So I’m sitting here listening to some classic Soundgarden, and it sure does take me back. It may seem a tad silly to get so nostalgic when you haven’t even made it through another decade, but albums like Superunknown and the unjustly overlooked Down on the Upside came at a major turning point in my life. Grunge… alternative… loud obnoxious shit… whatever you want to call it, this music was the real thing when my life changed in a rather profound and musical way.
Specifically these sounds take me back to November 16, 1996. A Saturday night when a college buddy of mine and I found ourselves debating about a concert across the river in New York City that night. Of course we didn’t have tickets for Soundgarden. We were both rather inexperienced concert-goers at the time. But we were emboldened by our recent trek to the ultimate show at the time: Pearl Jam. Hell, if we were able to make it to such a huge event as that one, why not give this one a try?
And so we headed for the PATH trains and walked all the way up to Roseland (about 20 some odd blocks) hoping that the scalpers wouldn’t kill us. When the first guy asked for over 100 bucks each, our hopes were almost shot. But we pressed on and watched the prices continue to drop until someone let us know that 20 dollar tickets were still available at the box office.
Holy crap! Was it really this easy? Here we were going to college just a 20 minute train ride from The City, and we could just hope over and gets tickets for a band we loved… I think I was hung up on the days of my sisters camping out all night for Peter Gabriel and didn’t realize just how many concerts went on regularly for us to immerse ourselves in the live experience without being forced to sleep on concrete.
But that was it. We were in. We rocked ourselves silly and moshed like there was no tomorrow. We screamed and shouted and even tried to sing along with “Black Hole Sun”. I helped some girl catch a guitar string and high-fived total strangers. Like I said, it may seem a tad silly, just a smidge over dramatic, but that night changed how we looked at music. We were no longer on the outside looking in. We were banging down the doors and joining in all of the fun.
From then on, we were… cool. Well, at least I used to be cool…