So anyway, onto some music stuff. I've been a huge Soundgarden fan for as long as I can remember; they were extremely influential on me during my "formative years", both as a musician and simply as a person, and they'd definitely be in the running for my favorite band of all time if I were forced to choose one. So of course when they recently released a retrospective collection entitled Telephantasm, I had to go out and buy the collector's edition mondo-box set. Some people might call me stupid for dropping 80 bucks for a collection of music that I already owned most of, but I really think that all the extra goodies that they crammed into this thing made it worth it.
The special edition comes with 2 CDs of music including a number of live tracks and unreleased alternate takes from throughout Soundgarden's career. The inclusion of the "lost" Badmotorfinger track Black Rain is an especially nice touch, and a 7-inch single of the same tune with a recent live version of Beyond the Wheel on the b-side. The same music on the CDs appears on 3 LPs, which are on colored vinyl, which is totally baller.
A DVD of all their music videos is somewhat hit or miss, honestly; on the upside, some of their videos are really cool (Black Hole Sun, Rusty Cage), and there are also some lesser known videos that are rarely seen for one reason or another (Jesus Christ Pose, The Day I Tried to Live, both of which are really fantastic). On the other hand, however, there are also a number of rather boring and/or generic performance videos that I could take or leave (Pretty Noose and Outshined especially come to mind here). And Blow Up the Outside World always seemed like a cool idea for a video to me, but in practice it just doesn't work, and the computer animated explosions look extremely dated and cheesy. Some of the early videos being lame is understandable since they were made when the medium of music videos were just in their infancy, but the inconsistency continues well into the 90's when masterpieces like The Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight, Tonight and Nine Inch Nails' Closer were really pushing the envelope and setting the bar high for what a music video really could be, and consequently some of Soundgarden's videos from this area look comparatively lame.
Also included is a huge amount of art, photos, liner notes, and essays about the band, including one by lead guitarist Kim Thayil. There is also a piece by Matt Pinfield, who I had forgotten was alive. I guess it's trying to be pretty heartfelt, but it feels to me like it comes up a big short due to mediocre writing. Additionally, it's hard for me to take seriously anyone who has appeared on a bonus track on a Limp Bizkit album.
I think the most important thing to discuss, however, is the cover art:
This is one of the most perplexing parts of the collection for me, because my intuition tells me that this picture of a wolf should be really really lame, but it somehow it seems pretty sweet to me. Seeing art of wolves just always reminds of me that kid in high school who is pretty socially awkward, always reading Dragonlance and carrying around Magic cards, and who wears lots of sweet wolf shirts when he's not wearing a sweet dragon shirt.
Anyway, the art in question is actually part of a larger panoramic piece, depicting some sort of weird post-apocalyptic world that is seemingly inhabited only by (sweet) wolves and is constantly riddled with green electrical storms. High res images here and here because they're too big to fit here.
All in all, I'm glad that Soundgarden is finally getting the retrospective collection they deserve, and I really truly hope that the reworked Black Rain is an indication that these guys are going to be making new music soon.
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