The Red Hot Chili Peppers singing "Under the Bridge," a very personal song written by Anthony Keidis, about his home, the City of Angels, Los Angeles, California. Fire Aid benefit concert, January 30, 2025. The concert was a benefit for all the thousands of people affected by the terrible Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena fires of January 2025.
Thank you firefighters!
I watched them save the area I live in now, on the ground and in the air. Thank you for your hard work.
Here are some of the ROCK highlights from the Fire Aid L.A. concert (These song/set videos are getting taken down or seriously shadow banned, but I'll link the best ones I can find now)
Nirvana Reunion- 4 songs- Surviving Nirvana members plus singers St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Violet Grohl
A poet for most of my life, I wrote this poem while the fires were still burning. This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote while working with the Red Cross on the huge Rodeo Chedeski fires in Arizona in 2002. I lost that original poem.
After the fire
I thought it was a nightmare
When I awoke
It couldn’t be real
Some kind of tragic joke
But there I stood
Amid the char
The house, my life
Even my car
The grass crunched black
Beneath my shoes
I had my family
But no idea what to do
Lost… the house, furniture
Our pictures and things
We had each other, the kids
And our wedding rings
Everything got blurry
I could still smell the smoke
With a charred 9 iron
I began to poke
I hoped for something
Some item dear
To have survived the inferno
A small reason to cheer
Soot, ashes, charred pieces of wood
Shattered picture frames
I wanted not to cry, I wanted hope
I wanted someone to blame
Our home, now ruins
It just couldn’t be real
I found nothing to pick up
I didn’t know how to feel
The skeletons of trees
In our backyard
Black, crisp, and silent
Everything was charred
I rubbed my eyes
I screamed loud at God
Why did this happen?
It was all just too hard
That’s when I saw it
A single green blade of grass
A shoot of life among the black
The future surging from the past
I walked closer
By the sliver of green, I froze
Against the forces of hell
That blade of grass rose
It couldn’t shout or scream
That shoot simply grew
If that blade of grass could start over
I realized we could come back, too
It was tough, the weeks after
We began anew, step by step
The memory of that blade of grass
I clung to and kept
Each day a bit of progress
To replace the life we had lost
Little things meant much more now
We struggled, but it was worth the cost
Each new day we woke up
Then we figured out what to do
If that single, green blade of grass could grow back
We knew that we could, too
-The White Bear
(aka Steve Emig)
I'm doing most of my writing these days on Substack, you can check out more of my work there:
Or is "Nothing Compares 2 U" Sinead O'Conner's song now? Her 1990, stripped down, soul wrenching cover and full face video is what really launched this song into the stratosphere. What about Chris Cornell's cover in 2016 with acoustic guitars, cello, and haunting vocals? Cynthia Erivo took it in another direction at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this year.
"Nothing Compares 2 U" has been covered by P!nk, Brandi Carlile, Madonna, Annie Lennox, Chris Stapleton, actress/singer Kate Hudson, as well as instrumental versions by orchestras, pianists, a romantic saxophone player and a bass clarinet player, along with many more.
But it was this cover and video by Sinead O'Conner in 1990 took this song to a whole different place. Sinead and her crew reinvented this song. When it's a Prince song to begin with, that really says something.
I often learn things when writing blog posts, that's part of the fun. I get an idea for a post, and get drawn deep into one subject or another, falling down a rabbit hole that goes places I didn't expect. In the last 24 hours, I've learned that this epic song is not only 40 years old this year, but it has become a modern standard, with a whole lot more really good cover versions than I had any idea existed. There are 29 versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U" linked in this blog post. There are three versions by Prince and three by Sinead O' Conner linked, each a bit different from the others. Then there are 23 other versions. I discovered P!nk's cover with the orchestra yesterday, recorded in a BBC studio, embedded above. That blew me away. Then I just kept digging on YouTube, and finding more and more covers.
Here's how this blog post came to be. As a homeless blogger, I spend most mornings in a certain McDonald's, with a sweet tea, and a sausage biscuit on a good day. I'm usually hanging out with 3 or 4 other homeless guys, decent guys from different backgrounds. We sit there, talking about one thing or another, from the weather to politics to surfing and current events. We have some really cool conversations at times.
Yesterday, one guy mentioned something about Chris Cornell being in Soundgarden, which I didn't know. Yeah, they had several cool songs, but I was never a huge fan, and I'm not someone who knows every musician in every band. I just like music.
About a year ago, I ran into Chris Cornell's incredible SiriusXM version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," and I love his version. Yesterday, I realized I probably met him, way back in 1989. One day while working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, a band walked through our studio. That happened occasionally, Vision was trying to get bands to help promote Vision Street Wear clothes. Gene Loves Jezebel, Antrax, and INXS all toured Unreel back then, along with several lesser known musicians. Our office was the coolest part of Vision, with a 7 foot high Statue of Liberty on the landing of the steps, an ocean view from two offices, and the $500,000 video edit bay. So when Vision owner Brad Dorfman wanted to impress someone, he brought them to Unreel.
As I walked out after work that day, one of the guys from the band said something like, "Hey, we're Soundgarden, want some stickers?" This would have been in their early, SST Records days. I may have heard the name of the band at that point, but wasn't familiar with them. But I was a BMX guy, I never turned down free stickers. "I said, "Sure." They gave me maybe 20 of the rectangular, "Soundgarden Louder than Love" stickers. I put them in the glove compartment of my truck, and forgot about them. A couple years later, my friend Keith was digging the the glove box for something and found them. He freaked, "Holy shit, dude! You've got Soundgarden stickers. Can I have a couple?" "You can have them all," I said. Did I meet Chris Cornell that day in the Unreel parking lot? Probably. But, I can't say for sure. But I remembered the band's name after that, though I never was a became a big fan. Yesterday, when I realized I probably met him, I got the idea for this blog post, thinking there were at least three awesome versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U."
In 2016, after the untimely death of Prince, Chris Cornell did his amazing cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U," as did several other people, as a tribute to the purple musical genius. As you can see in the links below, several people covered this song in 2016 and 2017, but I, personally, think Chris Cornell's cover rises above the others. This led to a resurgence of interest in Prince, and in this particular song, still best known for Sinead O'Conner's breakout, 1990 version.
Then, in 2017, Chris Cornell tragically died by suicide. His death brought another wave of interest in this song, since he had just done an epic version of it. Though my list of links below may not be in perfect order, you can see that there was a surge in people who covered this song, in that era. This brought "Nothing Compares 2 U" into the awareness of a whole new generation of fans, and the covers of this song increased.
Then, last year, 2023, Sinead O' Conner passed away, also at a relatively young age, of pulmonary issues. Whether she liked it or not, this was the song that unexpectedly launched her into mainstream success and notoriety. As a singer, songwriter, activist, and all around strong woman, Sinead had a huge fan base. Her death led to yet another wave of interest in her work, and in this song in particular. Another wave of young people was introduced to this song, and more began to cover it, in a variety of ways. "Nothing Compares 2 U" has become a true standard of our times, as it turns 40 years old this year.
As if the song is not haunting enough, the three people with the strongest ties to it all died in their 50's. Prince was 57, Sinead O' Conner was 56, and Chris Cornell was 52. That's as tragic as the heart wrenching song itself.
This blog post is my little tribute to this incredible song, during its 40th anniversary. This is a tribute to its creator, Prince, and to Sinead and Chris. This is a tribute to all the musicians who have given this incredible song a go, adding their own soul and style to the song, and the music world as a whole. If you've read this far, check out any of the links that sound interesting, above and below. Maybe all these variations of this song may spark some inspiration in you to write your own song, or do whatever creative work you do. Or maybe this song will help you survive your own broken heart someday. I think music is one of the great things human beings have come up with, and we need musicians to keep creating as a key part of human society. Music is a form of magic that, sometimes, just keeps growing and expanding on its own, even long after the creator of it is gone.
