Have you actually clicked on this article and made it this far? If you have, my guess is that you are wondering why anyone would bother to write an article about a mid 1990s one-hit-wonder band. It turns out that with Blind Melon's Soup album there comes a bit of a mystery. The answers to that mystery died with lead singer Shannon Hoon and the mystery was only created by his death.
First let's start with a little background. If you know anything about the group Blind Melon, you know that they penned the song No Rain. No Rain was a big hit in the early to mid 1990s and it was made all the more famous through its iconic video which featured a young girl in a bee outfit. No Rain was from their first, self-titled album. Despite my better judgment I bought the album when it came out. This is the kind of purchase that nine times out of ten leads to me listening to that one song and having to suffer through the others before I grudgingly admit I have made a bad purchase. Fortunately for me, this was a one out of ten deal. It turns out that, in my opinion, No Rain was probably the weakest song off of the album and not because it was a bad song but because it was clearly added to be a pop song to drive the sales of Blind Melon's other songs. In my case, that marketing strategy worked perfectly. No Rain was wedged into a great group of alternative, blues songs that all carried a melancholy tone.
Now you are saying, "so you think Blind Melon's self titled debut album was a good album. So what? It's not worth writing about seventeen years after the fact." In that, I would have to agree. Actually this article isn't even about that album but the one that followed it--Soup. If Soup had any recognizable, radio played song it was Galaxie. This song was probably played on the radio for about ten minutes and if you blinked you probably missed it. Soup's main claim to fame is that it was the last real album for Blind Melon. While on tour to promote the album, Shannon Hoon succumbed to an overdose of cocaine on the tour bus in New Orleans and it is here that the mystery begins.
While attending the University of Alabama, I found a compatriot in my love of Blind Melon with my very good friend and roommate. He and I seemed to be the only people in the world aware of just how good Blind Melon was. When Soup was released we both went out and bought it and we both listened to it over and over trying to get a feel for how it compared to the first album. My first impression was that the album, although good, sounded very disjointed in parts. I don't know if it was recorded in odd time signatures but the album has a weird flow or lack of flow to it. Beyond that and maybe because of it, I realized that though it wasn't as easy to fall into as the previous album, Soup was probably the better of the two albums. It was also a very dark album. The previous album had a sadness to it but it was in no way a dark album. Soup was very dark with many of the songs having to do with death. Ironically and I am sure deliberately, the happiest sounding song was a summertime fun ditty about a real life, serial killer who used his victims' remains to make furniture. It was that kind of a dark album. There was an exception to the darkness of the other songs. The song New Life seemed more sad than dark and was more reminiscent of Blind Melon's first album. In New Life Hoon is singing about the birth of his first child Nico and is asking himself if Nico's birth is going to be enough to save him from the downward spiral of his life. Other notable songs were Lemonade which was an allusion to drugs and was deliberately recorded in a very chaotic manner to reflect the affect of the drugs. In my opinion, the best song off of the album was Mouthful of Cavities which captures the melancholy, hopeless depression of the first album and takes it to an entirely new level.
Somewhere in the midst of still exploring this album came word of Shannon Hoon's death. I found myself thinking about Hoon's death, the circumstances of his death and the odd similarities to parts of the album. My roommate and I bounced various ideas off of each other. What we found was a very odd mystery.
To begin with, Soup is encompassed in a New Orleans funeral. In New Orleans, it is tradition that when a body is being carried to a grave that a slow, New Orleans jazz is played. After the funeral, when the mourners are heading back from the grave site, the music that is played is a happy, up tempo, New Orleans jazz. Just prior to Soup's first song, Galaxie, the album opens up with a slow, New Orleans jazz and after the album's last song is played--Lemonade, the album closes with the New Orleans up beat jazz. Soup was clearly intended to be a New Orleans funeral. It would seem odd and highly coincidental that Shannon Hoon died in New Orleans while on tour for Soup.
If I left it here, it would be odd but then something happened one night to add to the mystery. While I was at work, I was talking with a fellow coworker. I mentioned Blind Melon and how it was a shame that Hoon was dead. We talked about Soup and I mentioned how much I loved the album. He then told me about a hidden track. I don't remember my reaction but I probably told him that there wasn't a hidden track. I had played that album religiously and I had not heard any hidden track. He then told me that it was a uniquely hidden track. He told me how to access the hidden track. As soon as I was off of work, I ran home, pulled out Soup and followed the instructions while my roommate watched on.
Of course he was right, there is a hidden track on Soup. Unlike most hidden tracks, the hidden track on Soup is extremely well hidden. If you put the compact disc in and play it from beginning to end, you will never hear it. It starts out with the slow funeral music and ends with the happy funeral music. To hear the hidden track, you have to put in the compact disc and immediately hit pause. Once the compact disc is paused, you then have to hold down the back button and reverse the compact disc to approximately negative two minutes and forty seconds. At that point, you can play the song. The song is appropriately titled Hello Goodbye and is a strange song with backwards lyrics. The backwards lyrics are from the song New Life. Hoon was basically telling us that he knew that even the birth of his daughter would not be enough to save him. After all what is the opposite of New Life? Now all this in and of itself would make this album a masterpiece but then Hoon's death vaults this album into territories where albums just haven't gone. Shannon Hoon, a kid from Indiana, died of an overdose of cocaine in of all places, New Orleans. Whether Hoon predicted his own death, commited suicide, or fate played tricks on him, I will never know. People have mourned the loss of Kurt Cobain as the great Rock and Roll death of the Gen X crowd and I agree Cobain's loss to my generation has been monumental but in my heart, Hoon's death has rocked me far more.
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