Smells Like Alternative

Chris Cornell rocked the Borgata’s Music Box on July 27 .

Former Audioslave and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell put on a phenomenal show in Atlantic City. It didn’t hurt that the Music Box was a immaculate venue at the beautiful Borgata. It only held around 900 people, so there wasn’t a bad seat in the house.

Cornell’s vocals have been amazingly restored, after he stopped smoking and drinking. I remember seeing Audioslave back in 2003 and thinking that Chris Cornell’s days were numbered, but he proved me wrong last night . The band that he assembled was also impressive, after all they have some big shoes to fill, but they handled it will.

On to the show itself…the band came out with an intro and then burst into back to back Soundgarden songs, “Let Me Drown” and “Outshined”. Audioslave’s “Show Me How To Live” was next and followed by “No Such Thing” and “You Know My Name” from Cornell’s newest solo effort Carry On. During “You Know My Name” Chris brought his daughter out and she was singing along too, which had to strike the heartstrings of everyone in attendance. Other highlights from the show were Chris doing a solo acoustic performance of Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City”, “Sunshower” from Great Expectations and pretty much any of the Soundgarden songs. However, the best part of the night was “Ty Cobb”, which hasn’t been performed since Soundgarden was still together, so that would be at least 10 years ago. After the rousing performance of “Ty Cobb”, Cornell said that the song was from his favorite Soundgarden album, Down on the Upside, which is my favorite as well.

There were only two problems with the show. The first was that some of the crowd had no clue who Chris Cornell was, they were obviously comped by the casino, which made the crowd seem weak. And, the second problem was that he didn’t play anything from his first solo album, Euphoria Morning. I would have preferred less Audioslave songs and more solo tracks, but he played “Ty Cobb”, so everything balanced out.

Setlist (may not be exact, but pretty close):

Intro – Let Me Drown – Outshined – Show Me How To Live – No Such Thing – You Know My Name – Spoonman – Hunger Strike – Out of Exile – Atlantic City (just Chris) – Finally Forever (Chris solo) – Like A Stone (still Chris) – Doesn’t Remind Me (band comes back) – Cochise – What You Are – Rusty Cage – Be Yourself – Say Hello 2 Heaven – Black Hole Sun – Jesus Christ Pose – Encore: Ty Cobb – Sunshower – Slaves and Bulldozers

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