Uh, dude?

Well, I had quite a weekend. It started out with a bang when I went into a walgreens and passed the pharmacist a note that said I had a bomb and needed a few bottles of Oxycontin or else I’d detonate said bomb. Then I caught a cab to the show, and right before Soundgarden busted into Rusty Cage (one of my all time favorite classic jams!) the pigs showed up and hauled my super wicked high ass to jail. Major anti-stokage bro.

That whole story is a bummer. For those of you who don’t know, the Level 9 elf that plays bass for Coheed and Cambria fell into the dank pits of despair that only watching Soundgarden every night can induce and subsequently went ahead and committed the very deeds outlined in the opening paragraph. I mean, seriously? I fucking HATE Soundgarden. What the fuck are they doing touring? They stink. They are the suckiest bunch of sucks to ever suck and if I was on tour with Soundgarden I’d probably figure out a way to get super high and then physically removed from the tour myself. In the context of having to hear a zillion dildos warbling along to Black Hole Sun every night for a month, threatening to blow a Walgreens back into the stone age if they don’t make with the oxys seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do.

I recently asked (via my favorite social media platform, twitter) if there was a worse band in the history of music than soundgarden, and the answers were many splendored, though the big winner was Audioslave. I don’t think I agree with that assessment though. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Audioslave sucks. I think they’re terrible and have pretty unredeemable songs but I find audioslave to be about ten buhzillion times more palatable than Soundgarden. Here’s why: Audioslave is a complete fucking mess. On paper, they’re the worst idea of all time. It’s the irritating screecher from Soundgarden fronting the hopelessly dated electro-grunge-guitar-wank groove of rage against the machine. Terrible. On paper, Soundgarden is actually a kind of a good idea. They’re a cock rock missing link between Motley Crue and Nirvana. That’s got some serious potential, don’tcha think?

Well, sadly, instead of being raucous and full of swagger, turns out Soundgarden is pretty much the dreariest shit out there, topped with ridiculous howling and featuring the Kriss Angel of rock and roll up there just twisting around like such a punchable douche while the rest of those dudes...ugh. I don’t know. They don’t do shit. The whole thing sucks.

Audioslave fares a little better just because the expectations are SO AMAZINGLY LOW, and they’re so completely unremarkable that it doesn’t really offend beyond the general “who the fuck thought this was a good idea” knee jerk that pretty much everyone but your bald, bemulletted uncle that ‘still parties’ instantly has when confronted with the band’s concept.

Tom Morello plays some fairly interesting shit and generally, Cornell’s shrill bullshit is a toned down to the point where it’s just crappy rather than offensive. At this point, I’d like to restate that I’m not endorsing Audioslave here, merely pointing out that in the choice between douche and turd sandwich, I’ll take the turd sandwich, thank you very much.

But man, the dude from Coheed and Cambria must have thought that holding up a Walgreens was preferable to 1) not being able to take Oxycontin and 2) Telling his buddies that he was really, really interested in getting high. This kind of blew up all over his dick because number one is a crime and because of that everyone knows that he really likes getting high. So, uh, oops. Now you’re not high and you’re in jail. Bad combo.

Now, I’m no big city rockstar and I don’t know all that much about how to get drugs like that, but I gotta imagine that when you’re in a band that has a gold record there’s a slightly more convenient way to score than threatening to blow up the Walgreens. Ask the drum tech or the local promoter or that creep that’s been to every show since Syracuse, right? Fuck, go on stage and ask for pills from the crowd, ask one of the crew dipshits that’s walking around wiping Chris Cornell’s ass every night. Lord knows those dudes have to have heavy narcotics on them to be able to deal with being responsible for setting up and enabling Soundgarden’s painful stink. One would think, at least.

I mean, it’s probably kind of a no-brainer, but here’s the take away: if you’ve got serious issues with drugs, like I’m-gonna-flip-out-if-I-don’t-get-some-drugs issues, but you’re not interested in seeking help, for fucks sake, make sure you’ve got at least one homie nearby who knows what you’re doing, if for no other reason than so when you get that look in your eye and say ‘uh, I’m gonna head down to the drug store and go completely berserk until I get my drugs’ he can talk some sense into you and point you in the direction of the nearest degenerate, help you beat up said degenerate and take HIS drugs. I mean, god. How hard is that?

Sheesh.