Temple of the Dog - An Impulse Buy

Okay, so I bought the Pearl Jam Live at the Garden DVD for $10 at JB HiFi (hereafter known as 'JB', not to be confused with John the Baptist). I enjoyed the old Pearl Jam classics, and some of their newer stuff. Then I came across a song that I don't remember being on any albums. Eddie Vedder did a duet with a woman (whose name eludes me) and the song sounded familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

So I decided to try to find out the name of the song by Googling some of the lyrics that I could make it. I can't remember what I searched, but I ended up at this site: www.reachdown.com which is a site decided to what is known as Temple of the Dog. This I thought was rather odd. I clicked on some links to finally get me to the lyrics page, so I could see the words to what I discovered was the song "Hunger Strike". Then I noticed who wrote it. It said: "Music/Lyrics: Cornell".

I thought to myself: Is this the Cornell of Chris Cornell? The former lead singer of Soundgarden now leader singer of the relatively recent Audioslave? Mind you, I didn't know much about Soundgarden or Audioslave, although I was thoroughly familiar with Rage Against The Machine.

Anyway, I read on to see that Temple of the Dog was a one-off tribute to a singer called Andy Wood. It was a collaboration between Chris Cornell (Andy's flatmate), Stone Gossard (Guitarist in Andy's band: Mother Love Bone), Jeff Ament (Bass Player in Mother Love Bone), Matt Cameron (Drummer from Cornell's Soundgarden) and Mike Cready (Lead Guitarist, high school friend of Stone Gossard) and a cameo in some songs by Eddie Vedder (some random guy that Stone and Jeff heard on a demo tape).

As you will note, all collaborators but Chris Cornell make up the band Pearl Jam.

As soon as I found out that fact - I bought the CD right away without listening to any of it. One of the best albums EVER.

By the way, the album came out in 1991, the same year as Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger and Pearl Jam's Ten.

You should listen to it sometime. And another thing, does it strike you as odd that Soundgarden is related to Pearl Jam through Temple of the Dog and that Soundgarden is related to Rage Against the Machine through Audioslave? Is there anything else about Chris Cornell that I should know besides being one of the best vocalists ever?