Up On The Upside

I was a little late to the party, but 2010 is off to a good start.

Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell confirmed the the band is reuniting via Twitter at the stroke of midnight January 1st, writing, “The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!” and linking to a new site, Soundgarden World. As of now, the site only offers fans a place to provide their contact information for updates on the reunion. Between that and Faith No More doing a reunion US tour, both me and 1997 me are stoked!

Cornell and other members of Soundgarden spent most of 2009 hinting that the long-awaited reformation was on the way. In March, all of the band but Cornell rocked together onstage during a Seattle stop on Tom Morello’s Justice Tour. Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron were joined by Tad’s Tad Doyle for a run-through of “Nothing to Say,” “Spoonman” and “Hunted Down.” The following month, Cornell told a reporter, “If I was there, I probably would’ve gotten up onstage.” As for reunion prospects, he added, “You never know.”

In July, Cornell revealed that the band was talking about putting together a release of Soundgarden B sides and a box set of unreleased songs. “We all feel it’s time to do that, and we have a lot of fans out there, and we have a lot of new fans discovering our music, and I think the catalog and the legacy of the band has been ignored by the record label and previous management, so we decided to get together, and start working towards putting something like that out,” he said.

And in October, Cornell was clearly in the Seattle-legends-of-the-’90s spirit when he participated in a Temple of the Dog reunion at Pearl Jam’s Los Angeles gig. He joined the band for a rendition of “Hunger Strike,” and apparently Thayil and Shepherd were in the house to check out Cornell and Cameron, who has been Pearl Jam's permanent drummer since 1998. As of now, it’s unclear how Cameron’s duties in Pearl Jam will be affected by the Soundgarden news, but that group recently announced its first North American date of 2010 as part of the second weekend of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (April 29-May 2), and will also play 10 European shows from June 22 in Dublin through July 10 in Oeiras, Portugal. Don't you bastards schedule your LA show while I'm at the Canadian GP, either!

As I've posted in the past, Chris Cornell has never been able to come anywhere near his awesomeness after Soundgarden, so this is redemption, big time. And besides being happy at the news, I'll jump at any reason to link to this past post.