I staggered from my bed late this morning, as is my habit on weekends, after the Rock Chick yelled my name with the cursory “time to get up…” The Rock Chick runs a very military style weekend with plans and agendas… I have a more leisurely approach to my Saturdays. I can’t help it if I have a sleep disorder. At least waking to the Rock Chick’s shrill cry is better than waking to my father’s miserable singing voice, as he belted out “It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the moooooorning…” How very Ethyl Merman of him…Who says I don’t come from a musical family?

My Saturday morning ritual is a simple one: breakfast with strong black coffee and some hard rock. This weekend’s selection, as it’s been all week is Rage Against the Machine. I just felt like a little angry metal today… I’m feeling subversive. Blame it on the election. And as has quickly become part of my Saturday morning ritual, I checked “the Twitter” to see what was going on. I saw that the Temple of the Dog reunion tour had begun last night in Philadelphia. They played quite an impressive set list. Not only their own tunes, but some solo Chris Cornell, Mother Love Bone tunes (obviously) and an impressive array of cover songs including Zeppelin (“Achilles Last Stand,” are you fucking kidding me, how awesome!), Bowie and Free (who I’ve just recently gotten into). They even did a Syd Barret cover. To end the show they did “War Pigs” by Sabbath. Jesus, I hope they put out a live record after this tour.

For those of you not familiar with Temple of the Dog, it was a one-off “supergroup” of sorts. Although it would have been hard to call them a “supergroup” in 1991 when they formed as not many people outside of the Pacific Northwest had heard of Soundgarden or Pearl Jam whose members formed Temple. From Soundgarden, Chris Cornell did vocals and Matt Cameron (who later joined Pearl Jam after Soundgarden called it quits) mans the drums. From Pearl Jam you had both guitarists, Mike McCready on lead and Stone Gossard on rhythm. Also from Pearl Jam on bass guitar was Jeff Ament. An impressive line up in it’s own right, but they were also joined on a couple of songs by the then unknown Eddie Vedder, most notably on “Hunger Strike” where his vocal propels the song into the stratosphere. It’s one of his most impassioned vocals.

Temple of the Dog was formed as a one-off tribute to singer Andrew Wood. In the late 80s/early 90’s Andrew was the lead singer and frontman for Mother Love Bone. MLB was a great band with some great songs, “Stardog Champion,” “Crown of Thorns” and “Stargazer” just to name a few… I strongly urge anybody who hasn’t heard Mother Love Bone to seek out their music. As I am forced to write too often in the world of rock and roll, Andrew Young was found in a coma from a heroin overdose and died shortly after that. It was truly a huge loss, the man was meant to be a rock star.

Two of the members of Mother Love Bone, namely the aforementioned Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard decided to form a new band after Wood’s untimely death. They recruited a hotshot lead guitarist Gossard had seen play, Mike McCready and various drummers. It wasn’t until Jack Irons, erstwhile drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers passed them a demo tape of a singer from San Diego named Eddie Vedder, that the band coalesced under the name Mookie Blaylock… they were later to change their name to Pearl Jam, and the rest is history. The thing to remember here is that, without Mother Love Bone, there would have been no Pearl Jam.

Chris Cornell of Soundgarden had his own unique connection to Andrew Wood. The two had shared an apartment. In the Pearl Jam documentary, ‘Twenty’ Cornell talks about how he and Wood would challenge each other to each write a song every day to compare who had the better song that day. It sounds like the two were very close friends.

And so, to honor their friend and former bandmate, the members came together under the banner Temple of the Dog and did an album. This was about a year before PJ’s seismic “Ten” came out so these guys were relatively unknown at the time. I don’t think anybody was prepared for how kick ass this album was. Prior to this Cornell’s work in Soundgarden was more screaming metal than classic rock. The “Temple of the Dog” album sounded more like Mother Love Bone than anything Soundgarden had done which, when you think about it, is really the tribute to Andrew Wood here. The fact these guys could write and perform like he would really stands out.

The album “Temple of the Dog” had two great singles, that most people have probably heard: “Say Hello 2 Heaven” (a beautiful elegy to Wood) and “Hunger Strike” featuring the incredible Eddie Vedder vocal. It’s a shame Vedder isn’t joining these guys on this tour, but he’s busy drinking with Bill Murray in Chicago celebrating the Cubs historic win… and who doesn’t wish they were with him but I digress. The album is much more than those two singles, it’s an amazingly strong album – these guys had a great chemistry and it shows how close-knit the community was in the Seattle music scene. “Reach Down” is an epic 11 minute jam, turn that one up loud. “Pushin’ Forward Back” is a great rocker. On the quiet side is “Call Me A Dog” and “All Night Thing” both great songs. “Four Walled World” is another great tune with a fabulous vocal from Cornell. You can tell these guys poured their heart into this record, but no one more so than Cornell.

They’ve recently rereleased a deluxe edition of the LP with a few unreleased demo’s and outtakes. I didn’t see or hear anything that made me want to re-buy the record, but if you have never heard or purchased “Temple of the Dog” I highly recommend you pick it up post haste and turn it up loud. While you’re at the record store, pick up Mother Love Bone’s album as well. Most of their material has been repacked and rereleased so it’s not hard to find. These are both great 90s bands and should be heard by any true music fan. With the setlists I’m seeing, I am really hopeful to hear something live come out of this tour… let’s hope they’re dragging a tape machine around with them.

It appears that TOTD is only playing a few shows and mostly on the coasts but if you’re near a place where they’re playing, do what you have to, scalp if necessary but get to one of these shows. It’s time like these when great bands are only touring the coasts that I feel like I live in “concert flyover territory” and I regret living in theMidwest… oh well, someday maybe I’ll get up the gumption to move but then I’d miss going to Chiefs games. Life is such a give and take…

Cheers!