7/12/2023 0 Comments Blind melonGuitarist Christopher Thorn, originally from Pennsylvania, was added shortly thereafter the four eventually convinced drummer Glen Graham to relocate from Mississippi to complete the group after failing to find a drummer in Los Angeles. History Formation, debut and success (1990–1993) īlind Melon formed in Los Angeles in March 1990 after West Point, Mississippi, transplants Rogers Stevens and Brad Smith, a guitarist and bassist respectively, met vocalist Shannon Hoon, a native of Lafayette, Indiana. The group have been nominated for four Grammy Awards. Blind Melon is currently working on their fourth studio album. Shortly after its release, Warren left Blind Melon but returned in 2010, when the band returned to performing occasional gigs. The remaining members reformed the band in 2006 with Warren and recorded one album with him, For My Friends (2008). ![]() After four years of unsuccessfully searching for a replacement for Hoon, Blind Melon officially dissolved in 1999. īlind Melon released two albums on Capitol Records – Blind Melon (1992) and Soup (1995) – before their original lead vocalist Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose on the band's tour bus in New Orleans on October 21, 1995. The band has sold over 3.2 million albums in the United States as of 2008. They are best known for their 1993 hit " No Rain", and enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 1990s with their neo-psychedelic take on alternative rock. The band currently consists of guitarists Rogers Stevens and Christopher Thorn, drummer Glen Graham, vocalist Travis Warren and bassist Nathan Towne. If we’re to understand Hoon’s life through his footage, it’s as a victim of a lifestyle that amplifies not just the sounds in your head but the problems at your core.Blind Melon is an American rock band formed in 1990 in Los Angeles by five musicians: three from Mississippi, one from Pennsylvania and one from Indiana. Awfully, Hoon’s final scenes appear mere minutes after his baby daughter is born on camera. Rehabs, relapses and arrests ensue, before All I Can Say spirals towards its tragic end. Road fatigue and homesickness set in, bad habits re-emerge and, while recording in New Orleans, heroin arrives. Throughout, his lens acts as a cold eye on the souring, crushing effect of the flash in the pan.Īnd, ultimately, the scorch marks it leaves. ![]() Besides a celebratory singalong to Dr Hook’s ‘Cover Of The Rolling Stone’ when they all appear, no-one on this ride seems to be enjoying themselves very much, least of all Hoon. ![]() Hoon even secretly records his bandmates complaining about him potentially appearing alone on the cover of Rolling Stone. There are exhausted interviews and groupie-free nights in soulless shared hotel rooms footage of the band watching themselves lose out on a Grammy to Toni Braxton the obligatory piss-take slo-mo on Saturday Night Live. He is unsuited to relish it, and early enthusiasm soon turns to slog. But like his camera, Hoon – battling alcohol issues that pre-dated his fame – seems a dislocated observer of his own success. Watching Blind Melon popping corks on the roof of Capitol Records, you share their golden ticket rush. As ‘No Rain’ sees Blind Melon rocket through the pop ranks toward an all-too-brief moment of glory, the minutiae of first-flush success is crisply captured by the sharp editing. With Hoon such a comprehensive self-documenter – he films himself at urinals, on business calls and from some of the most unflattering naked angles imaginable – it all makes for a rare and unique first-person insight. All I Can Say instead tells the oh-too-familiar tale of the small-town boy sucked in and chewed up by the rock ’n’ roll dream. There are no historic Paul-writing-‘Get Back’ moments here. Lucking into a record contract thanks to their connections to Guns N’ Roses, they had one massive MTV hit (‘No Rain’) before Hoon descended into hard drug and alcohol addiction, with tragic consequences. Blind Melon’s journey, judging by the evidence here, was one of a grunge Reef. Narrative-wise it’s no Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, the story of an anguished icon torn to shreds by success. ![]() Perhaps, as he began filming several years before his star ascended, he hoped to document the rags-to-riches emergence of a grunge rock legend. Maybe he found solace and catharsis in the camera lens, like a video diary. To paraphrase: life moves too fast to appreciate in the moment, so he planned to watch it later, at his leisure, in the hope of understanding it all. At a key point in All I Can Say, a film compiled entirely from camcorder footage shot by Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon in the five years before his fatal, cocaine-induced heart attack in 1995, Hoon explains why he decided to capture so much of his life on home video.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |