Shannon Hoon “All I Can Say”

I was chatting with my guitar instructor about songwriting and we got on the topic of melody and he was sharing some artists who were especially creative in how they would compose a melody over a given harmony. One of those artists was Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon.

This prompted me to watch the 2019 documentary All I Can Say ($3 on Amazon Prime).

I really enjoyed this film. A few bits about it:

• It’s all just edited clips from Hoon’s camcorder. Hoon videologged his life from 1990 to 1995 which captured their rise from Midwest obscurity to the cover of Rolling Stone and playing Woodstock ’94.
• Hoon died from complication of a cocaine overdose at age 28. The documentary opens with his final day. He sets the camcorder on the hotel dresser, calls his wife while laying in bed, and goes to sleep for the last time. It’s a surreal thing to watch before the tape rewinds 5 years to the start of the videologging.
• The documentary is very raw as you might expect. It’s an intimate tag-along on his life. There’s also some amazing cameos. I’ll spoil one…he sang back up on several songs on the Use Your Illusions records, being from the same town as Axl Rose. He’s also in the video for Don’t Cry.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to lots of Blind Melon the past couple weeks but the video I watch every day now is their performance of the song Soup at Woodstock. I just love how he sings this, and the transition into the heavier part of the song is [chef’s kiss]. (YouTube)