photo by Shantasa Saling
Anaheim was a solo show at which Chris played a mix of old and new - including Soundgarden's Searching With My Good Eye Closed. Sadly the Orange County Register chose to rubbish their own idea of what Scream might sound like, rather than actually reviewing the show.
Searching With My Good Eye Closed - Flutter Girl - When I'm Down - No Such Thing - You Kmow MyName - Ground Zero - Gasoline - Set It Off - CC's acoustic set - Blow Up The Outside World - Watch Out - No Attention - Be Yourself - Scream - Moth - Reach Down - Like Suicide - Wooden Jesus - Black Hole Sun
by #1 Zero
Just came back from your show at the Anaheim HOB and it was awesome. Took my mom and she was so stoked to see you live. She's a rocker chick too. Amazing show, loved Searching and Reach Down.
photo by Shantasa Saling
by thud
Just got home from seeing you at the House of Blues Disneyland. It was by far one of the better concerts I have been too in a long, long time! It would have been perfect if you had played "Until We fall", but it was near perfect. I loved the whole set. I hope you put out a live CD and DVD of this tour. It rocked!!! I was very disappointed to hear you say the new album wouldn't be out until after the first of the year. I was seeing release dates of Nov. 4th and had hoped that was true. It's gonna be a long wait now. Thanks for playing your heart out. It showed.
photo by Shantasa Saling
"...Unfortunately, Chris Cornell is stumbling – a great voice left grasping for relevance without the assistance of band branding. This is Cornell Version 2.3 – the "2" signifying his solo career, begun between stints fronting Soundgarden and Audioslave , the "3" indicating that he's soon to issue his third solo album, the perhaps ill-fated "Scream."
Originally set to drop
Oct. 14, then Nov. 4, the already much-discussed collaboration with R&B/hip-hop
producer Timbaland, chiefly known for his work with Missy Elliott and
Justin Timberlake , currently has no concrete release date. "Sometime
in January" is the most anyone will confirm at this point. And yet here
was Cornell, mere months after impressing as his primal self alongside
Surely hard-core Cornell fans, who helped fill the Mouse House to bursting Tuesday, turned out to hear what all the fuss is about as much as holler along to "Black Hole Sun" and "Blow Up the Outside World," both of which were sung with arguably more gusto and clarity than he has conjured since Soundgarden split up. Wisely, however, Cornell gave people plenty of the past to chew on, as he has more than once recently . Had he devoted any more time to new bits than he did, he might have wound up with a pretty unruly mob on his hands.
It's not that the "Scream" material is unlistenable – it's just meatless and meaningless. Whatever message there is to repetitive grooves like "Watch Out" and "Ground Zero" gets buried in beat-heavy dross that reduces Cornell to little more than a cameo within his own song. This stuff is all hook and no heft – suitable for Rihanna , who excels at futuristic rock-soul hybrids, or Miss E, who maneuvers brilliantly in such frameworks (her galvanizing hits "Get Ur Freak On" and "Pass That Dutch" tempered furious force with clever rhymes).
Serving as mouthpiece to muscular electro twaddle is beneath someone as accomplished as Cornell, though. And yet he has downed his own Kool-Aid: During those bland new tunes Tuesday, it was if he were rehearsing for an "American Idol" showcase – were that contest to indulge a "grunge week" and make him a mentor.
Cornell and Timbaland have openly bragged about "Scream," each claiming it's among the strongest work either has done, with Cornell going on about how it's some sort of headphone masterpiece on the scale of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" or Queen's "A Night at the Opera." Based on this evidence, I find that comparison very hard to swallow. What I hear are club jams bolstered by Cornell's distinctive wailing.
How well the crowd took to it is difficult to gauge – it's hard to discern genuine admiration from polite applause. True Cornell fans, of course – loyalists who can recognize the superb "When I'm Down" (off his underrated 1999 solo debut, "Euphoria Morning") from its opening notes – have learned that it's best to be a booster to this 44-year-old icon of '90s rock. Kurt Cobain, for all his revolutionary genius, took the easy way out; a contemporary like Cornell really has had the rough road to hoe, cursed with having no choice but to carry on, warts and all, through stylistic ups and downs. And unlike Eddie Vedder, he's had to do it without the unwavering support of a first-rate band, one that could challenge and comfort him.
Now, when he apparently hopes to crack the mainstream like never before, he instead seems adrift in a desert far away from it. Good thing he's singing like you wouldn't believe.
The hoarseness of just a few years ago is long gone, his high notes clear as just-struck chimes. To hear him he belt out "Like Suicide" or "Like a Stone" or even his overly dramatic rearrangement of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" is to realize he's still one of the fiercest voices to emerge in the past quarter-century – some would say ever. But to hear that voice applied to glorified loops – well, that's just embarrassing.
- Ben Wener, Orange County Register
Check out more photos and show souvenirs at TourBusLive.com
Searching With My Good Eye Closed - thanks guideo2114
Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2008
