Posted in: News, Trivia Q & A | No Comments | July 3, 2022
Q. What band is named after a scuplture in Seattle that hums in the wind?
A. Soundgarden
A Sound Garden is one of five public art works on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) campus that lies adjacent to theWarren G. Magnuson Park on the northwestern shore of Lake Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Designed and built by sculptor Douglas Hollis from 1982–83, A Sound Garden features 12 steel tower structures, inside of which hang organ pipes of varying lengths that produce low tones when the wind blows around and through them. At the top of the towers, horizontal steel vanes catch the wind and rotate the pipes.
Because of its location overlooking Lake Washington, its visual and kinetic qualities, and the fact that the Seattle-based rock band Soundgarden took their name from this art work, the installation attracts many visitors.
SOUNDGARDEN: THE BAND -
Soundgarden is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1984 by singer and rhythm guitarist Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Matt Cameron became the band’s full-time drummer in 1986, while bassist Ben Shepherd became a permanent replacement for Yamamoto in 1990.
Soundgarden was one of the seminal bands in the creation of grunge, a style of alternative rock that developed in Seattle, and was one of a number of grunge bands signed to the record label Sub Pop. Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label (A&M Records, in 1988), though the band did not achieve commercial success until they popularized the genre in the early 1990s with Seattle contemporaries Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Alice in Chains.
Soundgarden achieved its biggest success with the 1994 album Superunknown, which debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and yielded the Grammy Award-winning singles “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman”. In 1997, the band broke up due to internal strife over its creative direction. After several years working on projects and other bands, Soundgarden reunited in 2010 and their sixth studio album, King Animal, was released two years later.
As of 2012, Soundgarden had sold more than 10.5 million records in the United States, and an estimated 22.5 million worldwide.
