Blind Melon

Don't know where this thought popped into my head from. Probably cause I was listening to Soup last night and the memory of that hour is far more appealing than what I'm actually doing, which is sitting in front of a computer in the basement of a pretentious university -where I sell train tickets to the stuck-up offpsring of old money hotshots (though not this week cause they're all in Cancun on their parents' cizzash)- wishing to GOD that's what I was still doing instead of sweet fuck-all at this ass job (less than 2 more months, less than 2 more months...) but that's neither here nor there.
What is, is that it recently occurred to me that Shannon Hoon was a far greater loss to music than Kurt Cobain was.
Cobain is remebered and revered the way he is because he allegedly blazed the trail towards the grunge movement that welcomed a million disaffected youth into its angry and understanding arms, but guess fucking what? There were hundreds of greasy-haired dudes just like him kicking the same damn jams out of a hundred dirty bars -he was just the first one to get noticed. I mean, I like Nirvana (I really like Nirvana), and that trio was a hell of a lot better at what they did than a whack of others doing the same exact thing, but there were a whack of others doing the same exact thing, you know what I'm saying? Cheers to them for doing it well, but cheers to aaaaalllllllll the other late 80's/early 90's grunge bands that did it well too.
Blind Melon, on the other hand, was a new and crazy trip packed with broad and complex psychedelic tuneage, intelligent, intelligible lyrics, orchestras of instrumental experimentation, an overall sound and feel no one else was coming close to, and a nutty touring schedule that would have broken most bands (and I guess ultimately had a hand in doing just that to them).
Cobain may have been the first competent figure spotted in the sea of a widespread movement, but Hoon gave something to music that hadn't been heard before, and hasn't been rivalled since.
While kids all over my high school wrote suicide notes to themselves and walked around wearing Cobain's down-and-out, heavily-mascared face on their t-shirts, I had a shot of Shannon taped inside my locker door -wearing a blissful smile and electric blue t-shirt as he danced onstage, his long, wavy hair crowned by a wreath of flowers. He was one of the few fresh things that came out of the 90's, and in the mess of embarassing musical influences we all trip over in our youths, he was a dude I'm proud and happy to say shaped my preferences and still spins on my stereo weekly.
To rip a quote from Blind Melon bassist Brad Smith, "he was a special cat...He could just nail it".