I am not sure when or where I first heard Soundgarden. It could have either been an episode of Beavis & Butt-head or through KRQR 106.7 Z-Rock FM in the NorCal valley. I am thinking it had to be Z-Rock as my family hadn’t had satellite in years, and the cable we had did not have MTV.
Around this time I was in my freshman year of high school and living in a gated community. Before anyone gets the wrong idea this was not your ideal, Hollywood gated community where you were welcome with open arms because you could afford to live there. No, this was your “we are better than everyone because we live three miles from any form of civilization” suburb. You were shunned if you weren’t part of their clique, derided if you didn’t allow everyone to know your business. Not a fun place.
I was living in a house there with my father, sister, Evil Step-Mother and Evil Step-Sister. To make a long story short I had lived with my grandparents from the age of two, but my grandfather decided to go off the deep end a bit more than usual and attacked my grandmother. My father came in, took my sister and I, and we ended up in another type of hell. (I call her Evil Step-Mother for a reason.)
Around this time I started getting into heavier music then my usual Bon Jovi pop-rock stuff but any incoming music was limited. As stated above the cable we had in that house didn’t have MTV. We had VH1, which served its purpose, but at the time it was adult contemporary music only so no alternative or metal type music. At 4pm everyday it would switch to Comedy Central so there were no late night viewings. As well, the Evil Step-Mother didn’t think that MTV was a good influence because of “the fast moving images” and sexualization of people. This from a major druggie was a bit hypocritical.
I know now that Soundgarden had been around for ten years by the time I had heard of them, and that Chris Cornell had helped produce and sang on Alice Cooper’s The Last Temptation album, but it was in that year of 1994 that I first heard Black Hole Sun which got me to dig a bit deeper for their music. I bought the Superunknown album (discussed much later) but it wasn’t until 1997 when I bought the A-Sides album that I actually heard any of their earlier stuff.
Soundgarden A-Sides
