Soundgarden have reunited

[Spoon87]

Soundgarden announces Summer tour

[Black Sabbath]

Philly.

Boo-fuckin'-ya.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not entirely sure if I will go or not. Especially after I read that the cheapest ticket is $119

Edited April 14, 2011 by Black Sabbath

[Turn_It_Up]

Sppon, I ya, thanks for quick heads up. But, yeah, these ticket prices suck, Gaga was same.

No reason to kid myself, though. Will be all over this. Figure I'll skip CC's accoustic tour and double down on SG...

[Spoon87]

Sppon, I ya, thanks for quick heads up. But, yeah, these ticket prices suck, Gaga was same.

No reason to kid myself, though. Will be all over this. Figure I'll skip CC's accoustic tour and double down on SG...

You're welcome!

I'd give my left nut to be able to attend one of the Songbook concerts, I sooo hoped that he'll come to Europe with that tour... but now that Soundgarden's going, I guess that'll be good enough (although they'll most likely just tour the US, too).

[ITW 2012]

Philly.

Boo-fuckin'-ya.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not entirely sure if I will go or not. Especially after I read that the cheapest ticket is $119

That's the base price for a pair of tickets.

[Turn_It_Up]

Philly.

Boo-fuckin'-ya.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not entirely sure if I will go or not. Especially after I read that the cheapest ticket is $119

That's the base price for a pair of tickets.

Good catch, does say "pair". Just means I'll go to twice as many shows. :xmassrudolph:

Were so killer at Lollapalooza, worth every penny and more...

Edited April 14, 2011 by Turn_It_Up

[Black Sabbath]

Philly.

Boo-fuckin'-ya.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not entirely sure if I will go or not. Especially after I read that the cheapest ticket is $119

That's the base price for a pair of tickets.

Must have missed that. That makes it a little better.

[Chewbacca]

It would be really nice if they made a world tour to support the upcoming album. I would be definitely going.

Edited April 16, 2011 by Chewbacca

[Zint]

Toronto in July...might go.

[Black Sabbath]

Bought my tickets for the Philly show today.

[WhazUp]

Yeeaaahhh 3rd row Cornell for the Songbook tour and just got Soundgarden tickets for LA today rock1

[Spoon87]

Yeeaaahhh 3rd row Cornell for the Songbook tour and just got Soundgarden tickets for LA today rock1

Goddamnit!!!

Nah, seriously, happy for everyone who's going, but fuuuck, I'm so jealous!

[dalsh327]

Soundgarden writing new material

Nooo....

Why? Let's see what they come up with first! AIC's comeback album was boss, too!

Because this whole reunion seems wrong. Chris jumped ship back to SG after he was blasted for Scream, Ben is poor, Thayil has said in not so many words that his heart isn't in it, and the whole purpose of them getting back together was to rebuild a merchandising empire. Almost everything about it has seemed like it's for money, so I'm damned afraid that they're going to put out a terrible album.

In AiC's case, they took every step towards their reunion with respect and trepidation, and the emotions behind the whole process helped to create an amazing album. Of course, I'll listen to the new SG album, but my gut says it's not going to be even half as good as anything they've done before.

I think Chris tried to prolong going back to SG as long as possible. He prob. ran out of new ideas, and if he waited too long, his voice might not have been up to handling it.The last solo tour I saw him do (not sure if this songbook tour is acoustic) but his voice was in amazing shape, the band was definitely able to deliver, that I hadn't heard when he was with Audioslave or at the last show I saw SG at Lolla in 96.

Matt's not there for the money. PJ's the type of band that goes off and does their own thing for a while, then come back together. He's been a part of that band for well over a decade and made a nice living with them. The band has a pretty good relationship and wound up finding a way to survive as a touring band without the need to be on magazine covers and in music videos. They didn't stop making them, but I think when they "went weird" in the mid 90s, it saved their asses. To me, they're following in the footsteps of Petty, The Band, Springsteen's E Street, etc. Petty goes solo once in a blue, Springsteen let his band go for almost a decade and was able to bring it all back together, so it is a fomula that does work. U2 has their odd side project, but Bono leaves the band to create music while he goes off and asks for money from world leaders, then comes back in and writes away, and they get the show on the road. I think part of him is happy to offload Spiderman, which is a bigger disaster than the U2 egg on the Pop tour. They've been on the verge of breaking up a few times, but after 30 plus years, they manage to make it work.

[gunsguy]

Toronto in July...might go.

Soundgarden

Sat, Jul 2

Molson Canadian Amphitheatre

On Sale Sat, 4/23, 10am

I am going for sure

[Turn_It_Up]

Shows are getting unbelievably strong reviews. By all accounts CC's voice in top form.

So psyched for tonight's show in Chicago. Awesome setlist, including this:

rock2

Zint, did you catch Toronto gig?

Edited July 16, 2011 by Turn_It_Up

[Turn_It_Up]

Don'thave vids up yet from last night's show, but whatta fuckin' gig. Best possible setlist.

1. Searching with My Good Eye Closed

2. Spoonman

3. Room a Thousand Years Wide

4. Jesus Christ Pose

5. Blow up the Outside World

6. Day I Tried To Live

7. My Wave

8. Fell on Black Days

9. Ugly Truth

10. Hunted Down

11. Outshined

12. Flower

13. Rusty Cage

14. Black Hole Sun

15. Burden in My Hand

16. Pretty Noose

17. Fourth of July

18. Superunknown

19. Beyond the Wheel

Encore

20. Nothing to Say

21. Mailman

22. Like Suicide

23. Slaves and Bulldozers

Couple faves:

Beyond The Wheel from Ultramega OK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crILNt7-kj8

Slaves:

Edited July 17, 2011 by Turn_It_Up

[Black Sabbath]

The show I saw in Philly on the 13th was amazing. I'm already ready to see them again!

Here are some pictures I took with my Droid X throughout the show: http://s139.photobucket.com/albums/q319/OzzyFanatic/Concerts/Soundgarden/

Some favorites -

Did you get one of the show specific posters, Turn_It_Up? The one for your show is pretty cool:

Also, if you use Dimeadozen, there is a very good sounding audio bootleg from the Chicago show on there!

[bt88]

I may go to New Orleans for Voodoo fest purely for soundgarden.

For the people who have seen them on this tour, honestly, does Cornell's voice still hold up? if he sounds bad the show pretty much falls apart.

[Black Sabbath]

Chris is in great form, along with the rest of the band.

It's probably one of the best concerts I've been to.

[Turn_It_Up]

I may go to New Orleans for Voodoo fest purely for soundgarden.

For the people who have seen them on this tour, honestly, does Cornell's voice still hold up? if he sounds bad the show pretty much falls apart.

As Sabbath said, CC's voice is more than holding up, dude's a freak of nature how good he sounds. When you can close and kill on Bulldozers after THAT setlist, shows he's got power to spare. But it isn't just his voice, this was the most engaged and happy I've seen him and it carries over to the whole show. Band in a zone.

Sabbath, those are awesome pics. Didn't get the poster, but waay cool, I agree.

Didn't you love that final 2-3 minutes of closing distortion? They gotta get a DVD out from one of these shows...

Edited July 22, 2011 by Turn_It_Up

[Turn_It_Up]

Great review from SF show that sums it all up:

============

Review: Soundgarden still sounds strong in concert

By Jim Harrington

Oakland Tribune

Posted: 07/22/2011 03:59:04 AM PDT

Updated: 07/22/2011 08:53:50 AM PDT

That was heavy.

Soundgarden's long-awaited return to San Francisco on Thursday night, following a breakup that lasted more than a dozen years, proved to be stunning affair, one that left the capacity crowd at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium wondering why the group went away in the first place.

For in 2011 -- just like in 1991, when the CD "Badmotorfinger" brought the band into the Top 40 for the first time -- nobody sounds quite like Soundgarden.

Everything about the band's music carries true weight -- from the crisscrossing guitar lines of Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil, which move with all the subtlety of freight trains, to the punishing, yet precise rhythm work of drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd.

And, of course, there's Cornell's voice, which can fly with menace or softly seduce.

It was a potent mix in the '90s, when Soundgarden joined with Pearl Jam and Nirvana to briefly make Seattle the capital of the music universe. And Thursday's show proved it can still be an intoxicating cocktail.

The band's two-hour-plus show, which opened with the "Badmotorfinger" cut "Searching With My Good Eye Closed," was like a ride in a time-machine back to the glory days of grunge rock. "Spoonman," "The Day I Tried to Live," "Jesus Christ Pose" and so many other selections hit like a sledgehammer swung by a band that is still on top of its game.

The musicians even looked and acted pretty much as they did back in the day -- although, to the disappointment of some fans, Cornell kept his shirt on throughout the concert.

Cornell was the focal point as he belted out "Room a Thousand Years Wide," "My Wave" and "Fell on Black Days," reminding 8,000 pairs of ears why he deserves to be ranked beside Roger Daltrey, Grace Slick and other all-time-great screamers in rock history.

Yet, the vocalist, who turned 47 on Wednesday, never sounded this convincing during his solo career or when he was fronting the supergroup Audioslave. And the reason why was obvious in San Francisco: He needs Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd.

Cornell simply works best in this musical setting. His voice is strengthened by the music's darkness and weight, contrasted and complemented by the wild time signatures and breakneck changes. And that fragile mix, which sounds anything but, is one of Soundgarden's specialties.

Another is songwriting, although that strength is sometimes hard to grasp amid the fuzzy fireworks of vocals, guitars, bass and drums. Yet, these guys are solid songsmiths, crafting versatile tunes that would probably hold up through multiple interpretations. Indeed, the band's best known song, "Black Hole Sun," is likely destined to be a standard someday. It's already being played -- quite remarkably -- by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.

Besides treating the crowd to selections from its five-album catalog, Soundgarden also played a few new songs in San Francisco. Not surprisingly, they were pretty heavy and sounded almost identical to the old stuff.

And fans wouldn't want it any other way.

http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_18528711

[Spoon87]

The last couple of posts had me go "Aww maaaaaaan"...

[Turn_It_Up]

The last couple of posts had me go "Aww maaaaaaan"...

Spoon, do what you can to catch 'em. What's cool is you got this tour which heavily covers all their albums, including Ultramega OK and Louder Than Love. And then when the new album drops they'll be touring again behind that, likely dropping out some of the older tracks to make room for the new songs. Best of both worlds.

All the reviews are like the above and this:

==========================

Live Shots: Soundgarden at the Civic Auditorium, 7/21/11

07.22.11 - 11:37 am | Charles Russo |

After capping off a monstrous 20-plus song set yesterday, on Thursday, July 21, with the tortured grind of “Slaves & Bulldozers,” Soundgarden put an exclamation point on their performance with a six minute shake-the-building-foundations, horses-of-the-apocalypse audio assault.

Amid waves of controlled feedback and blaring Seattle Sonic resonance, I thought my dental fillings were shaking loose. I was worried the Civic Auditorium balcony would soon collapse. I suspected that teenagers might start exploding throughout the audience.

If there had remained any wayward ounce of Superunknown sentiment regarding Soundgarden’s return, it had been extinguished long before the encore. The ear-bleeding onslaught at the outro was entirely (and wonderfully) gratuitous, then. Apparently the band just wanted to ruin our hearing for the rest of the week to make their point.

Yes, Soundgarden was in prime fighting shape. If you hadn’t caught it at the 1996 show at Kaiser Auditorium (now featured on their Live On I-5 disc) or the Greek Theater during grunge’s high watermark or the Warfield in all of its youthful glory -- well, you still got the real deal last night. Not only did the band deliver on its trademark heft, but the setlist was epic.

The group relied most heavily on material from Superunknown and Badmotorfinger, but dug deep into the vault at times, with the likes of “Ugly Truth”, “Loud Love,” and the early-as-it-gets “Nothing To Say.” Soundgarden also gave San Francisco first listen to some glorious obscurities that have yet to surface on their reunion tour, with an amped-up “Drawing Flies” and an entirely anthem-oriented “Head Down.”

All of the band’s radio hits were included, which at times this made for a somewhat disjointed iPod shuffle-style pacing to the night. But the slower, quietly textured numbers are all essential to Soundgarden’s identity -- and say what you like, but “Black Hole Sun” might very well be its generation’s “Strawberry Fields.”

As the band wound down the main set with the juggernaut creep of “4th of July,” Soundgarden plunged deep into their element with “Beyond the Wheel,” from their first LP Ultramega OK. Chris Cornell stalked the stage belting out upper register falsettos for the better part of the track, while Kim Thayil let loose on high wire guitar solo wizardry.

There is a stunning weight to all of this, to Soundgarden’s music when it locks one member to another like that. In this sense, their current tour shouldn’t be viewed so much as a reunion, but a question as to why they were apart in the first place.

http://www.sfbg.com/noise/2011/07/22/live-shots-soundgarden-civic-auditorium-72111

Edited July 23, 2011 by Turn_It_Up

[WhazUp]

Great show last night! Definitely one of the loudest shows I have been to

Mike McCready joined them for Superunknown. There were many, many stars there. Jerry Cantrell, Serena and Venus Williams, Dave Grohl (he was in the mosh pit!), the Chilli Peppers, a couple of guys from Tool, Ann Wilson, etc.

[Turn_It_Up]

Soundgarden at The Forum

Written by Paul Lyons

Sunday, 24 July 2011 06:09

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The most fascinating thing is, unlike every other headlining band in the universe, Soundgarden still plays as if they are still an opening act. What that means is, despite their fame, fortune, and legend...Soundgarden never ever rest on their laurels. They perform their songs as if they need to win the audience over...like they have something to prove. Further emphasizing this point, on Friday night, lead singer Chris Cornell made sure to remind the audience a few times that “We’re Soundgarden”...as if the adoring crowd needed to be told who they were. Yet that’s exactly what an opening band would do.

The mood was set when the The Stooges wah-wah classic “1969” blasted over the loudspeakers before the lights went down. One by one, the reunited Soundgarden hit the stage to thunderous applause. From the opening song, “Searching With My Good Eye Closed”...a great track from 1991’’s classic Badmotorfinger album, it was clear to all that Soundgarden were firing on all four cylinders, and were going keep up that momentum for the entire show. Lead guitarist Kim Thayil looked just like he did 20 years ago...with a touch of grey in his beard. His exotic, fluid playing (usually in the delicious Drop D tuning) was flawless. Bassist Ben Shepherd has bulked up in the last few years, yet he still plays like a renegade maestro...as if he’s gonna bolt any second from the show, with his bass hung dangerously low to the ground. Ever reliable Matt Cameron on the drums provided the same forceful, complex yet steady rhythm that has fueled Soundgarden’s music since the 1980s.

Then there’s lead singer Chris Cornell, who’s 8-octave range has never sounded better. Even when I saw Soundgarden back in their 90’s heyday, he did not sound this good. I’m just gonna say it...Chris Cornell has drank a gallon of water from the Fountain of Youth. How else to explain the fact that he looks younger now then he did 15 years ago? How else to explain the fact even at 47 years old, his voice still sounds just as amazing as it did when he was 25. There were times where my jaw dropped just listening to him sing.

If you were a die-hard Soundgarden fan, the setlist last night was really and truly a dream come true. Beginning last year, Soundgarden dove deep into their back catalog for the first time ever. In the 90’s, the band would only play songs from their 90s records...ignoring their great 80’s songs completely. Last night at The Forum, they sky was the limit in terms of what songs they could play. There was no new album to support...so it was anything goes.

After “Searching With My Good Eyes Closed”, Soundgarden killed the crowd with a faithful rendition of “Spoonman”...the classic 1994 track from their masterpiece Superunknown, one of the greatest albums ever made. Then it was time to reach back to a rare gem from 1989’s Louder Than Love...”Gun.” Never thought I’d ever see that one played live. This was followed by an excellent double-shot of Badmotorfinger tracks: “Jesus Christ Pose” and “Room a Thousand Years Wide.”

Turning back to 1996, Soundgarden broke out “Blow Up The Outside World”, a key track from their final studio album Down On The Upside. Then they performed a triple-shot of Louder Than Love tracks: “Loud Love”, “Big Dumb Sex” and the great “Ugly Truth.” It’s hard to believe that Soundgarden dropped these fantastic songs from their set 17 years ago, and never performed them again until last year.

Superunknown is filled with nothing but amazing, dark rock and roll songs. So the band fed from that album as much as possible, such as the next song they played “Fell On Black Days.” Yet just when you think you got the show figured out, Soundgarden reached back to their very first full-length album...1988’s Ultramega OK, and performed a stellar version of the great opening track from that record...”Flower.”

Chris Cornell told the crowd that the band originally considered playing some of the new material they had been working on recently, then changed their mind and decided to just play old songs instead. Needless to say they crowd did not mind, as they were more than happy to stomp and sing along to the Badmotorfinger classic “Outshined.” About headlining at The Forum for the first time, Cornell mentioned that the night’s concert was going to be one of the Forum’s last, as it was just recently sold. He was clearly not happy about that. I can’t blame either, as The Forum has been THE venue for thousands of great Los Angeles concerts for well over 40 years now.

From old, to relatively new, Soundgarden next brought out “Black Rain”...a song originally recorded in 1991, yet was re-worked and released for the first time ever just last year on their compilation album Telephantasm. Speaking of 1991, next up was the great opening track from Badmotorfinger: “Rusty Cage.” Rusty, this song was not...sounding just as fresh as it did twenty years ago. Then came a double-shot of Superunknown classics: “The Day I Tried To Live” and the brilliant and powerful “My Wave.” Down on The Upside’s “Burden In My Hand” followed...still sounding strong fifteen years after its initial release.

To close the main set, Soundgarden treated the crowd to no less than four Superunknown tracks in a row: “Black Hole Sun,” the transcendent psychedelic epic “Head Down”, “Superunknown” and the rarely performed gem “4th of July.” A huge highlight of the show was when Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready joined Soundgarden on stage to jam on “Superunknown.” Kim Thayil let McCready take a guitar solo, which to no surprise to anyone, was fantastic.

Just when you thought the Soundgarden show could not get any better, the band came back for an encore to again dive deep in their back catalog to perform an out of this world version of Ultramega OK’s “Beyond The Wheel.” I still am in awe of how Chris Cornell sang that song. His vocal skills in the upper range seem almost...superhuman. I don’t know how he does it. At 47, to hit the same extreme high notes Cornell did back when he was 24? Unbelievable...In fact, I still don’t believe it.

Spoiling the crowd rotten, Soundgarden next treated the crowd to another old rarity...their first ever single: 1987’s “Hunted Down”...sounding as if it were just recorded yesterday. Next, the band brought out the ninth Superunknown track performed that evening: the brooding and vengeful “Mailman.”

To close out the show, the band played the great, pounding, Badmotorfinger classic “Slaves & Bulldozers”...which ended with five minutes of nothing but loud feedback from Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd. The roar of the amps washed over the crowd in a sea of distortion and noise...which still somehow fit perfectly with the concert, and ended the night on a high note.

Soundgarden’s Friday night concert at The Forum was just pure perfection in all ways. Great setlist. Great performance. Amazingly, the band has lost none of their edge. Doesn’t get any better than that. And to think that this incredibly talented and powerful quartet are now officially back together AND recording a brand new album? This scares the crap out of me, because the potential for greatness is enormous. Watch out world, Soundgarden is most definitely BACK.

http://www.ocreloaded.com/concert-reviews/403-soundgarden-at-the-forum.html