The first CD I bought was Rage Against The Machine’s first album. the second one was Soundgarden’s Superunknown. I was nervous as I only knew Black Hole Sun. Keep in mind that I was in France, MTV was not really available there –unless you were wealthy, I knew like 2 people who had it- but I had been in a hotel on vacation and that song was on heavy rotation on Music TeleVision.
So gen X. But also, so hipster in my old country. Very few people around me knew about that band.
I remember spending summer ‘94 listening to those two albums endlessly. I went on a small Soundgarden binge a couple months ago, talking about how that album is so good to friends on Slack. I hadn’t listened to it in over a decade. Superunknown is one of those albums, it’s so much better than the previous ones and the more recent are just following that beast. The master of them all. I have no idea what he’s singing about, it’s all music to my ears and I just felt Chris Cornell’s voice was just right in all circumstances.
At that time I’m 15, in my room in the suburbs of Paris surrounded by green trees, opening the window trying to catch some wind, loving that heavy rock and anger from the West Coast. Playing with the EQ on my sound system. It was around that time that I was deciding that when I grow up I’ll be somewhere at the corner of music, audio engineering and computer games, all that stuff. The Seattle sound. The Simpsons. Street Fighter II. Sony Playstation incoming.
And Chris singing “alive in the superunknown”. The only lyrics I could understand. Well Chris got fed up to be alive in that motherfucker.