Tuesday, March 26, 2024

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 422 Soundgarden - Louder Than Love

 


When it comes to Soungarden, and I have the greatest respect for that band, I'm strictly a Superunknown man. With some bands, one album is enough,I bought it when it came out in 1992.On CD. I still think about it as my first CD.  I was in Dortmund, Germany and was making some of the best and most enduring friendships of my lifetime. Just thinking about them transports me back to a time and place and the company of people I loved and still love.

I started going round to a friend's on Friday afternoons to visit one of these people, a guy named Matt and listen to records, drink bottles of Veltins, smoke cigarettes and slightly stronger stuff and talk nonsense. 

It was the height of Grunge and Matt was sold on the whole thing. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Plaid shirts. He grew his hair and tied it in a thick pony tail. He looked like a Home Counties Tonto. He used to play me Rusty Cage from Louder Than Love  and it was so tooth rattlingly shrill and full on that I'd ask him to take it off before it got to the end.

We actually saw the band play a year or so later. At a club in Dortmund called ... yes Soundgarden. They were fantastic. I miss those days but not enough to listen to Louder Than Love today to hear if I missed anything. Matt died about seven years again in painful circumstances in Leiden, Holland. His death still upsets me if I focus on it too much so I prefer not to . Some friends are irreplaceable.




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