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.

Primus 7/6/18

PrimusTicket

When I brought up this show to Ingrid she asked me what kind of music Primus made and I was perplexed. Partially because she did not really know who Primus was and partially because I could not really think of how to describe Primus. I guess in my mind they are a unique mix of rock, funk and psychedelia with a virtuoso bass player that sings.

I had seen Primus almost exactly a year before this but three months after that they released the concept album The Desaturating Seven based on the children’s book The Rainbow Goblins, which was the first album since 1995’s Tales From the Punchbowl to feature drummer Tim Alexander.

This was one of the only times waiting for a ticket paid off because Calvin and I were able to get tickets a couple days before for only $8 with all fees off of StubHub. That is not a typo but it did make me feel like a criminal. Calvin and I showed up with just enough time to grab a beer before Mastodon took the stage to open. I have tried to like Mastodon but it just does not speak to me. This time of trying to like them was no different so I took the opportunity to stock up on beer while the lines were short. In hindsight I probably did not need much more beer since I started out the night with my first six pack of the hemp infused 7% New Belgium beer The Hemperor.

I love that Primus sandwiched The Desaturating Seven album in its entirety in between a choice selection of songs from Suck On This, Frizzle Fry, Sailing the Seas of Cheese and Pork Soda. Sneaky sneaky. This may have been the first time I ever saw “Nature Boy” live and it was worth the wait.

SETLIST: To Defy the Laws of Tradition, Pudding Time, Here Come the Bastards, Too Many Puppies, The Star-Spangled Banner, American Life, The Valley, The Seven, The Trek, The Scheme, The Dream, The Storm, The Ends?, Nature Boy, Welcome to This World, My Name is Mud, Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, John the Fisherman