I first heard this song during the summer of 6th grade. My parents used to take us camping at Lake Skinner, in the dry and blazing inlands of Southern California. They had a pop up trailer which was part tent, part trailer, part inferno. As a younger kid I used to love these trips. My brother and I would be free to aimlessly ride our bikes through the dirt for hours during the day, and to throw things in the fire pit at night just to watch them burn at night. By the time I was 12 though, the fun was gone. A weekend at the lake became a 72 hour prison term with no Cd's, no MTV, no possibility of parole and most of all, no Rock n Roll.
My mom used to have a small, portable black and white television set that plugged into the cigarette lighter for electricity. I wasn't interested in anything that would be on stations 2 through 13 at that time, nor am I now. This contraption did have an FM radio on it however, and that was intriguing. There were no rock stations within 50 miles of the lake and the reception was terrible. Inside our trailer, I crafted an antenna matrix using anything that was metal. Beer cans attached to wire coat hangers, held together with paper clips connected to soda cans wrapped in aluminum foil. Anything. It looked like something Dr. Frankenstein would have designed, awaiting a lightening storm to bring the monster to life. After hours of amateur electric engineering, I got a San Diego based Hard Rock station to come through.
The moment the static cleared, it gave way to a haunting and soulful chord progression. It was simple. It was dirty. The tone of the guitar fascinated me. At that time, I didn't play guitar yet and my young mind was running rampant with inquisitive thoughts. 'What kind of guitar sounded like that? What would a guitar that sounded this good look like? How much would it cost? How long would it take me to learn to play like that?'
The opening lines, 'I don't mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence' were captivating. For years I contemplated what that meant. The soaring vocals on the chorus, "I'm going hungry" sounded shockingly convincing. The singer actually sounded hungry. I knew there was a deeper meaning taking place that I couldn't yet understand.
As soon as the song ended, I dashed outside to find my brother. I told him I'd just heard the best song ever written and that he had to hear it. 'What's it called?" he asked. I guessed it was called "I'm Going Hungry." "Who's it by?" he wondered. I did too, since I had no idea.
For 3 years that song haunted and eluded me. This was before the wide spread availability of the Internet. All the wonders of the world weren't a Google search away. Then during the fall of 9th grade I saw the video late at night on MTV's Alternative Nation. Kennedy (who I found to be extremely attractive) introduced the video as a masterpiece. I couldn't have agreed more. I was shocked to see the singers from two of my other favorite bands, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Chris Cornell of Soundargden. Everything was making sense now. The song was 'Hunger Strike' and the band was Temple of the Dog. She told the brief story of how members of both bands were originally in the same band. After their singer died, they split ways and found success separately, then came back together with their new singers to make the tribute album.
For 2 more years I chased that CD. Most record stores didn't seem to carry it, and on the rare occasion I did find it available, my wallet didn't permit the purchase. When I finally did get my copy during my Junior Year of high school, the album became an instant classic in my personal collection. Sophomore year of college, my truck was broken into and the disc was stolen, along with 20 or 30 others. Temple of the Dog was replaced first. I've owned two more copies since, and probably always will.
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