Rebirth

Today marks a new beginning in PhillyPhanhood. I fell off the map for a while, distracted by golf, summer, beer, Jersey Shore, and overall laziness, but after much thought, it occured to me that I need to give myself this forum, regardless of whether it gets read or not.

Posting for the first time in almost 10 months, I find my beloved Eagles back in the playoffs, on the road in a wild card game. If you listen to the pundits and prognosticators, this game is over before it starts and Cowboys fans should probably start booking hotel accomodations in Miami. Thankfully, pundits and prognosticators are rarely right. As an Eagles fan, I know this is difficult to believe, but there were positives to be taken from Sunday's game. The Birds were, on several occasions, inches from the game-breaking big play we've grown accustomed to this year. Offensively, the reads were there, unfortunately the throws were not. That is not something that happens to the Eagles 2 weeks in a row. The Cowboys defense, while disruptive, has holes the Eagles can exploit. Defensively, the Eagles were put on their heels by a terrible call on the Cowboys' first drive and never really seemed to recover. They played less aggressively than normal, and, like the offense, missed by inches on several big plays that turned into even bigger plays for the Cowboys. All in all, the Eagles did not bring their A game last Sunday, the Cowboys did. I do not believe that the Cowboys can up their level of play any further, whereas the Eagles can improve drastically in all facets of the game. I think this weekend's game will be a lot closer than many are predicting. My game predictions will come Friday.

On to music... New Year's brought us a new decade and a huge Penn State win, but overlooked in all the celebrating was Chris Cornell's announcement that Soundgarden will reunite for a series of concerts this year. For the life of me, I cannot understand why people haven't been talking about this more. There were four bands mainly responsible for the global popularity of so-called "grunge" music: Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam is still, by all accounts, hugely popular. Alice In Chains is making a comeback after taking a hiatus due to the death of Layne Staley, however everyone knows that they are not really Alice In Chains without him so I can understand the lack of buzz surrounding their current tour, but nevertheless their original music is everywhere. Nirvana's music has lived on and is still hugely popular despite the death of Kurt Cobain. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Soundgarden has largely fallen off the radar so to speak. Rarely are Soundgarden's hits played on the radio, and if they are, the number of times they are played is drastically less than those of Pearl Jam, AIC, or Nirvana. All I've heard in regards to Cornell's announcement have been lukewarm side comments. As I remember it, Soundgarden's last album was highly anticipated with lots of pre-release press. They then announced they would take a break and the rest is history.

My question is this: What pushed Soundgarden to the bottom of the Big 4? Was it because there was no tragedy involved in their decision to break up? No martyred figure for the press to hail as a troubled genius, thus bringing the band's music into and stay within the conciousness of the general public? And if that is the case, is the music of Nirvana and the original AIC held in higher regard than it naturally would be?

All I know is that when I was young, Soundgarden was a big deal. Their music was of the same style and quality as the aformentioned bands whose success has withstood the test of time, yet Soundgarden has announced intentions to reunite with little fan fare, and few under the age of maybe 15 would know "Spoonman" or "Burden In My Hand" or even "Black Hole Sun". What happened??