Post by mdorman

The other thing that's kept me busier than usual was my resolve to listen to more music—at least one album a day, preferably two. I haven't been as consistent as I'd like, but it has gotten me into the habit of listening more. I'll take what I can get.

It wasn't directly part of that effort, but I had occasion to listen to some tracks on Soundgarden's Superunknown. One of them was Head Down—probably my favorite track on an album that's pretty loaded. I haven't listened to it in a while, though, and I'd forgotten just how heavy it is, and that when you're playing it, during the chorus—I guess you have to call it the chorus, but the structure of the song is weird and chaotic—there's a wonderful circularity to the chord progression that I find almost hypnotic. Best listened to at volumes that will alienate your partner, your cats, and if you do it right, your neighbors:

I don't think Head Down was ever even in the same zip code as their most popular stuff; it's one of the two weird tracks from the album written by their bassist, Ben Shepherd. The other one, Half is even stranger. Still, they seem to have played it live reasonably often. Here's a performance from 1995—the sound quality is good but not great, but being from the tour for the album, everyone's firing on all cylinders:

They would release Down on the Upside the next year, then break up for a dozen years, before reforming around 2010. This other live version is from 2011. Chris' voice isn't up to the high notes on this one—and of course, watching it knowing what's coming is like a paper cut on my heart—but the ending, when Ben leans over Matt on the drums and starts injecting a little chaos, is worth the watch:

While looking for those, though, I stumbled across this cover that is simultaneously so !!EXTREME!! that it's kinda funny (and that gets one note in the weird intro guitar figure flat-out wrong, and I can't not hear it), but it is also somehow perfect: