“I know my name is pain.”

“You ever heard the story of Mr. Faded Glory?”

You know, music isn’t always about bushy beards and big, bad riffs, as much as I make it out to be.  I mean, those things are great, and generally essential, but sometimes I enjoy — as I’m sure we all do — the deep, personal, and emotional connection with music as well. No other music I’ve ever heard (save for maybe Jeff Buckley) affects me as emotionally as Andrew Wood’s does.

Wood, an early purveyor of Seattle’s grunge rock scene and undoubtedly its biggest personality, died in March of 1990 from complications of a drug overdose at the age of 24, just as his band, Mother Love Bone, was about to release their debut full-length, Apple, and have a profound influence on a scene that would blow up into an industry and change the musical landscape in the decade that followed. But this story, a 10-year project for director Scot Barbour, tells of Wood’s years before his death, and shows us a man many of us never knew existed. Wood grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional household and used humor, drugs, and his alter ego, Landrew the Lovechild, to cover up the pain. His penchant for being the center of attention manifested itself in Landrew, the ghost-faced entity and lead singer of Wood’s first band, Malfunkshun, who would come down from Olympus to preach love rock to the people. His love rock was truly something special.

Malfunkshun, set against the backdrop of an emerging Seattle scene that included bands like Malfunkshun, Soundgarden, Green River, the Melvins, U-Men, and Skin Yard, features interviews with friends, family, band mates, industry heads, and even Wood’s rehab therapist, includes lots of old photos and rare live footage of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, incorporates colourful animated sequences that turns Wood’s life and music into a seemingly appropriate abstract kaleidoscope, and plenty of footage of Wood himself, including an interview in his room — dubbed Landrew’s Lovenest — where he’s clutching a stuffed toy frog, as if it was his childhood innocence, and hamming it up. Malfunkshun also comes with two bonus audio discs, Malfunkshun’s Return to Olympus and Melodies and Dreams, a solo album of material — music and interviews with himself — recorded to tape in the Lovenest. This disc alone, which also includes a rare song recorded by Chris Cornell and Wood when they lived together, is worth your money.

Truthfully, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate Wood’s impact at the time, but I’ve since come to revel in his music and appreciate his legacy. This film allows me the ability to feel and understand what it was like for him and the scene he helped create back then, and I come out of it a bigger fan of love rock than ever before.

Check out the trailer for Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story!

Dead Meadow
Three Kings
Xemu

This isn’t so much an album as it is a full-length concert movie with soundtrack. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to track down the DVD (their online store only accepts credit cards and I don’t have one, which is great for staying out of debt but shitty for instances like this), so I haven’t actually seen the film, which apparently consists of live footage and “vignettes that abstractly depict themes of corruption, destruction, and rebirth” while the band “portrays the Three Kings who are the silent watchers of their world.” Seems pretty groovy at any rate, which is Dead Meadow’s specialty, and the soundtrack certainly delivers in that respect. A mixture of old, live songs and new studio recordings, Three Kings is a psychedelic time warp of fuzzy, exotic, Zeppelin-esque boogie that bends and shines like a rainbow in a dope fiend’s mind. Stand-outs for me include the new song “That Old Temple” and the old classics “Seven Seers” and “Beyond the Fields We Know,” the album’s longest running, free-flowing, freak out jam. It might be a bit of a weird one for newcomers, but long-standing Deadheads (or maybe is should be Meadowheads) will surely dig this hazy collection.

Check out the video for “That Old Temple” from the Three Kings movie!