Seattle is known for a lot of things…rain, coffee, evergreens, rain, and, of course, grunge. The Seattle grunge scene (also known as The Seattle Sound) includes famous bands such as Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains and was responsible for 100% of flannel sold between 1984 and 1998.
Today, we are here to talk to you about Temple of the Dog, a band that is celebrating their 25th anniversary and just wrapped up two shows at the Paramount Theater.
Now, we’re going to be honest with you here…the grunge scene is a complicated mess of musicians working together and collaborating for years, but Temple of the Dog is an important one to know. Let’s see if we can break it down for you:
Mother Love Bone was made up of Andrew Wood (lead singer), Jeff Ament, Bruce Fairweather and Stone Gossard. Sadly, Andrew Wood died right before the release of their first album.
With the end of Mother Love Bone, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard would go on to create Pearl Jam with Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready.
Chris Cornell, who is the lead singer of Soundgarden, was Andrew Wood’s roommate.
In the months following Andrew Wood’s death, Chris Cornell approached Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament and asked them if they would like to collaborate on an album to pay tribute to Andrew Wood. Mike Mcready and Matt Cameron joined them and, thus, Temple of the Dog was formed. Here is a helpful graphic:
This Soundgarden/Pearl Jam super group only had 1 album with the most well-known song being Hunger Strike (you know, the one where you don’t mind stealing bread from the mouth of decadence. I’m going huuuuuuuuuuuuungry). Not to confuse you more, but Hungry Strike featured vocals by Eddie Vedder who sat in on this singular Temple of the Dog song (Chris Cornell covered all other lead vocals).
The band is celebrating 25 years since the album was first released and doing a (short) tour that sold out in mere seconds online (including 2 shows in Seattle). Since the band members were already working on other successful projects, the band has never actually toured making these shows even more of a hot ticket. We still aren’t exactly sure why the music Gods blessed us with tickets, but we aren’t going to argue.
The band played every single song from their album and included covers from Mad Season, Mother Love Bone, Bowie, Black Sabbath, and Jimi Hendrix. There was some harmonica playing, some guitar slamming, and some swinging around of the microphone stand. The biggest highlight for us was when the entire crowd sang Hunger Strike in lieu of Eddie Vedder. It felt like the entire theater knew the words and sang along. Amazing. It was an incredible night and lets hope it's not another 25 years before they play again!
