Thursday, March 13, 2014

Into My Hypercube



One of the better shows of my lifetime was nearly 24 years ago to the date - dragged down to the ol' defunct City Gardens in Trenton, NJ by a punk rock friend to see some depressing sludge band of whom he'd just grabbed their major label debut CD. That band was Soundgarden, opening for some weird Canadian prog rock (sound familiar?) four-piece called Voivod. Oh, by the way, the middle band on the bill was some unknown San Francisco alternative outfit called Faith No More. Needless to say, I stood with 6 other people to watch the two openers and was absolutely awestruck. I was also so drunk that by the time Voivod came on we were already out the door and heading home up Rt. 202. Post-show I actually felt bad I had missed the headliner, especially with such incredible opening acts (Soundgarden was especially awesome - Louder Than Love is just an epic album, hands down, and Chris Cornell was on fucking point that night), they had to be the absolute shit, right? I ran out the next day to grab the first Voivod album I could find (it happened to be Nothingface) and was instantly turned off by an overambitious quasi-concept album performed by musicians more interested in technicality than listenability. And gee, who went down in the annals of rock history over the next 5 years? Guess what, it wasn't Voivod. I foolishly pulled this one out of the dusty CD collection a few weeks ago with fleeting hopes that a more mature ear would hear something my drug-addled brain missed so long ago. Nope, it is still is as agonizing to listen to as it was 24 years ago. And I fucking hate Rush too.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am not much of a FNM or Soundgargen fan these days, but anybody that attended any one of those concerts from that tour with VOI VOD, seen one of the best that year by anybody.
hard for me to remember anything else that came close to being as much fun, besides the Day of Death fest in Buffalo,NY later that year.