Soundgarden – Rusty Cage (from the album Badmotorfinger, 1991 A&M) Defined as “grunge”, these four guys predated the genre, forming in Seattle in 1984. This is a heavy song, featuring some great guitar sound from Kim Thayil. I read that he dropped the top E string on his guitar all the way down to B. That is three steps lower than standard. For those of you who are not guitar nerds, it basically means he was playing lose rubber band. Thankfully, whatever he did sounds amazing and this record still kicks ass a quarter-century later. This was one of two of the first CD’s I ever got, the other being The Tragically Hip‘s Road Apples.

Cool trivia – Rusty Cage was covered by the Legendary Johnny Cash on his 1996 album Unchained. The album won the Grammy award for Country album of the year. Cash’s version is stripped down, but very upbeat and has a mean swagger.

T.