Another Reunion: Temple of the Dog
Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 12:10AM Temple of the Dog, the early 90s supergroup featuring members of Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone and Eddie Vedder before he was in Pearl Jam, will reunite this fall. The tour will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band's self-titled debut (and only) album. The reunion tour will only be five stops and Vedder isn't involved. Here are the dates:
November 4 - Philadelphia, PA @ Tower Theater
November 7 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
November 11 - San Francisco, CA @Bill Graham Civic Center
November 14 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
November 20 - Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theater
Temple of the Dog will always be special to me because the song "Hunger Strike" is basically amazing. The band came out in that sweet period before grunge killed all the good music and Temple of the Dog was just regarded as a rock band. I remember racing to the TV with my childhood best friend Samantha every time the video came on. We loved the song and thought Eddie Vedder was too cute!
Reader Comments (9)
TofD, on the other hand, was a tribute that was better than that to which it tipped its hat. IT succeeds on its frenetic energy. It also proves that Vedder, for all the tributes and adulation, pales next to Cornell. More talented, better at being a tortured artist, and yet a band that fell far behind Pearl Jam in terms of sales and stature.
One last comment: Grunge didn't kill Glam or metal. It was self inflicted. It was also a cultural shift. But, when you water down a product in an era where the product still has purchase, you risk incurring the wrath of those who want something better, or different, or more popular. Too many people mistake the result for the cause.
And, damn,. it was the same case with a lot of bands. Change your spots? Sure. But sell them out for a tone? Takes a while to get those fans back even as you went after people who would never be there for the short, or the long, term.
Him, as always, very interesting comments. It's easy to say that grunge killed glam, and it's also easy to say that glam killed glam. My take is that, any successful music genre that catches on is then killed by record labels who see dollar signs in their eyes. they sign every band that remotely looks and/or sounds like that genre, then they push those bands to tweak their sound toward a more mainstream version of that genre.
for a few years, it works. That genre becomes mainstream, record lables make a fortune, but the people who loved that genre before it became mainstream abandon it because it no longer resembles what it started out as. then, the buying public who simply latches on to whatever the masses say is cool at the time, moves on to whatever the next new popular thing is.
this goes back to the beginning of recorded music. the hard jazz of the 1920s turned into the predictable watered-down genre known as swing. The early rock 'n' roll of the mid 50s was virtually unrecognizeable by 1960. The psychedelic sound of the late 60s was so exploited by record labels that its eventual mid-70s bastard child was known as corporate rock.
This is what happened to glam, and also what happened to grunge. glam just had a much longer shelflife than grunge did. Interestingly enough, the early musicians who began playing the music that came to be known as grunge, actually had the best of intentions. The documentary film, "Sound City", features interviews with several of these artists. They were fed up with the over-produced, manufactured sound of late-80s glam, and wanted to get back to playing a more raw, honest form of rock. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be depending on your opinion of the genre, grunge exploded fairly quickly, and record labels jumped all over it. they exploited it, and over-exposed it so quickly, that by about 1997, the genre was unrecognizeable, and the masses were already sick of it.
Love this site. And appreciate your post.
Personally, I place most of the blame on the record companies and their greed for killing just about everything good. I know this is not exactly the place for this, but it's pertinent to the overall discussion, although tangentially. Right now the record companies and mainstream country radio are destroying country music. Much like they did glam in the late 80s.
They are sinking tons of money into malleable artists looking for the next hit while artists like Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton are killing them with record sales.
But if you really want to look at another culprit of what killed glam, look no further than Guns n' Roses. Glam, hair metal, whatever you want to call it, had reached saturation point when Appetite came out. It was not slick and overproduced. It was raw and real. That was the turning of the tide, not Nirvana (overrated hacks that they were and why does anyone care what Dave Grohl does?).
Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were straight up rock. Got lumped into grunge because of locale.
I love this site. Allyson does a great job. But instead of bringing back glam, let's look for the current glam. And yeah, it's out there. The Struts are glam in the truest sense of glam. Dorothy would satisfy anyone who likes 80s hard rock. The Temperance Movement has glam tendencies, but more of a Southern Rock/90s rock (Soundgarden, Alice In Chains) amalgam.
Wait, what? Did I derail this thread? Sorry.
Cheap Seats brings up a good point, it was actually Gn'R that ultimately made Hair Metal let it's hair down.
And, as HIM and Bob point out, also the perfect storm of the record labels molding malleable bands who were driven to and by excess, case in point, Warrant, "Cherry Pie", that ultimately drove our beloved genre to it's untimely demise.
The output of mainstays Crüe, RATT, Poison, Cinderella, etc. seemed uninspired compared to their creative peaks.
Even Gn'R lost it's edge and sold out with the overblown pomp of "November Rain", which I'm sorry to say, was total crap compared to anything the band put out before it was released.
Metalboy!, excellent post. I will put to the side the fact that "moobs" seems like poor form from a man who suckles--or is it suckled, as there has been some elasticity in the praise and worship section in recent months from this choirboy . . . I mean, fanboy--at the teat of the ALMIGHTY CRUE. In recent months, he has been far more reflective. I have no idea why. I won't say it was a change in position. That would be the start of a flare. And we don't need those these days.
I wonder, though, if we could widen our diagnosis a bit further (and this includes the astute comments by TheCheapSeats). As labels jumped on every trend in metal that seemed to be pliable, they slowly and steadily wore out the denim jean pool. In a bid to find "the next . . .," they helped to seal the fate of metal (and glam, in particular) for years to come. That is a given. But there were other bands that also lacerated the frayed edges of what was already starting wear out.
The Cult, for instance. They (had already) said goodbye to their hippie-dippy past (there's the reference you wanted, Bkallday) and planted a flag in the middle of metal (selling out or cashing out or simply rocking out). I say the last of the three. There were other bands that were doing it better, in other genres. Garth Brooks, for another example, perfected the spectacle of KISS . . . in boots.
And rap was a full fledged assault on the nerves of the adults and the aged that had already become a genre big enough--and dangerous enough--to replace the PMRC worries of another batch of Moms and Pops.
I think it is always healthy to turn a semi-critical eye towards the things you cherish. This set of posts does the trick. Temple of the Dog were a celebration of things that were, and weren't, metal (ask me more if you want). They were also a repudiation of the things that were happening on The Strip. Much of it was as affected as the metal music of the time. But some of it stuck and lives on.
I suspect that most genres and sub-genres suffer the same cyclical--and cynical--machinations which lead to their demise. Thankfully, the ones with staying power regroup and experiences a rebirth.