Blind Melon, Shannon Hoon, The Music we remember..
Posted: Monday, May 24, 2004
by Andrew Olson
The Fountainheads.com
"It's been a long road, long adventure, and many different paths. 2004 marks my 11th year of being a melon fan. Maybe now the patch has settled down it's a good time to reflect on what brought us all here and the unique melon stories we all have. So this is my Blind Melon story..
**Kiwimelon's Story**
It all started with me being a huge Guns N Roses fan. I bought the Making of Don't Cry in 1993 which of course featured Shannon Hoon. I thought he was
adorable in a cute dopey sweet way, spit dribbling and stuff. Anyway, he was going on about his band and he had this flannel shirt on (Go the 90s!!) which he had painted BLIND MELON on the back across the bottom.
I thought he had a very unique voice so I decided to buy the album. It was around the time of No Rain being a huge hit and I had cable which got Much Music from Canada and it was in heavy rotation. I swear I have No Rain on video more than 10 different times because I was always trying to get The Perfect recording of it without anything cut from the start or end. I loved that song, yeah I admit it..sooooo what?!
So I bought the album, didn't like it at all, thought it was weird, and sounded like old folk music! Now keep in mind I was 14 years old and my musical appreciation was pretty limited. Before I started liking GNR I listened to Michael Jackson and New Kids on the Block… shhhh don't tell anyone (I saw them live weeee!!).
I was the teenybopper from Hell.
I listened to The first Blind Melon Album a few times and of course it starts growing on me. Enough that I am listening to it over and over all day long.
I became obsessed.
I start trying to spread the melon word around but with little avail. They never really made it big in New Zealand. No Rain was a hit here and later on Galaxie
was to some extent. So it was a lonely business being a melon in New Zealand, but I didn't mind most of the time. It made me feel special and unique and I was getting it while others were clambering all over the popular sucess of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. They even thought they were very *ahem* different and alternative. (I also like these bands but we won't go into this issue, that's a whole different story).
Anyway so then came Soup. Loved it, not as much as the self titled, it wasn't as raw, I guess it was more mature and at that point I couldn't quite appreciate it fully but I still loved it. Soup was just awesome because I finally had some new Melon to listen to.
I was Dying to see them live, at that point it was my Major dream in life. I was waiting patiently for the day that they would come to NZ... Then October 95 rolls around. I get a phone call from my sister saying that she saw on Much Music that a member of Blind Melon had died.
She couldn't remember who, but she kept saying, "I'm so sorry Sarah".
I didn't believe it! In the back of my mind I was thinking, "PLEASE MAY IT NOT BE SHANNON HOON". I didn't give it much more thought pure denial. Later on that evening I saw it on the news. This arsehole was pretty much laughing at how this "one hit wonder band frontman had died of a drug overdose". It was just another drug casualty
in the rock n’ roll world.
But not to me.
I was in complete shock, I couldn't even cry I couldn't even think. The next day I went to school and when it came to telling other people it really sank in and I started crying. People either laughed at me or didn't care. Kurt had died, now there's a tragedy, Shannon who? Get the fuck over it lassie.
So that was the end of my dream of seeing them live and for a long time, afterward I couldn't even listen to Blind Melon. It wasn't just music to me, it was a way of life, and it had just died.
Then Nico was released. I had it ordered in from the US actually as no one here was stocking it. I Loved this album, it was pure, raw, honest, and everything I had ever loved about melon.The next five years were very strange in my life and my underlying love for melon always remained. My musical tastes were as varied as the chain of events that were happening to me.Every year I would light a candle for Shannon on October 21.
Then a glorious thing happened, I finally got the internet! This is New Zealand, computers were expensive and so was the internet! But in my job I was allowed access to the net and this was awesome as it opened up a new world of melon! I could now actually find out information and read interviews and
Yes! I found other melons!
This is where I find the Patch and I finally stumbled into my field full of dancing bees! I've met some of the most awesome people there ever and of course I've finally been able to hear unreleased melon which is a breathe of fresh air after having only 3 albums in all these years.
In 2002 I planned my trip to the states to visit Shannon’s Vigil, but then I found out I was pregnant.
Without a doubt the child is to be named Shannon, Girl or Boy and heaven help the father if he tred to argue with me!! (he didn't-he's a mini-melon himself) Now I have a wee Shannon of my own, I have a Patch, I have melon friends from everywhere, I have new melon, I have melon videos (THANKS GABBY!) and this year looks like the year I will be making my trip to visit Shannon and say, " Thank You for changing my life"!
God knows what I would be like today if I had never discovered melon? Non-melons just don't get it.
It goes beyond obsession and if I'm sounding crazy to you right now then maybe you don't get it fully either.But now and forever I am proud to say
**Hi, I'm Kiwimelon, and I'm a melonaholic**
Rogers Stevens (Guitarist of Blind Melon wrote after reading this article)
Kiwi,
wow,
that was pretty cool......Rogers"
For a full biography the deal on www.blindmelon.org is the best.
It's like you took the words right out of my mind and heart.The melon also touched me in a way I cant even articulate.Ive never written about my experience but wanted to so many times. It is still painful 10 years later.
hey missing shannon lots forgot how much it means for a few years but just getting back into it, take care
Was also a lonely Meloner and its as if your words were my words. Got into Melon through G'n'R's and became obsessed - will never ever get over the death of Shannon. I don't even understand why I feel so deeply about this-I wept buckets reading this
Hey that was a very nice story!! You an I sound just alike!! this is my 3 year of going to the vigil! Being around his friends family an daughter gives me much more of an understanding!! Thank you so much!! Good work----
I Get it! I am so excited to be going to the vigil this year too for the first time and to meet other melons! I have yet to meet anyone who loves Blind Melon as much as I do! I am a melonaholic, and I love it! See ya there! Peace, love and Shannon.
Your thougths are well layed, funny how we can all close our eyes and make it all go away...
Great reflexion, i'm 15 years old only, and i listen to BM since i was 12, i live in Uruguay, so here is sooo difficult to find melonheads, and here people talk in spanish haha, and in this age, people is listening ohter music... i prefer that five hippies of the ninties, singin that peacefully music, as you, it's my dream to see BM, with travis now, thanks for this article, we all miss shannon, even if i wasn't alive when he dead, loves, of a melon