Confessions of a Fanboy

It started with my quoting a line from “Dam That River” in an e-mail to 11 this morning. “You piss upon my candle” captured my feeling at that moment. 11 likes AiC; he doesn’t love them. He was unfamiliar with the lyric but he liked it. That discussion was enough to send me flipping through my AiC collection. It probably didn’t hurt that I spent a lot of time preparing for BCA listening to Mudhoney.

I started off by listening to most of Dirt. I thought about starting the album over and listening to it in its entirety and probably will, but decided to queue up Unplugged first. Setting aside the obvious human tragedy of the loss of a man’s life, the loss of the music Layne Staley should have and could have made during the years he was inactive and in the years since his passing is incalculable.

AiC’s music is a painful reminder and a warning. Layne was like an undercover reporter sent to explore a vast wasteland. His music exposed a lot of us to a world with which we are/were completely unfamiliar. The pain, rage, and anguish in his voice, when married to the lyrics he and Jerry Cantrell wrote, are sometimes too naked, raw, and exposed to listen to without physically turning away. Listening to AiC is a visceral, demanding experience.

Layne wasn’t some sort of messiah who died for our sins. He didn’t do us any favors, but he did provide a service to us beyond having helped birth some incredible music. He made choices. He fell prey to an insidious disease. Choice. Chance. Destiny. Disease. These were all factors in his life and all played a role in his death. His music tells that story, and more, with his words and his voice.

You don’t have to memorize every line of every song. You don’t have to be able to bust out with “You piss upon my candle” in a Friday morning e-mail. Listen to his voice. Listen to the detuned harmonies and haunted melodies. It’s all right there and it sticks with you. Alice’s music has been with me more than 17 years now. It has grown on me and with me. My understanding and appreciation of it has only deepened with the passage of time. I turn to it when my misery wants company. I turn to it for cathartic release when I’m feeling overcome by anger. I turn to it to hear that beauty and even humor can be born out of of pain and anger. Sometimes I turn to it just because I like it.

I’ve practically bankrupted us buying every piece of music I can get my hands on, and Alice in Chains is just one of the bands that does this to me. This is why I write this site. These aren’t just songs to me. Even when I’m listening in my most casual headspace, there is still something larger and deeper that happens inside me. Music has made me a better person. I know not everyone feels that same way about music, but I wish they did.

Filed under: Tags: Alice in Chains