ummm... Don't get me wrong, I love Chris in all of his bands, but he can sound absolutely HORRIBLE from one night to another, and from one song to another even. IMO, Ed's way more consistent. I did not like how he was singing Hey Baby at all on the TOTD tour.

my point was that Jeff, Matt, Stone, and Mike sounded better (the 4 of them as a unit) when Cornell was their lead singer

not that Cornell is a better lead singer than Ed (which i do think he is, but we can debate elsewhere; with no shirts on, preferably)

but so the implication here was meant to be that Cornell is perhaps a better leader and/or more professional and/or someone that simply inspired the four of them to play better

the PJ 4 sounded more crisp and professional with Cornell. oddly enough, it showed in a lot of the covers. i wouldn't normally think that covers demonstrate the skill of a set of people; especially given the laundry list of miserable covers that PJ has rolled out in the last few years; but it seems that the TOTD tour came together with little to no rehearsal; and yet the skill of those four came out in that they were really tight for the most part and they covered a fairly wide span of material between TOTD, MLB, and the covers.

perhaps an additional implication was meant to be that they were better because they weren't stifled by Ed, who is a mediocre, immodest twat at this point in his evolution - and which came across pretty blatantly in his D-league meandering HOF verbal masturbation session

or, perhaps, it was because they were playing, songs from Temple of the Dog, which outside of PJ20, they havnt really played at all in 25 years, with a handful of covers from some of their all time favorites that they had never played before, so it energized them to be playing together, new songs, that they all loved but havnt played live. I'd say THAT has WAY more to do with it than who was the lead singer.

Yeah, this is obvious. Like anything else, you're going to be more focused in a new situation where the moment is heightened. The novelty of playing a TOTD show with Chris Cornell is clearly different from the 900th show with PJ playing Even Flow. I love Cornell but there's nothing to see here. It's the same as them all getting a collective hard-on playing the Mirror Ball tour. Has nothing to do with Ed.

so we all are in agreement then

I would also add that when I saw them in San Francisco, the four of them looked a lot happier onstage than I had seen them in ages.

The quality of the Black Sabbath cover alone sounded better than any PJ output in a decade.

It's like Clark Griswold stumbling upon Christie Brinkley at a hotel pool.

That's actually a pretty apt description

The main reason why they sounded so tight on the TOTD was not the fact that to rehearsed a little.
They rehearsed way more than an average PJ tour. To play the song 'Achilles Last Stand' as tight and strong as they did on that tour, not even the most skilled musicians can do that without rehearsing. No they rehearsed days (or weeks) for that tour. They only had to rehearse 25 songs orso. PJ plays about 125 songs on a similar tour.

By this point the main difference between Chris and Ed is control. Chris seems to be more of a controlfreak then Ed. Ed is a punker kid who just wants to wail, and sometimes he succeeds and other times he does not. Chris wants to do everything perfect. You never see him play a song on stage that they just tried in soundcheck once. About ten years ago Chris quit smoking because of the effects on his voice. Ed blew his pipes because of smoking. Chris wants to create a wave, Ed wants to ride a wave.

Yeah..Ed really needs to quit smoking..

It can't be stated enough how much better Cornell sound after giving up cigarettes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9_IQeMw_E

I had not seen this before, but he really seems to have problems staying in tune here (Audioslave 2017 reunion):

https://youtu.be/f3DitD8_a1I?t=303

Edit: He might be completely wasted though

Audioslave was very hard to listen to live, he could be absolutely horrible during some of those shows.

If I remember right, he sounded A LOT better one of the two nights of PJ20 as well? but its been awhile since ive listened to those.

I thought Ed did quit smoking.

nah he is still smoking the salami bigtime

that video tho. wow. I thought it was a Shreds at first.

Yeah, too bad for this guy: https://youtu.be/GGh2cqxGjBw?t=3227

I like Audioslave, but that was the worst I have ever heard Cornell. He sounds really drunk.

Sucks getting old huh.

Got my DVR set for the show tonight.