soundgarden Archives - Vinyl From The Vault

Soundgarden “Ultramega OK”

sfilzen — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:12:28 +0000

Soundgarden “Ultramega OK” 1988. SST Records. Today, September 4th, is Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil’s 60th birthday (b. 1960) so I’m spinning their first full-length LP (they released 2 EP’s on Sub Pop in ‘87 and ‘88). Grungy/alt-metal, it secured a Grammy nomination in ‘90 for best metal performance. Thayil is considered one of the greatest guitarists (both Spin and Rolling Stone include him in the top 100) and many credit his style of playing – hard and heavy riffing – as basically setting the tone for the grungy Seattle sound of the late 80′s and early 90′s. I’ve only seen Thayil play once and not for Soundgarden but instead as part of the MC50 tour with Wayne Kramer in 2018. That was amazing.

Thayil wrote/co-wrote several of the tracks on Ultramega OK (I guess the title was a Thayil joke: the band wasn’t happy with the album’s mix but liked the songs so they considered the record “absolutely, unbelievably not bad” – it was remixed from the original tapes in 2017 and released on Sub Pop) including the lead track and only single “Flower,” “All Your Lies” (co-written with bassist Hiro Yamamoto), “Circle of Power” (one of my faves on the record and the most punk leaning) and “Incessant Mace.” Chris Cornell and/or Yamamoto wrote the remainder of the record besides the two cover tracks: Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning” that also includes bits of the most excellent Sonic Youth song “Death Valley ‘69″ as well as “One Minute of Silence” which is not really a cover but another joke, this time on John Lennon’s song “Two Minutes of Silence” – Soundgarden’s version is a minute of not really silence because apparently Thayil couldn’t be quiet for a full minute so there’s some muffled noise in the background.

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Soundgarden “Screaming Life”

sfilzen — Thu, 18 May 2017 11:13:16 +0000

Soundgarden “Screaming Life” EP, 1987. SubPop Records. Sad news this morning: Chris Cornell died last night at age 52. I previously blogged about Screaming Life back in 2015, having been pleased to discover we had an original pressing of SubPop’s third ever release (though not of the first 500 which were on orange vinyl), and found myself enjoying the rawer, dirtier sound of the band than their later big money releases. That opinion still holds up. Since then, we’ve become pretty good friends with a woman who grew up in Seattle and hung out with many of the not-yet-legendary grunge musicians, including members of Soundgarden. I’ve gotten to hear some pretty entertaining stories from those pre-fame times including one about her playing Scrabble with some of the guys from the band. Her son also happens to be an incredibly gifted musician; he’s in high school and has already earned a WAMI Award. We went camping last summer up in Door County at Peninsula State Park and one evening he and a couple of others pulled out their guitars. One song he played reminded me of one of my favorite Chris Cornell songs, “Seasons” which appears on the soundtrack to Singles. My friend’s son hadn’t heard the song so once I had internet connection (something sorely lacking in the northwoods), I sent him a link to the track. His comment was “Just listened to this, and I love it thanks it’s so beautiful.”

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Soundgarden “Screaming Life”

sfilzen — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 17:19:00 +0000

Soundgarden “Screaming Life” 1987. EP. 45 rpm. I pulled this for today’s selection from the vault because we’ve been watching Dave Grohl/Foo Fighter’s “Sonic Highways” HBO documentary on the DVR and finally watched the Seattle episode last night. When the topic of this EP being Sub Pop’s third-ever release came up, Joe said, “Yeah, we have that.” Me, embarrassed, “Really? I had no clue.”

While not of the first 500 pressings (which are on orange vinyl), this copy is an original 1987 release. I’m not sure when or how we acquired it, but had I heard it back in ‘87 (which I did not), I probably would have been an earlier adopter of the Seattle scene. I liked Soundgarden okay in the 90’s when they had widespread popularity, but this EP has much more raw and messy sound (i.e. the single “Hunted Down”) than their later big-money releases. Life in general in the late 80’s was raw and messy and this EP would have been a great accompaniment to that time.

(I love looking for the little scratches of writing on vinyl. This one has “Buy Green River” on side A and “Buy MalFunkShun” on side B. I always wonder about the person in the pressing room deciding what little hidden gems to script.)

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