revolutionaryetude:

NUTSHELL
Alice in Chains

We chase misprinted lies
We face the path of time
And yet I fight
Yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call home

Whenever I listen to this song I think people nowadays should just stop for a minute and realize the crap they’re listening to. This is not only one of the most painfully beautiful songs ever written, it’s also - probably - the best unplugged ever performed. Unplugged doesn’t even exsist anymore, yeah, they try to do them, but they’re not real - I mean, what would Gaga have if you unplug her pc?
Grunge was the first kind of music I actually chose to listen to when I was a teen, so I used to be a huge fan of Pearl Jam and Nirvana (and Soundgarden, Blind Melon, Stone Temple Pilots…) but Alice in Chains remain the best band from grunge era; yet, the “grunge band” definition is higly inaccurate and mostly geographical (the Seattle spot): they had several influences from metal to blues, great variety in their production (each album was different) and peculiar harmonized vocals (Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell) that distinguished them from the others.

Many know them for famous songs like Down in a hole or Would?, but this is my personal favourite, with the dark lyrics dealing with loneliness, death and despair, and heroin addiction flying all above. This unplugged was one of their last concert, with Staley clearly deep down in his depression (his girlfriend had died in a car accident) and addiction: he’s in pain, and his beautiful, original and haunting voice is able to express in every note all the sadness and the struggle he’s going through.

I think Cantrell didn’t get enough credit for his work: he was the band’s brain, he wrote the music and many lyrics, and was the hell of a singer, too. But Staley was simply transcending, and dearly missed. I love this video. I can’t get enough of it. It is a true 90’s classic.