Reach Down

“I want to reach down
and pick the crowd up
Carry them in my hand
to the promised land…
To the promised land”
–Reach Down

Republished; 2018: The death of legendary singer and grunge pioneer Chris Cornell stunned the music world last week.

Chris was a rare talent. He was the greatest voice in rock music; a versatile singer who could wail on high notes and slide effortlessly into a bluesy moan charged with soul and emotion.

It’s been a few days since his untimely death, and many fans remain in a state of disbelief.  The best we can do is honor the man by celebrating his music and appreciating what a profound gift he gave us during his life.

It’s impossible to discuss Chris Cornell and Soundgarden without acknowledging the tremendous influence grunge had for me during my youth. Grunge music was my entry into rock. Before I was a fan of classic rock, I was a hardcore fan of grunge. The big four – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden – formed the nucleus of my obsession.

Grunge was a visceral introduction to the rock universe. It was unbelievable. Together, all the albums released by each band created a unified alternate world. This world mirrored the dark emotions we lived inside, but the music made it beautiful.  It was empowered alienation. As Rolling Stone once said, it was the music of “violence and retreat”.

Grunge delivered raw emotion behind soaring voices, screams, otherworldly guitar phrases and lyrics that touched our souls. A handful of bands defined our experience, and those bands were larger than life. Chris Cornell was larger than life.

The first song I heard by Soundgarden was the iconic “Black Hole Sun”. The dark psychedelia was strange, but I loved it. From that moment, I was hooked.

I listened to early-era Soundgarden every morning on the drive to school. The sound was perfect for Alaska mornings. I remember gliding down the icy road listening to “Nothing to Say”, “Flower”, and “Hands All Over”.

The red sun peeked over the horizon, blazing a thin line over mountains beneath a dark sky. The guitars echoed to the mountains; mean, cold, and brittle. The drums vacillated between a steady battle march and unhinged madness. The whole thing sounded like a glacier splitting in slow motion.

Soundgarden’s early music is hypnotic and full of stark imagery; dark pines, eerie lakes, power lines, and grey skies marbled in clouds. I listened and flew across the sky. I gazed down on a vast portrait of nature in still life. Cornell’s soaring voice pulled you into a vision.  You didn’t jump or head bang along with this music – you brooded to Soundgarden. It was menacing and the intensity pulled you in. Your soul moved into the songs.

“Room A Thousand Years Wide” is a great example, it churns through desert surrealism, blinding sun, and strobe lights.  Soundgarden’s music was a vehicle into imagery or a feeling you couldn’t place. You broke through the mirror and emerged into a realm halfway between artist and audience. Waves of saturated guitar washed over and you were reborn in an instant.

Locked into a serious grunge obsession, you went hours without eating because you were too busy experiencing a surge of emotion.  It was like a drug.

I never left this music completely behind, but I remember when it was all new.

I had a sad moment today during one of my favorite songs, “Loud Love”.  The song is so high octane and immediate that I forgot Chris passed away. I was rocking out, then suddenly I remembered that the source behind this powerful vocal delivery is gone.

I have another special memory connected to Soundgarden.  The band accompanied me into the stupidest decision of my life.

Many years ago, I decided to visit my favorite park in Anchorage armed with two sugar cubes of LSD.  This seemed like a great idea until the bathroom walls started breathing. An orange hue creeped over everything and at that point I decided it was probably foolish to hang out in the woods at a public park on acid.

So, I decided to drive home.

During the drive home, I played “Searching with My Good Eye Closed”.  I turned the volume up to full blast. When that first wall of guitar hit, it vibrated through my body with an intensity I’d never experienced. I felt like I was entering heaven. Chris sang about the sky and I was ready.  I was ready to go up into that sky. I had this total spiritual experience, like a monk on top of a mountain. It was amazing.

I could talk about Soundgarden songs and my memories connected to them all day. Nothing I say can touch the experience of listening to the music.

I was never impressed by Audioslave’s radio singles. However, I picked up the album Songbook a couple of years ago and was blown away by the acoustic version of “Like a Stone”. I decided I should explore Audioslave’s albums. I never ended up doing that, but I will soon.

The one Chris Cornell project that I’ve always loved is Temple of The Dog.

Temple has been a tear-inducing experience over the last couple of days. Every other song makes me cry. Beyond just mourning Chris Cornell, I might also be mourning the grunge era and human experience in general.

Temple of The Dog inspires that level of grief. Since the album’s songwriter is now gone, the music has adopted an additional level of meaning. Many of the songs are about grieving. “Say Hello to Heaven” is especially poignant. This is the album where Chris  began to show the world his genius beyond the limits of Soundgarden.

Chris Cornell’s passing has taken me back into memories of the first days when I fell in love with music – days at home staring into the fireplace, occasionally glancing out the window at the autumn moon while listening to Kurt, Layne, Eddie, and Chris.

The music has been there all along, but somehow the shock of Chris Cornell’s passing has taken me deeper into old songs.  I realize I’ve been sleeping through life lately.

Chris is gone, but we have his legacy and a huge amount of recorded music to remember him by. All the moments of sweltering power and glory are still there, and nothing can take that away.

~~~~~~~

“Please, mother mercy
Take me from this place
And the long-winded curses
I keep hearing in my head

Words never listen
And teachers never learn
Now I’m warm from the candle
Though I feel too cold to burn

He came from an island
And then he died from the street
And he hurt so bad like a soul breaking
But he never said nothing to me

Say Hello to Heaven

New like a baby
And lost like a prayer
The sky was your playground
And the cold earth was your bed

Poor stargazer
She’s got no tears in her eyes
Smooth like a whisper
She knows love heals all wounds with time

Now it seems like too much love
is never enough
You better seek out another road
Cause this one has ended abrupt

I never wanted
To write these words down for you
With the pages of phrases
of things we’ll never do

So I blow out the candle
And I put you to bed
Since you can’t say to me now
How the dogs broke your bone
There’s just one thing left to be said:

Say Hello to Heaven”

-Chris Cornell, Temple of The Dog; Say Hello To Heaven.

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The Ghost Returns / How To Disappear Completely

Republish from April 2019. Long ago, I sat in my living room listening to Amnesiac by Radiohead with a head full of LSD.

I stared at the fireplace, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, watching the giant stones swirl in geometric patterns. Listening intently, I tried to understand the pops, clicks, and clanks of “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”. I was awestruck; everything made complete sense, yet it made no sense at all.

“Pyramid Song” started playing and I sat up. The flood gates of my mind opened; a river of emotion flowed into my ears and out of my eyes, a gleaming mirror formed in my field of vision as music notes danced on the surface.

Fog rolled into my living room. As the orchestra kicked up and Thom Yorke moaned wistfully, a lighthouse beacon appeared. I was on a ship in the ocean. I looked over the edge and saw those black-eyed angels Thom was singing about. I looked up to a dark blue sky laced with pink clouds above the twilight. The songs became stranger and infinitely more beautiful as the album unfurled.

Amnesiac isn’t an album on LSD — it’s an odyssey.

---

I can never fully describe the experiences I had listening to Amnesiac on acid. The description above is a rough, crude sketch that doesn’t begin to convey the level of beauty and strangeness I witnessed in that living room.

Amnesiac had a calming quality, but it was also brittle, vast and perplexing. I could drink in the cold passion while I wrapped my brain around the puzzles within the sound. I could never solve those puzzles, but I never tired of the effort.

Radiohead’s music has been the soundtrack to moments of intense connection and grief in my life. Looking back, it was the calming and therapeutic quality of Amnesiac that hooked me above everything else.

Now I’m returning to Radiohead for the same reason, exploring late period music I overlooked in the last decade and discovering songs that serve my journey now the way Amnesiac served my acid trips in 2003.

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I’ve recently experienced severe anxiety. It’s subsiding now, but this Nightmare Land lasted nearly a month. When anxiety strikes, it’s like a series of waves crashing. When the tide goes out, you’re left with an ethereal, ghost-like feeling. That’s disassociation. This is your brain’s way of dealing with adrenaline overload. It’s almost like being high. It’s a welcome relief from the feeling that you will collapse from fear.

For that reason — the “high” thing — I’ve been purposely feeding it with Radiohead. Because nobody does disassociation like Radiohead. They’ve been doing it well for a while.

The album A Moon Shaped Pool is arguably Radiohead’s crowning achievement in otherworldly disconnection. Today I walked 4 miles in the sun listening to A Moon Shaped Pool, just floating along on my ghost trip. Normally while the sun is out, I won’t touch Radiohead. On a sunny day I usually prefer bombastic guitar-based music.

But not today… because it doesn’t matter what the weather is. I’m up here in my head. People pass by and they’re in another realm. I can almost pretend I’m invisible. They ruin it sometimes by looking directly at me, but not often because I don’t look at them.

But I have Radiohead.

I have the gothic choral strains of “Decks Dark” in my ear, and I could float up to the damn sky on the refrain if I wanted to. I could climb the arpeggios of “Present Tense” up to a rainbow. I don’t need to eat lunch or dinner to walk 4 miles, and I don’t need much sleep. I’m never tired and I’m never fully awake.

But I have Radiohead.

---

And I have Radiohead backward…. Backward, way back through the smoke rings of my mind…way back through the haze of all that weed I used to smoke. I see Wyatt when he was still alive, playing a Radiohead song on his acoustic guitar.

I see Wyatt before he killed himself and shattered the lives of everyone who loved him. Before the memory of 20-year old boys howling in pain at his wake, some of them quiet with tear-stained faces, before the memory of his stoic mom barely holding it together, greeting kids so bravely, hugging me and asking where I’ve been lately.

Before all this, I see Wyatt in his room.

I see Wyatt who idolized Thom Yorke before he became obsessed with Tom Waits, who he probably learned about from Thom Yorke. We’re in his room, just me and him. We’re smoking weed and he’s playing the riff to “Street Spirit” over and over again, getting it down.

Fast forward to a different night under the full moon shining down on Cook Inlet in Kincaid Park. There’s me, Wyatt, and two other boys trekking through the woods at night, climbing up an endless hill to gaze at the jeweled moon. Three of us took acid that night, and I wasn’t the sober one. Neither was Wyatt.

There’s Wyatt pulling out a spoon to show me the reflection of the moon on its silver rounded surface, as if he’d brought a spoon just for this occasion. We’re on top of a grassy hill overlooking the vast inlet below. We all have headphones on. I’m listening to OK Computer by Radiohead. I take my headphones off and I hear the faint, tinny scratches from Wyatt’s headphones. I ask him what he’s listening to. He tells me he’s listening to Ok Computer.

I smile wide and tell him that’s what I’m listening to. We didn’t discuss what we’d listen to beforehand. It’s not an album I listen to much anymore since I discovered Radiohead’s Kid A, but it seems right for the moment. Apparently, Wyatt thinks so too. I marvel at the synchronicity for a moment before getting lost in something else within that long magic night under the Alaskan moon.

Fast forward a couple of years later and there I am in my bedroom, still stunned in disbelief that Wyatt is gone. Listening to “How to Disappear Completely”. Listening to other Radiohead songs. Listening to other music I like that Wyatt also liked, laying there like a stone unable to move for days. Going over every memory I have of him in my mind from the past 4 years.

---

Last week I thought I was losing my mind; staying drunk to get food down on account of anxiety, hiking the woods during the day, and finding relief near the ocean. Then I returned, and I had Radiohead.

For a few days I couldn’t listen to anything but “Codex”. This song is a perfect example of Thom Yorke’s brilliance as a singer. You’ll first listen the song focusing on the sound, not paying attention to the lyrics. You’ll hear a word here and there. “Dragonflies… the water is clear…”, that’s all you can make out.

But it doesn’t matter because his voice is like a bell from heaven combined with a raw nerve. The whole meaning of the song is stretched out in every yearning moan elicited between his quieter moments of despondency. He soars up and bellows out that great beautiful bell-tone ache, then slides down quietly as if to say, “this is so sad, I can’t even”.

One day I looked up the lyrics. When you read the lyrics without listening to the music, they sit flat on the page. The words are so devoid by themselves that it’s almost comical. However, once you know the lyrics and then listen to the song again, the beatific emerges. Now this song is about getting lost in the serenity of the woods. You’ve done nothing wrong and you don’t deserve this. Here’s the clear water now. Take a break.

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I love songmeanings.com. Looking up songs on this website is sometimes an exercise in comedy, but it always provides revealing insight into people’s lives. I looked up “Codex” on this site (found here), and as usual I’m entertained.

Many people think it’s about suicide. Someone thinks it’s about political conspiracy. Another guy thinks it’s about flying a military plane and carpet-bombing civilians. Someone else thinks it’s about Radiohead breaking up. Another person thinks it’s about Christianity and the clear lake is holy water.

The interpretations people come up with are a reflection of their own lives and beliefs, and that’s the genius of songmeanings.com.

The highest rated comment is my favorite, and I have co-opted it for my own purposes. The commenter posits that it’s about “the Buddhist spiritual cycle of life, death, and rebirth” — that it’s about “exploring the unfamiliar within ourselves and abandoning our previous shells”. He then provides evidence that one of the songs is titled “Lotus Flower” and other songs on the album follow a similar pattern thematically.

This is a beautiful interpretation, and I can no longer hear the song any other way. After reading this, “Codex” changed from being just a sad song about being isolated and needing a break to a song about experiencing sadness, but finding hope through a spiritual path.

And it took Radiohead to get there.

If you liked this, you might also like Saturn Returns

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I jumped in the river, what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
And all the figures I used to see

All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt

-Pyramid Song, Radiohead

Slip Inside This Dream

The 13th Floor Elevators are the best kept secret in the history of 1960’s rock music.

My first encounter with The Elevators happened on a primitive version of streaming radio. This station also introduced me to The Who, Eric Burdon, The Stooges, Black Sabbath, King Crimson, and many other acts that I soon became obsessed with.  It wasn’t “classic rock” to me back then.  It was just this new, incredible music.

As with many other bands that I fell in love with around this time, I heard one good song and proceeded to immediately order a couple ofalbums from their catalog. When I heard the Elevators, I ordered their two legendary albums, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, and Easter Everywhere.

I sat in my living room completely enthralled by both albums. The first album mixed 50’s style rock n’ roll with blues. Roky Erickson’s voice arrested my attention right away; he moaned and screamed like a zombie possessed by electric current.

The lead guitar cut through the mix with alarming precision, and the overall effect was masterful. A kind of magnetic force or energy drove the entire sound which can’t be explained in standard music terms – there was a conviction, an absolute now or never attitude. It sounded like a group of fire and brimstone preachers decided to form a rock band.

The first time I listened, I sat cross-legged on the floor directly in front of my stereo. I put on Psychedelic Sounds and started reading the liner notes.  The liner notes had this weird philosophical content. I was immediately puzzled.  The writing was academic, but strangely esoteric. The text seemed a little heavy for the album opener; a country-fried punk stomper called “You’re Gonna Miss Me”.

As “Roller Coaster” began playing, I listened to the lyrics closely.  At this point, I began to slowly piece everything together.

Here we arrive at the mystique of innocence – that moment of discovery when you absorb information for the first time, but you have no idea who the author is. You have no precedent for the information you are receiving – no historical context for whatever theory, song, or piece of knowledge imparted to you.  It was just new, strange, and exciting.

I was blown away.  Roky Erickson’s haunting, reverb-saturated voice blasted through the speakers and created a resounding echo in my living room.  A very strange whooping sound flew back and forth across the speakers. I turned the dial up.  The music shifted suddenly and dropped into a swirling whirlpool of menacing blues guitar and raga.

Easter Everywhere was different, but equally good. “Slip Inside This House” combined lyrics inspired by classical poetry with music that somehow matched the lyrical content. It’s still amazing to me that they pulled this off.  It was a feat of genius. The Elevators completely outshined other underground bands from that era.

Their story is a sad one.  The general narrative contains two key circumstances that contributed to their plight – an incompetent Texas record label, and their insistence on consuming LSD on a regular basis. Excessive drug use ultimately lead to mental health issues among several band members, most notably Roky Erickson.

Their live shows are the stuff of legend.  People who saw them live in their heyday have said that the albums are nothing compared to their early live shows.  They played live on LSD, and it apparently didn’t slow them down at all.

In interviews, people who went to their live shows in 1966 say they were the kings of the San Francisco scene. All of the Bay Area bands from this period went to see The Elevators, and they were all floored.

The consensus among people who knew them and saw their performances is that if they would have backed off the drug use and aligned themselves with a good record label, they could have been as big as the Rolling Stones.

The reality is that their situation was a catch-22.  The Elevators whole philosophy (and all the strange power behind their music) was driven by consciousness expansion. They wouldn’t have remained the same band if they had cleaned up and started behaving. Instead, they became the very definition of a cult band.

Years later, I can still feel the chills rush over me when I play these albums. My heartbeat kicks up, the speakers magnetize my blood and I want to be inside of that strange musical canvas. I want to just walk right into that room.

These albums are best listened to by candlelight and without any distraction. This is music you cannot listen to passively.  As with Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Buckley, Tori Amos, and The Smashing Pumpkins, you live inside of this music.

It is an alternate universe; a sonic island that redefines the concept of what music is. It’s a philosophy, an experience, and a dream – alive and pulsating in time.  It shapes your mood and your perception of the environment around you. When you connect to music this good, you transcend your life. You transcend into a power connected to everything.

~~~~~~~~~

If you liked this, you might like Jefferson Airplane

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“Every day is another dawning
Give the morning winds a chance
Always catch your thunder yawning
Lift your mind into the dance
Sweep the shadows from your awning
Shrink the four fold circumstance
That lies outside this house
Don’t pass it by”

-Slip Inside This House

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Exuberant Joy and the Infinite Night

March 23^rd 2016 was a special night. A friend and I went to the famous Paramount Theatre in Seattle to experience my favorite band of all time.

Buzzed out of my mind on sheer anticipation, I spent the entire night of March 22^nd walking around while listening to the entire Smashing Pumpkins catalog on shuffle.   Afterward, I proceeded to watch several hours of DVD concert footage.

If I could only convince myself on a regular basis that I was going to see one of my favorite bands the next day, I would always be in a splendid mood. Maybe that’s the key to life – just willfully enter a state of perpetual delusion and stay there forever. Sounds good to me.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t merely pretending that there was a show the following night.  There was a show, and it was my favorite band. I had not attended a Pumpkins show for sixteen years. Rumors were flying around that Billy Corgan had taken to playing classic songs again.

I couldn’t have been more excited. Somehow, I managed to sleep.

The next day, I drove into Seattle at a furious rate of speed. I met up with my friend and concert companion for a pre-show dinner and beer. We raced around the grey city together; the world whizzed by speckled with a hazy, dreamy sheen. The air was feather-light and pleasant against my skin, the pavement swirled in lollipop patterns beneath my skipping feet. It was the kind of moment people yearn for – the natural high of exuberant joy.

After dinner, we rushed off to The Paramount Theatre. The Paramount is gorgeous – it was the perfect setting for this show; ornate furnishings, chandeliers, and dim lighting. My friend and I took turns smiling at each other with idiotic pleasure.

Finally, we entered the auditorium and took our seats. Murky red lights glowed on the carpeted walls. Hushed voices whispered all around us, rising and falling in crescendos of excited anticipation. The lights dimmed, and Billy Corgan’s profile stalked across the shadowy stage.  He picked up his acoustic guitar and stood in the dark.

I stiffened to attention immediately.  I sat up straight on the edge of my seat, erect as a steel rod.

“Is that him!?” she whispered in my ear.

“F— yes, that’s him!” I whispered back impatiently, reeling with barely contained joy.

It was unmistakably Billy; his figure loomed over 6 feet tall, wearing his trademark black suit, sporting his notorious bald head. That was him. His long arm reached for his guitar. The house lights came up. He stood before us in a single spotlight.

The auditorium hushed.

He began playing “Tonight, Tonight” on acoustic guitar. I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. A pleasant shock overcame my senses; the moment was completely surreal. His voice carried through the air in front of me, emerging in real time and happening in front of my face.

They played songs that I never thought I would hear live. The whole middle section of the show was dedicated to the Siamese Dream era.  They played a suite of four or five songs from Siamese Dream, including one of my favorites, “Soma”, reworked for piano instead of guitar.

I had to resist a very strong urge to run up to the front of the auditorium and stand under Billy, right in front of the stage. I wanted to run up and stand directly below him.

I had to resist this urge several times.

I have never experienced such a visceral pull before. I was being physically pulled by a force beyond my control. I maintained extreme willpower to resist that urge. Respect for both the band and the audience allowed me to hold onto my sense and keep my wits about me.

That experience recalls a memory from when I worked in a guitar store 11 years ago.  I was the only female working at the store among several young men, all talented musicians.  My co-workers and I would occasionally watch music performances on video when business was slow. One day, we watched footage of The Beatles performing in 1964. Young women threw themselves down and rolled on the floor. They screamed at the top of their lungs, flailed their arms, cried, and fainted.

The guys couldn’t believe it. They stared, awestruck and envious. “God!” one of the guys declared, “Those girls!  Damn, girls were crazy back then!”  I smiled slyly – the reaction of the boys was as amusing to me as the footage of girls in the throes of Beatlemania.

Years later, I now understand the tidal force that possessed those poor girls.

My fellow concert-goers were an experience as well; they were clearly hardcore fans. Everyone stood up after all the popular songs.  They yelled, whistled, and begged for more. The men shouted, “BILLLLLLLY!” in long, drawn out howls.  I surveyed the crowd in ecstasy.  It was thrilling to be immersed in a symphony of devotion that mirrors my own.  I looked around frantically, trying to drink everyone into my eyes and senses. Many were around my age, not surprisingly.  Some were a little younger.  My friend who attended is 10 years younger than I, but she claims she listened to The Pumpkins in high school.  They are the new Pink Floyd.  They span decades.

Billy’s star was shining as bright as ever that night.  It was all there – flawless guitar solos, high clear singing, fascinating interplay with the other instrumentalists.  My favorite part of the show was the look in his eyes during moments where he scanned the audience as we screamed and went crazy after songs.  He looked like a little boy on Christmas morning.

As he scanned the crowd, his eyes lit up with love and appreciation.  He smiled. The look in his eyes was genuine and unmistakable. His eyes shone with affection. Corgan has never been a guy to hide genuine emotions. So much of what he is (and what fans are) is The Child.  That brief flash of his eyes was everything.  He has a reputation for being the most arrogant and incorrigible asshat in the music world.  Fans know a whole other side of the man –  we laugh at the interviews, push them aside in amusement, and listen to the music.

As a bonus, Jimmy Chamberlin came out and drummed for a few songs.  The crowd went apeshit when Jimmy emerged on the stage.  A few nights later, original member James Iha also joined the band for a few songs in another town. I am horribly envious of the people who attended those shows.   Those fans were damn lucky.

After the show, my friend declared this was the best show she’s ever seen at The Paramount. In 2015 she saw her favorite band, Modest Mouse, at the Paramount. She said that something was off with Mouse, that the sound wasn’t quite right.

I smiled broadly. “Well, of course, my dear,” I said in a tone of obvious superiority, “This is The Pumpkins, you see”.

I feel lucky that my hero is still alive.  Above everything else, this is proof that the greatest talents of a generation do not have to die young. Great talents may release less exciting albums as they age, but you can still see them live.

I wanted it to last forever.  Even now I wish I could jump back into the moment. But, like any good trip, you must come back sometime.  Then you’re just left with the memory.

And what a sweet memory at that.

***

Originally published in 2016.

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