Chris Cornell @Irving Plaza, April 16th

With all the indie shows I usually go to, much like the time I caught Alice In Chains at the Bowery last year, I kinda felt like a grunge interloper for last night's concert featuring the one-time frontman of Soundgarden, then solo, then of Audioslave, and now solo again, Chris Cornell (but hey, at least I did buy Eurphoria Morning back when it came out). Tonight's gig took place at the newly re-christened Fillmore New York fka Irving Plaza, which, despite my not having been there in 1-1/2 years, is pretty much the same. In an attempt to escape the Pearl Jam war stories of Wawa and his Jamily, I followed some roadie woman who pushed her way through the crowd and happily ended up right up front. Awwwww yeahh!

So having never before seen Chris Cornell in any of his iterations, tonight's setlist was perfect for me -- it was like a nice buffet wherein I could sample a little bit of the solo new and old, a little bit of the grunge, a bit of solo acoustic and a little bit of the stuff for the new millennium. Hell, he even did stuff from that side project, Temple Of The Dog (yeah, that I'm going hungrrrrryyyyyyy song, and an acoustic "Call Me A Dog" from that album):

He performed the now well known acoustic cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and pulled out some big Soundgarden songs like "Zero Chance," "Jesus Christ Pose" and everyone's favorite, "Black Hole Sun." Sure, I would have loved to see Tom Morello on guitar, but for about 100 minutes, Chris Cornell proved why he is such a dynamic, charismatic frontman, and lucky me, I got to experience that gorgeous voice wayyyyy up close. I'm so deaf right now.

As an added bonus to being so damn close, the roadie handed me the setlist (which is missing the additional encores of "Wide Awake" and "JCP") after I simply asked for it. Easy peasy!

(Nice! I got linked on Glide Magazine and some random Japanese site!)