Month: March 2023

My Sunday Song – “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden

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For the last My Sunday Song #350 for the Chris Cornell 10 song set is “Black Hole Sun” by his band Soundgarden. The song is off their 1994 album Superunknown and went to #1 on the Mainstream Rock Chart in the U.S. The song has so many accolades including one of the Top 500 Songs of all time landing at #368. It didn’t go Gold in the U.S., but did in the UK, Australia and Italy. It is one of their most recognizable and amazing songs and was written by Chris Cornell.

The song was written by Chris mostly on a drive from the studio in Woodinville to Seattle which was about a 34-40 minute drive. Once he got home, he whistled it in to a dictaphone. The next more he got and wallah, a new song. The song was inspired by a story on the news, Chris doesn’t remember the story itself just the words Black Hole Sun which he thought would be a great title to the song. When he wrote the lyrics in about 15 minutes, there was no meaning, per se, behind them, basically it was him putting words together that painted this dark picture. From reading the lyrics, it sort of looks like a song about disillusionment and how the world has grown so dark and mean that no more honest men exist as everyone is eventually turned to the dark side.

Musically, the song is just as dark sounding at times with a grunge sound, but also a little psychedelic with a slight Beatles vibe to it. The chorus feels a little upbeat and a little sunnier, but when that chorus comes in it feels like a menacing dark sludge. Kim Thayil’s guitar tone on this is perfect for the song as it has some really cool moments with that solo lying under the grungy riff really plays nicely off each other. Cornell’s vocals on the chorus seem monotonous at times as they are trudging through the sludge of the music. His backing vocals are higher pitched and really give the song something a little extra. I was immediately engrossed in this song the first time I heard as there is so much going on. It is simply wonderful.

Continue reading “My Sunday Song – “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden” →

Friday New Releases – March 3, 2023

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We are in to March already. Another year flying by, but not without leaving us some new music to hear each and every week. This week we have over 40 choices to choose from and hopefully there is something for you. I actually have a Country artist I’m eager to hear as my daughters (both of them) have introduced me to Morgan Wallen and his music and you know what, I like it!! So, he has another double album coming out today and it is on order and arriving, but it is actually a birthday present for my daughter, but I know I’ll get to borrow it when I want. But otherwise that is it for me. Now, something else exciting this week is De La Soul’s catalog is finally getting released on streaming services and digitally this week, so all you fans, go nuts. What do you want to hear this week? Let me know and let us know what we missed as well. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weeekend!

  • 91zQ1fGh7nL._AC_UL640_FMwebp_QL65_  Morgan Wallen – One Thing at a Time – (Big Loud Records / Mercury Records)

And then all the rest…

  • 91MxexmhZzL._AC_UY218_  Macklemore – Ben – (Bendo, LLC)
Continue reading “Friday New Releases – March 3, 2023” →

Scorpions – ‘Humanity: Hour 1’ (2007) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)

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For their 16th Studio album, Scorpions wanted to shake things up a bit. But before they could do that they needed to get a producer and that seemed like a daunting task. They had hoped to work with Dieter Dierks yet again, but that didn’t work out yet again due to contract issues. They brought a ton of producers to Germany to interview including Roy Thomas Baker, but the band wasn’t exactly pleased with those results. In the end they settled on two producers. They chose James Michael (lead singer of the band Sixx A.M.) and famed songwriter/producer Desmond Child. They each had their own specific expertise that was utilized on the production. James worked on the guitars, drums and bass while Desmond concentrated on the vocals.

So, Rudolf Schenker, Mathias Jabs, Pawel Maciwoda and James Kottak were in one studio with James while Klaus Meine was in another with Desmond. Desmond believes that if a singers vocals are in great shape, you will get a great performance so Desmond had Klaus basically take vocal lessons every day for an hour before they recorded the vocals. They brought in vocal coach to help Klaus warm up his vocals each and every day. The album is full of songwriters from outside the band as well, but the band still is on every song. You get Eric Bazilian (Hooters), Marty Frederiksen, Jason Paige, Russ Irwin, James Michael, Desmond Child and there are even more.

The band started recording in October 2006 and had about 30 songs and by the second recording process they had another 20 songs. The album was going to be a concept album that was developed by Desmond Child and futurist Liam Carl. It was based on a civil war between humans and robot, it is very apocalyptic in nature and at times very dark. Which is why a number of songs were thrown out because they were too dark. The album needed some more upbeat style songs and those were added, but they were all based around this concept and all tied together because the songs were about humanity. The album was called ‘Humanity: Hour 1′ and was released on May 14, 2007 in Europe and August 28, 2007 in the U.S. We were introduced to a very modern sounding Scorpions album, but at the same time, it still sounded like the Scorpions. All I know is that when I heard this album, I was back on board the Scorpions’ train and been riding it since. Sit back and get ready for the best Scorpions album in decades!!

A woman robot welcomes us to Humanity: Hour 1 as “Hour 1” is the start of the war. The earth-shattering drum beats, the Sabbathy guitar riffs and then Klaus comes in and sounds amazing as he introduces the reasons behind our downfall and that humans tried to play God with their machines causing all the problems we are now facing. It is a heavy, intense and rocking opening track. Very modern and very brutal and a solo that will rip your face off as the battle rages on. A killer opening track and one of their most aggressive tracks…ever!! And what is even cooler about this one is that the guest guitarist is none other than the mighty John 5.

Continue reading “Scorpions – ‘Humanity: Hour 1’ (2007) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)” →

1,000,000 Views and Counting

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic28 Comments

On Sunday, February 26, 2023, 2 Loud 2 Old Music reached a milestone for the site. We finally reached 1,000,00 views on the site. It all started April 17, 2016 and only took just shy of 7 years to hit that mark. Now, at the pace we are going now, it should take less than 4 years for the next million.

What did we do to get to this point, well, we have written a lot of post. We are at 2,141 posts since we started and I am not sure why I keep saying we, because it is just me. Maybe the we is me, myself and I. We have done over 350 post of My Sunday Songs and Friday New Release posts which I have been doing since almost the beginning. We have done I think close to 1,000 album/single reviews, a bunch of The Original Vs The Cover posts and even a lot of Album Rankings. I never thought I would write this much and still have stuff to write about, but we’ve barely scratched the service at what is in the collection so there will be more to come.

The 10 most popular posts are as follows:

  1. New Release Page – over 25,700 views
  2. Maroon 5 – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 10,200 views
  3. Apple Music vs. Amazon Music Unlimited – over 9,400 views
  4. The Original vs The Cover: “The Sound of Silence” – over 9,100 views
  5. Whitesnake – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 8,200 views
  6. Ratt – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 8,200 views
  7. Poison – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 6,700 views
  8. Tuesday’s Memes – Christmas Music – over 6,200 views
  9. The Top 20 Ratt Songs – over 6,000 views
  10. Tuesday’s Memes – Rock & Roll – over 5,700 views

And if you wonder why I have done a lot of Album Rankings, well, they do make up 40% of the list so there is that reason. I stopped doing the Memes collections, but maybe I should bring that back…nah!

What I have really enjoyed doing over the last few years are artist series where I cover every album either in my collection or in their catalog. Definitely I’ve done all the studio albums for these bands so there are a lot of reviews up for these artists. I’ve done quite a few.

  • Ratt
  • Billy Idol
  • David Coverdale/Whitesnake
  • Kiss
  • Queen
  • Judas Priest
  • Aerosmith
  • Cheap Trick
  • Scorpions (only 3 more left to write)
  • Jeff Scott Soto (only 18 more to write) – And will be the most comprehensive reviews of Soto’s career anywhere on the web and I can almost guarantee that.

And the next one lined up is Bon Jovi which will start sometime either late Spring or early Summer.  Not sure where I will be going after that series.  

I think I am going to stop the You Pick It series as that doesn’t get a whole lot of participation. I think I have one more lined up to post for April’s selection and that will be it. I’m working on March’s right now.

Let me know if there is something you’d like to see me do on the site and maybe I’ll do it. I am planning to continue to show off things in the collection and write reviews on them and if I ever catch up and do it all, maybe I’ll stop at that time, but I think I still have a few more years left in me.  When we hit the 10 year mark, I’ll re-evaluate and see what is next, but for now, I am going to keep on doing what I’m doing.

Thank you to everyone that has come and stopped by the site and to those regular readers, thank you most of all. You are my motivation and reason to keep on going.  You know who you are.

Here’s to the next 1,000,000 views!!