Rock's Last Great Summer

There was a time, in this country, when you could be a white kid and listen to music made by older white kids and not get called a "herb" or a "bitch." There were some years, prior to 1995, when hiphop wasn't required reading, and you could say "The Beastie Boys suck" if you wanted to, and laugh your ass off if MTV tried to do something as dumb as air a rap version of Carmen. The last year I remember like this was 1994, and the song that lumbered around that summer, big and grungy and gloriously white, was "Black Hole Sun."

It was great. Soundgarden, who had a fine catalog of fast tunes, put out one of the slowest, most repetitive, most depressing things on their new record, and it caught on like ball sweat and got about one spin an hour for the whole summer. "Black Hole Sun" was helped, of course, by that fantastic video, the tripped-out pastiche that showed an evil, computer-distorted suburbia getting sucked into a frickin' supernova; also, some runty pill-popping junkie in Seattle had shot himself to kick off the spring, so MTV was self-analytical and willing to indulge in rock tunes for the kiddies.

And hey?that was me. I was 13 years old, up at summer camp, where a few people had CD players but almost no one had a radio, and the reception wasn't good enough to justify one anyway. We had In Utero, which one of the black counselors was heavily into, and which would blare in the rec hall as we played Dungeons & Dragons (yeah, at camp?the plot thickens). But every time we went on some trip, to the beach or canoeing or wherever, they got us in this hot, moist, yellow bus and we would hear "Black Hole Sun" at least once on the radio.

That was a nice thing about 1994?you heard rock everywhere. The equivalent of Z100 in every zip code in the country got suckered into playing "Plush" and "Under the Bridge" and "Teen Spirit," so even if you had to sit through Jon Secada, you knew something good was coming up. Now Z100 is a true embarrassment, especially since the record companies figured out how to sell auto-tuning as a vocal effect. (A quick explanation: when you hear a voice in a pop song turn all "electronic," like "It's gonna be meee," that's because the producers are auto-tuning the voice?shifting its pitch to exactly match the notes that are supposed to be sung. This process is so refined that, these days, artists don't need to sing during recording. They can just say their lyrics deadpan and have the auto-tuner add pitches later.)

"Black Hole Sun" didn't have anything really special. Well, it had that crazy guitar sound, and the ultra-distorted reprise chorus vocals, and the line "Won't you come/Won't you come/Won't you come," which made 13-year-old boys think about their penises. And according to legend, Chris Cornell refused to use any groupies, which made him an interesting figure. And girls thought bass player Ben Shepherd was hot (the only bassist I ever heard that about). But more than anything else, "Black Hole Sun" was just a song where Cornell chilled a little; he didn't scream his head off like he did in a lot of Soundgarden's work, so it was a tune you could rock to, make out to, walk to, fall asleep to.

Rock music isn't in such a bad state now?the nu-metal act Stereomud's initial shipment of their record Perfect Self is 100,000 copies, compared with Nevermind's 50,000. The second Creed album is going diamond; Limp Bizkit has sold close to four million Chocolate Starfishes; Tool's new offering might debut at #1. But man, it sure was cool when I didn't have to put up with D'Angelo, or Ani DiFranco or Massive Attack on a fairly regular basis. And it was great when I didn't have to endure semi-music that consisted of a processed beat looped for four minutes with a straight male spraying his scent glands in my face.

Mmm, scent glands. Yes sir, you do have a large penis and you do smoke blunts. Where do you keep those scent glands, actually? Nearer your penis or your butt? Are they shaped like almonds, or internal?

I don't know. I'm willing to turn off my taste to appease women (last night I put up with some Ben Harper) and cool guys who can get me into good bars, but it sure was nice when I didn't have to, back in 1994. No one complained if "Black Hole Sun" came on; the rap kids who didn't like it weren't confident enough yet to trash it, and some of the girls who enjoyed it didn't look like trolls!