Friday, January 24, 2014

Video Of The Week: Hole

I've been on a Hole tear lately, and decided to share with the rest of the class...

The band was formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson, after Love had spent the better part of the decade parlaying her way into and soon getting thrown out of a multitude of bands (Faith No More, Pagan Babies, Babes In Toyland), either because of her personality or the fact that she didn't really know how to play an instrument at the time.

A sweet talker, she convinced Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon to produce their first independent record, Pretty On The Inside, dated The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, married Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and got signed to Geffen Records, which released their major-label debut Live Through This in 1994.

By the time touring for the record came about, Love had lost her husband, and the band had lost their original drummer as well as four bassists, including the most recent, Kristen Pfaff, to a drug overdose. The line-up with Melissa Auf Der Maur on bass and Patty Schemel on drums (14994-1998) is widely considered the quintessential Hole, though, perhaps because they appeared in the most videos and played more shows as a unit, but I like to think it held the best combination of balls and brawn, grit and softness, fury and beauty. (And I think Auf Der Maur has a lot to do with it).

Rumours have always floated around Hole that their best songs had been ghost-written by either Cobain or Corgan, and for their third album, Celebrity Skin, Corgan's actually credited as a co-songwriter on five separate songs, so at least the ''ghost'' part was eliminated. One of those songs is this one, Malibu, directed by Paul Hunter:

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