alice in chains

MoPOP Founders Award 2020 Honoring Alice In Chains Livestream 12/1/20

This was a star studded free livestream to honor the career of Alice In Chains and raise money for the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, also known locally as EMP or Experience Music Project as it was originally named. After 10 minutes of messing around with trying to get the feed it finally kicked on with Alice In Chains in the middle of performing “Your Decision.” Observations from the two and a half hour event:

Jerry Cantrell reprised his role as Nona from back in the day when they did the Nona Tapes! This was awesome because I had the original home video on VHS back in the day.
Mike McCready made a brief appearance doing the opening riff of “It Ain’t Like That” that made me want to hear the whole song but no dice.
Ann Wilson sang “Rooster” spliced with old Alice In Chains footage with Layne. She has an amazing voice but I just wasn’t feeling her version.
Corey Taylor, Dave Navarro and Taylor Hawkins did a performance of “Man In the Box” with current Jane’s Addiction bass player Chris Chaney. Some might say Corey was making the song his own with the vocals but to me it sounded like he was just struggling to imitate Layne. This is coming from a guy that loves Corey Taylor so no disrespect to him but after hearing two great singers do Alice In Chains songs it just made me appreciate how incredibly unique and talented Layne was even more. At this point I realized I was in for a long night.
Duff McKagan and Shooter Jennings did a pretty rad version of “Down In a Hole” with Duff impressively playing all the instruments except lead guitar. This is such a powerful song and they captured the overall mood perfectly.
Korn did an admirable job covering “Would?” but cover songs are a strange beast to me. I love Korn but feel like you either need to absolutely fucking nail it, make it way different or make it better in some way and this did not do any of those things for me.
Mark Lanegan and his backing band of misfits including Nancy Wilson covered “Brother” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just got done reading Lanegan’s book and I could tell he was giving an inspired performance for his fallen friend.
Fishbone did a cover of “Them Bones” with horns and all and it was awesome. They definitely made this song their own but kept the bones of the song intact (pun intended).
MoPOP has a contest for local talent called Sound Off and at this point the program featured a handful of gifted artists doing various bits of Alice In Chains songs.
An artist named Liv Warfield did a cover of “Put You Down” that was respectable. It is always nice to hear women in rock.
Mastodon covered “Again” and the music part was on point but again I just was not digging the vocals.
Kim Thayil made an appearance with a group of people I did not recognize doing a full-length version of “It Ain’t Like That,” which finally quieted my brain after the teaser Mike McCready threw out at the top of the program.
Kim Thayil and Krist Novoselic doing “Drone” with two female singers was right up there as the highlight of the whole thing for me. It simply sounded great.
Weirdo extraordinaire Les Claypool made a cameo doing a crazy partial bass solo version of “Man In the Box” that was pretty cool.
Lily Cornell Silver (daughter of Chris Cornell and Susan Silver) made her professional music performance debut playing piano and singing the beautifully haunting “Black Gives Way to Blue” with Queensryche’s Chris DeGarmo accompanying her on acoustic guitar and she killed it. I guess it does not hurt to have great genes.
Mark Lanegan made a second appearance doing “Nutshell,” which I did not enjoy as much as his first act but still liked nonetheless.
Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd did “Angry Chair” with Tad Doyle singing and it stirred the same emotions in me as the Mastodon cover did: musically it was great but Tad’s vocals just were not doing it for me. Mike McCready showed up again during this just long enough to lay down a scorching one-two punch solo with Kim.
Billy Corgan did a stark rendition of “Check My Brain” alone with an acoustic guitar. I love Billy but if you have read this far then you know his voice was definitely out of its element here.
Metallica was one of the most anticipated performances of the night but when they finally appeared doing a partial acoustic version of “Would?” (that had already been done by Korn) it was a little disappointing.
The grand finale was Alice In Chains doing “No Excuses” and it was a nice ending to a really magnificent evening.

It is noteworthy that it was free to watch the event but money was being raised through donations. While this was nice it was also disheartening to see the tally of money raised at a paltry amount even as we neared the end of the broadcast. They could have raised way more money if they had just charged something in the first place. Since most of the other streams I have been watching average $15 for a ticket I made a donation in that amount because music is important and MoPOP is doing good work for the community and the arts in general.

Aftershock 10/14/18

To nobody’s surprise I woke up still a little drunk from the day before this morning. After getting our shit together we walked down the road to our staple Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some football and get some beer and food. After we were nice and sauced on $5 pitchers we made a pit stop at a local dispensary for edibles on the way to the show.

We made it just in time to catch Seether, who was badass as per usual. Their newest album Poison the Parish came out in May of 2017 but for some reason I had not picked it up yet so was unfamiliar with the two songs they played from the album but I did like the songs. Note to self: pick up the album.

To our delight we did not have to leave this stage for the next band we wanted to see which was Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. Slash was melting faces like it was 1987. I never really went down the rabbit hole of Slash solo material so most of the set was unfamiliar but hearing “Nightrain” made the whole set worthwhile.

I had just saw Incubus exactly a month earlier at Kaaboo. I think they played exactly the same set but that was just fine by me.

Alice In Chains had just released Rainier Fog less than two months before this and played a short but intense set.

AIC

This is when another night starts to get fuzzy again as Marvin and I got separated from the other two. We managed to make it to see System of a Down, which I am always pumped to see. They had not released new material in nearly 13 years at the time of this concert but we all keep lining up because they are incredible live.

At this point Mr. or Mrs. Reader you are probably asking yourself (again) why I continue to spend a lot of money to just get trashed and not remember everything. For the answer we need look no further than the wise words of Wooderson: L-I-V-I-N.

Epicenter 8/22/09

The Fairplex in Pomona is basically the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds that underwent a name change in 1984 and host to the largest county fair in the world. I drove up with Bob and a guy he works with to get scorched by the sun and a pretty solid lineup.

The first band we gave any shit about was Street Sweeper Social Club, which was Tom Morello’s new project with Boots Riley from The Coup on microphone duties. I did not have the benefit of really listening to their newly released self-titled debut album before we saw them because I only learned of them at all very shortly before the show. In an article written by Alex Young in Consequence of Sound Morello described the project/album as “revolutionary party jams. It’s got huge steamroller riffs combined with depth, charge, funk, while Boots unloads clip after clip of incendiary rhymes rich with satire and venom.” Boots Riley added “this is a time when the working class is being fleeced left and right. More families will be homeless and more people will be jobless. They’ll need something to listen to on their iPods while storming Wall Street.” The music was all those things. I only wish I had the benefit of getting to know the songs prior to seeing the performance.

Wolfmother was up next and I had just seen them open for STP less than a month before this. They were awesome again but essentially put on the same show as the first time I saw them.

Alice In Chains was the first band I really really wanted to see again. This was to be my third time seeing them with William DuVall singing but now they were only a month away from releasing the excellent Black Gives Way to Blue so we got to hear “Check My Brain” and “A Looking in View” in addition to the classics. It was a little strange to see them in full daylight but they killed it.

Linkin Park was up next and I had not seen them since the two times I saw them back in 2001 when they were touring for Hybrid Theory. At this point they were a full on hit factory and their newest album was their third album Minutes to Midnight. They were touring pros by now so the set was very tight and they looked like they had gained some confidence after years on the road.

Closing out the night was the almighty Tool. I do not care how many times I have seen them they still blow my mind. It’s like an old friend that you haven’t seen in awhile and I had not seen them for almost two years since I saw them in Spokane. Tool is an experience. The visuals are on par with the epic nature of the music and the whole thing can very easily put someone into a trance like state. The pot that I smoked did not do anything to counter this feeling. The newest album was still 10,000 Days but I was in hog heaven. Adam Jones has a way of playing guitar sometimes where he appears to be staring into the crowd fixated on one spot as he is pulling off these badass rhythms. We were watching from his side of the stage and I was right in his stare zone, which was messing with me in my state of affairs. Also of note was that Maynard performed on crutches due to an injury. Not that it affected his performance since he stays in the back of the stage anyway, but it was pretty cool he did not call off the show.

Velvet Revolver 9/16/07

I did not hear about this show until about a month after tickets had gone on sale but somehow was still able to score general admission floor tickets directly through Ticketmaster. Being a fan of Guns N’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots obviously made Velvet Revolver exciting on paper but this excitement was cemented the first time I heard Contraband. For some reason unbeknownst to me I missed out on seeing Velvet Revolver when they came to San Diego to support that album so I was not about to miss out again when they came back to support their new album Libertad that had been released just a couple months before this show. This was about as close as I was ever going to get to seeing Guns N’ Roses since I had never seen them and as a bonus a reunited Alice In Chains opened.

William DuVall had gotten even better in his lead singer role in the year that had passed since I last saw Alice In Chains. We were still two years away from Black Gives Way to Blue so we were treated to a very Dirt heavy setlist. Apparently I was not the only one ecstatic to hear these songs again live as evidenced by the entire crowd singing along to every word.

ALICE IN CHAINS SETLIST: Again, Grind, We Die Young, Them Bones, Dam That River, Rain When I Die, Down in a Hole, No Excuses, Angry Chair, Man in the Box, Would?, Rooster

Velvet Revolver was absolutely fantastic. There was a moment when Slash came about 10 feet in front of me and just ripped off the most effortless badass minute and a half solo I may have ever seen. The Velvet Revolver songs were amazing but seeing them perform three of my favorite GNR songs and three STP songs was equally amazing. A full on sitting on stools performance of “Patience” was goosebump inducing.

VELVET REVOLVER SETLIST: Let It Roll, She Mine, Sucker Train Blues, Do It For the Kids, Superhuman, Big Machine, Pills, Demons, Etc., Vaseline, The Last Fight, Interstate Love Song, Patience, Gravedancer, It’s So Easy, Get Out the Door, Fall to Pieces, She Builds Quick Machines, Set Me Free, Mr. Brownstone, Sex Type Thing, Slither

Alice In Chains 8/18/06

This show after the horse races at the Del Mar Fairgrounds was included with the price of admission, which means I got to see Alice In Chains for about $6. Jerry Cantrell recruited William DuVall to take over lead vocal duties for Layne Staley and started to tour. It would be a full three years before this incarnation would put out their first Alice In Chains album Black Gives Way to Blue so they stuck to playing all the songs we knew and loved. Layne left some big shoes to fill and there is nobody out there that quite sings like he did but DuVall did a good job. It was great to hear the songs live again. I don’t think Jerry Cantrell felt quite the same as I did about this show as some disrespectful motherfucker threw a shoe at him during their encore and hit him square in the face. He threw down his guitar and walked off the stage as the rest of the band, not realizing what just happened, kept playing. Once they did realize they too walked off the stage and disappeared into the night never to be heard from again.

Alice In Chains 9/17/93

My birthdate is March 18^thin the year of nineteen hundred and seventy-eight. At the date of this concert I was a 15 year old rock and roll loving male in Kennewick, WA. I was about 225 miles Southeast of the “Grunge” music scene going on in the famed Seattle, WA. The first song I heard from Alice in Chains that really caught my attention was “Would?” I don’t know if I heard it on the radio or saw it on MTV back when they used to play videos. Once I did see the video with Layne Staley looking like a complete badass I was done. I got into the album Dirt first and then went back and explored Facelift. They are both amazing albums but I think Dirt took it up another level. This was the album they were touring for at this point and I couldn’t believe they were coming to my town! We did have a thriving local music scene going on in our area and that is how I first became hooked on seeing live music. We had great shows out at the fairgrounds including bands such as Small, Black Happy, and even Green Day before the world knew who Green Day was. There were also various shows held at people’s houses, the Hoedown, and Shane’s barn. Pretty memorable times, but Alice In Chains was to be my first major rock concert. Everyone in the “wrong” crowd I was hanging out with liked Alice In Chains too but the concert happened to fall on the same night as the homecoming football game for our high school. They chose the game and have regretted it ever since. For me it was never a choice. I talked my neighbor Craig into going to the show with me. He was about 2 years younger than me and we had become friends when I moved in a few houses down about 3 years before this. The Tri-Cities Coliseum was the biggest place to play in town.

What I do remember is the moment Alice In Chains took the stage. There was a cargo net much like the one you used to climb in elementary school that ran the whole distance of the front of the stage. What an entrance and what a setlist! The only other distinct things I remember about the show is that when they played “Godsmack” Layne Stayley kept putting his face in the cargo net while he was singing and this was the first concert I had ever crowd surfed at. They worked their way through the setlist with a fury and I feel lucky to have witnessed this magical event, especially now that Layne Staley is no longer with us. In fact this was their last major tour even though they released two EP’s and another album after this. The saddest part about Layne Staley is that it didn’t seem to surprise many people when he passed away because of his known struggles with heavy drugs. The super ironic part is that that his estimated death was April 5^th, 2002, which is exactly 8 years after the estimated death of Kurt Cobain. The irony for me is that this was my first major concert and my next wouldn’t be until after Kurt was found dead. This was a particularly traumatic event for the world of music and me since Nirvana was my favorite band. I never had the opportunity to see Nirvana because at this point in my teenage years my friends and I didn’t really have cars or our driver’s licenses yet. It made me realize that I better see every band that I have the opportunity to see because you never know when one of the band members may die or if the band will break up. In short, life is short and this is the event that I can credit for making me first realize this.

SETLIST – Rooster, Godsmack, Junkhead, Angry Chair, Man in the Box, Hate to Feel, Bleed the Freak, It Ain’t Like That, Dirt, A Little Bitter, We Die Young, Dam That River, Them Bones, Would?, Sickman