer by trading my grunge or punk or metal, for hip hop. I now liked Snoop Dog or Cypress Hill, and he now liked Metallica or Nirvana.

But, it was Soundgarden that opened that door. I grew as a person because of one song and one summer. It may seem insignificant for most, but I like to remember those pure moments, the ones that exist on the axis of absolute joy and now, so many years later, I still do.

Thanks for that time in my life Chris. See you on the flip side.

Chris Cornell Covers Dolly Parton

RIP Chris.


Chris Cornell is Gone

Farewell to one of rock's finest vocalists ever. Another voice of my generation silenced. Superunknown is easily one of my favorite rock albums of all time. 52 is far too young.


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