Retro Video of the Week: "Rusty Cage" by Soundgarden

As I mentioned in last week's Retro Video of the Week post about GNR's "Don't Cry," August and September 1991 were uniquely prolific months for groundbreaking and massively successful albums.  Thirty years ago this Friday, five of those albums were released:  Waking Up the Neighbours by Bryan Adams; Nevermind by Nirvana; Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers; Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden; and The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.

I've featured videos on Retro Video of the Week by all of those artists except Soundgarden, so now is the time.  Badmotorfinger was Soundgarden's third studio album, and thanks to the fact that the band was from Seattle and grunge was becoming the new thing, the album was helped by the grunge wave, even though it's really more of an alternative metal album.  It was the band's highest-charting album up to that point, reaching #39 on the Billboard album chart, and it eventually went double platinum in the U.S., setting the stage for their huge, chart-topping follow-up album, 1994's Superunknown.  And while Superunknown may get more love, Badmotorfinger is a pretty damn good album.

"Rusty Cage" is one of the band's most well-known songs prior to Superunknown, and it's a badass, weirdly tuned, frenetic song with time signature changes and a fuzzy, whirling guitar riff.  And, of course, Chris Cornell's vocals on the song are amazing.  That beginning guitar riff is like a "welcome to the '90s" moment, and the video is definitely pure '90s, but at the time, it would have been weird to see a video like this on MTV.

The song was also famously covered by Johnny Cash on his 1996 Grammy Award-winning album Unchained, and if you thought this was originally a Cash song covered by Soundgarden, you wouldn't be alone.