Here’s the group’s confounding agenda thus far in "South Park"-underpants-gnomes-"profit" style:
1. Announce reunion on New Year’s Day 2010.
2. Play no large-scale shows for eight months.
3. Tease a nationwide tour, but don’t actually do one.
4. Release compilation and toss in a milquetoast unfinished track.
5. Release live album of material performed 15 years ago.
6. Leave legions of fans incredibly vexed and confused.
7. ???
8. Profit.
Seriously.
These guys have written the guide book for “Most Ridiculous Way to Have a Reunion.”
What’s the point of announcing a reunion and then not really doing anything?
It’s an unwritten rule of the music industry. When you bust open the “reunion” play book, one of two things needs to be in that bad boy either you’re lining up the X’s and O’s for a wide-scale tour so everyone who missed you the first time around gets a chance, or you’re issuing new material.
These are the only acceptable choices.
Announcing your reunion and haphazardly puttering around for 15 months doesn’t cut it.
The Police did it right. A world tour was announced a few months ahead of time. The group’s three members made it clear that it was a last hurrah to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary and that no recording would take place.
Fine.
Those confines make the transaction between fan and band clear.
Soundgarden’s plan, on the other hand, is, as the group’s fourth album is titled, Superunknown (right).
The Seattle grunge quartet seems intent to forge some third path that draws out the process interminably.
They’ve played only a handful of shows since the announcement, including headlining last year’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.
Last fall it dropped Telephantasm, a best-of compilation. It was a trimmed down version of A-Sides, the band’s 1997 hits retrospective, except it included “Black Rain,” a previously unreleased cut written during the sessions for 1991’s Badmotorfinger.
Earlier this week came Live on I-5, named because the tracks are culled from 1996 West Coast performances near the end of the band’s first incarnation.
Information about a possible album of new material is trickling out slowly. The band announced in an e-mail last month that its members “have some cool new songs that (they) are going to record very soon.” Lead singer Chris Cornell named Adam Kasper (Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam) as producer.
But even with the hope of a fresh platter finally, guys I’m completely baffled as to the seemingly directionless game plan.
It’s most infuriating to me because I long hoped for a Soundgarden reunion.
When the rumors of the group headlining the annual Coachella festival in Indio popped up last year, one friend and I were prepared to make the drive out to the desert for the reunion gig.
Now, after making many of its fans wait for so long, the need for this in-progress sixth album to be followed be a victory lap in support of it, is almost necessary.
Would seeing “Outshined” live just once wash away all this animosity for bungled reunion plans? To be frank, I won’t know unless I see it.
But I can say that, after waiting this long and after this much misunderstanding, I want the chance to find out for myself.
Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun"
Soundgarden, "Outshined"
Soundgarden, "Spoonman"