Put Down Your Wii and Tell Us What Makes A Real Life "GUITAR HERO?″

According to Chris Cornell's promotion/publicity agency (who is a combo of Sacks & Co. and Red Light Management, this from Sacks & Co. who I have to say really are awesome in keeping us at the Brass Hat Group in the loop and whom without, we would not be providing you nearly the level or attention to detail that we love and hope that you all do as well):

Wanted to send along a Chris Cornell update.

Last night Chris Cornell played a sold out show at Seattle’s Showbox. Good friend and former Soundgarden bandmate Kim Thayil was at the show with Chris
(see Chris’s tweet: http://twitter.com/chriscornell) as was Queensryche’s Chris DeGarmo.

See photo Kim, Chris, and Chris.

(click on this image to download)

Chris’s Scream Tour Live
Tour
4/28 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, BC
4/29 Crystal Ballroom Portland, OR
5/1 Grand Ballroom San Francisco, CA
5/2 House of Blues Anaheim, CA
5/3 Wiltern Theatre Los Angeles, CA

Sites
www.chriscornell.com
www.myspace.com/chriscornell

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I also wanted to share with you all what was so freely given to me. This is a clean download and directly from the record label. This is a live version of "Scream" acoustic off of the Scream album (2009) - available for purchase at that link.

(cover art - "cherie" 9x12 mixed media 2004 sanithna phansavanh - available at http://tinyurl.com/c69ax2 thanks to The Brass Hat Group)

In addition, I wanted to give a little shout-out to Kim Thayil who is for all practical purposes a rock guitarist G-d for those of you not familiar with his work. Rolling Stone Magazine listed him in the top 100 best guitarists of all-time. And much of that 'Seattle - Grunge Sound' you so often hear referenced comes from the styling of people like Kim and few others. Kim was not just an awesome Soundgarden guitarist, but her wrote the co-wrote lyrics, music and plenty for many tons of their songs:

• "Hunted Down" (Screaming Life) ... music
• "Nothing to Say" (Screaming Life) ... music
• "Tears To Forget" (Screaming Life) ... music (co-written)
• "Little Joe" (Screaming Life) ... music
• "Hand of God" (Screaming Life) ... music
• "Kingdom of Come" (Fopp) ... credited to Soundgarden
• "Flower" (Ultramega OK) ... music
• "All Your Lies" (Ultramega OK) ... music (co-written)
• "Circle of Power" (Ultramega OK) ... music
• "Incessant Mace" (Ultramega OK) ... music
• "Hands All Over" (Louder Than Love) ... music
• "Get on the Snake" (Louder Than Love) ... music
• "Heretic" (Loudest Love) ... music
• "Jesus Christ Pose" (Badmotorfinger) ... music (co-written)
• "Room a Thousand Years Wide" (Badmotorfinger) ... lyrics
• "New Damage" (Badmotorfinger) ... music (co-written)
• "My Wave" (Superunknown) ... music (co-written)
• "Superunknown" (Superunknown) ... music (co-written)
• "Limo Wreck" (Superunknown) ... music (co-written)
• "Kickstand" (Superunknown) ... music
• "Never the Machine Forever" (Down on the Upside) ... music and lyrics

According to much of what you find about the etymology of Soundgarden is as follows:

Although he was born in Seattle in 1960, Thayil grew up in the Chicago. Kim Thayil met Hiro Yamamoto at Rich East High School in Park Forest in Chicago. After graduation, they moved to Washington together where they went to the University of Washington (located in Seattle), where he studied philosopy. Hiro and Kim met Chris Cornell while at school at UW and in 1984 the three formed Soundgarden in 1984.

Kim is in my opinon, without the famous quotes or lists or awards, one of the best rock guitarists of all-time and a big reason I was such a huge fan of Soundgarden. His guitar and Chris's vocals and I was sold.

Here is a photo of Kim during his Soundgarden days:

(Truth be known they were all big Beatles fans, much like fellow Seattle grunger Kurt Cobain -see MSN.com Bio for this factoid)

There is Thurston Moore (see his MySpace page linked here for details of the now) of Sonic Youth:

















There is Stone Gossard (see his MySpace page for details of the now) of Pearl Jam:

Obviously there was also Kurt Cobain (see this link for his Official posthumous page) of Nirvana. They still more than anyone get the credit and the hate for the grunge sound, scene and aftermath of all that arose from those years. Kurt also, who for a variety of reasons gets most of the press regarding the guitar sound, especially by the main stream media masses. While I know this might appear blasphemous, Kurt was not nearly the technical guitarist the others listed above are. Though I have to admit I was/am as big a Nirvana fan as the rest of them - them being the people who either totally became grunge or hated it with such a passion that George Bush - the first one- made mention of it in one of his speeches.

Starting in 1993, about 2 months before 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' hit the market and Nirvana played the good ole Masquerade with its 'Heaven' - 'Hell' and 'Purgatory' levels (live music on the top floor, dance club with all kinds of debauchery on the bottom floor and a bar and billard's room as well, a real eye opener for a 16 year old suburban white kid who's idea of wild and crazy at the time consisted of shaving my head for a sign of sol
idarity for the High School soccer team.

Post Script: Had it not been for my friend Gray who used to give me rides home from school from good old Dunwoody High School and had a tape cassette player, I would never had been exposed to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Dinosaur (before they became Jr. and still had Lou Barlow in the band), Soundgarden, Shonen Knife, Sebadoh (after Dinosaur broke and became Dinosaur Jr.), Eric's Trip, Superchunk, a lot of stuff from the Raleigh music scene and lot of other bands that never seemed to catch on like Nihilist, still the angriest band I have ever seen live. as well as getting to see the the film "1991: The Year Punk Rock Broke", which opened my eyes into what I believed being real, and a true grunge slacker was about (in keeping with that it seems Amazon only sells this movie in VHS lol) .