Temple Of The Dog

Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,

I am just getting back from the Temple Of The Dog concert at The Forum. I wasn't originally planning to go because it sold out really fast when tickets first went on sale, and then scalpers of course wanted ridiculous prices for their tickets, which I won't pay for any band. But anyway, Grimsley suggested I check Stubhub yesterday. I told him I'd checked it for a friend a couple weeks ago (my friend Jon from the KX board), and the tix were still up around the $70 range for nosebleed seats. But lo and behold, I did check, and all of a sudden, a day before the concert, there were a ton of seats available for 14 to 17 bucks! Unreal - much cheaper than even face value. I figured the scalpers must have bought too many and couldn't sell them, and now had to dump them at bargain basement prices to avoid eating them. So I scored two seats for me & Grim for 24 bucks apiece (17 + a $7 Stubhub fee). Beyond cheap, SB!  :)

So now suddenly I was gonna go to Temple Of The Dog. They are made up of 2/5ths Soundgarden (Chris Cornell & Matt Cameron) and 3/5ths Pearl Jam (Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament & Mike McReady), and they made the album before Pearl Jam was even formed, and before Soundgarden was famous. It came out of the demise of a band called Mother Love Bone, whose founder Andrew Wood died. The Pearl Jam guys had been in that band (before PJ) and........anyway, it's a long story. But the Temple album was really the first Grunge album, and it came out in 1991, just before the PJ debut album. The song "Hunger Strike" became a radio hit, and thus the album caught on too. And the resulting bands, Pearl Jam and Soungarden, became huge. So everybody kind of forgot about Temple Of The Dog, because they only put out the one album.

But Holy Smokes did they ever crush it tonight. All those guys have become world class players in the meantime, and then you have Cornell on vocals, one of the greatest singers in rock history. Man what a powerhouse band. The guys in Pearl Jam, McCready especially, get to play much heavier in Temple - I mean a TON heavier - and they get to absolutely shred as well. They played 2 hours 15 minutes, and because Temple only had one album, besides playing the whole thing, they filled out the set with a few Mother Love Bone songs and some killer covers of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Free, Jimi Hendrix and Harry Nilsson of all people.

It was a killer show. Getting down there was another story.

It absolutely sucked. The Forum is only about 35 miles from Pearl's. But it took us 2 1/2 hours to get from there to the Forum parking lot. "Horrific" doesn't even begin to cover the traffic jam. The city of Inglewood is too cheap to hire traffic officers to direct the flow of traffic, and so cars are backed up at red lights for miles. It was awful. And then on top of that, The Forum charges 25 dollars for parking.

So, to recap : The city of Inglewood cheapness and The Forum parking Sucks Beyond Measure. The Forum as a venue is quite good, with excellent sight lines and sound. And Temple Of The Dog played an awesome show.

But it will take a lot to get me to go to The Forum again, because of the nightmare traffic and parking.

But I'm still glad I went tonight!  //////

I hope your day was good. I only saw one post, a Cheesehead reference by a musician friend of yours. :)

I take it nobody up there is allergic to dairy.  :)

In fact, I am guessing it would be against the law.

There is probably a required Quotient Of Cheese Consumption per person, per annum.

I still say that we in California should be nominated or declared Cheesehead Vice Presidents, or some kind of Honorary Cheeseheads because we are second in cheese and in overall dairy production, as mentioned before.

We make a mean Quesadilla out here, too.

So please consider us for some type of Cheesehead classification. Thanks. :)

In other news, SB, Trump Still Sucks, and his administration is toast before it even gets off the ground.

We've gotta stay on him, because now he's appointing guys like Steve Bannon, a White Supremicist.

But enough of Trump for tonight. He is cooking his own goose, which we knew he would do, and so that will make it easier for us in the long run.

I will see you in the morning. I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)