@@lanecore75Amen Brother, 🙏🙌❤!! Truly one of the absolute most amazing concerts of all time!! God willing I can get out of the hell, I'm trying but with the massive trauma from a couple of wicked motorcycle accidents living in pain, it's no way to live.. I'm praying that these specialists Dr's I finally got in with can get my pain under control with the least medication possible, and get my health back up.. turned 49 a couple of years ago and my health just went downhill like a switch... God bless you guys, and I am using music to help me get through it all...
Man this is incredible! It’s amazing how brilliantly good he sounded considering the damage and abuse afflicted on his body. I imagine what he could have sounded like had he turned his life around early and took complete care of his body. I bet he would have had multiple solo albums and projects out at this point… he has been my favorite for many years now.. you do a killer job on these videos! It’s so good seeing Layne get all the love he deserved! Keep ‘em coming my man 🤘🏻
I remember first hearing this on the radio in high school and immediately dismissing it as part of that 60s/70s revivalism that blipped in the mid-90s. Pretty stupid on my part, it's gone on to be one of my top 10 favorite albums. I really love the balance of soft and loud with Mad Season, I'm certain they're wearing their influences on their sleeves when they played, but their unique qualities as musicians don't make it sound like a pastiche. Wake-up is definitely a highlight, the groove, the solo, the vocals, it's blues-y, beatnik-y, acid rock-y. It's an album getting better with time and sounding more out of time and place as it ages. Great snapshot of a group of artists trying to cope the best way they could. Appreciate the video ✌️
Thank you for this, having someone who also values Layne voice and Madseason in general is great, also, amazing vocal technique (your notes are on point)
I remember when Above came out I was on a road trip with my best friend to Cape Cod of all places. It was beautiful out, we were in a Honda Del Sol with the top off, and just blaring these songs through everything a stock stereo could give. Young, dumb, and full of... well, you get it. We were so excited to hear anything new from Layne, and it didn't disappoint. Thanks for the memories GOAT, and RIP.
I’m from the time of grunge but was a classic rock and roll girl all the way. I have been listening to AIC for about six days or so. Nirvana was my first introduction about 6 months ago. So needless to say grunge is mostly new to me. I’m absolutely loving it. The mtv unplugged AIC is some of the best music I’ve ever had the luck of finding.
For sure, I spent some time Buckley, spending a lot of evenings at a club with live music 7 nights a week over inn Puyallup. Got to jam with one band and played foxy lady on the guitarist's beautiful white Stratocaster, flipped it over and played it upside down too.. *There's always a right handed guitar around so I learned a lot of stuff with the strings backwards.. Anyway, truly amazing time to be alive and the music, well here I am, still, fully in love with Layne and all of these phenomenal musicians 🙏😁🙏❤️
all of the AIC and Mad Season music I listen to is all live, imo he is one of the few singers that sounds better live, the studio does his vocals no justice at all; Layne has been my favorite vocalist since 1990😊still haven't heard anyone that can touch him, probably never will and this is just me opining ✌🏻
ABSOLUTELY LOVE MAD SEASON!! WAKE UP YOUNG MAN!! I LOVE MIKE FREAKIN MCCREADY 🎸🔥 AND BARRETT MARTIN AWESOME 🥁🔥 AWESOME BASS BY JOHN BAKER SAUNDERS AND THE ONE AND ONLY LAYNE STALEY!! BLUESY I LOVE 💙 LONG GONE DAYS FT. MARK LANEGAN 😊🩷🤘✌️SKEIRK 🎷
My soul weeps a little bit because I'm just discovering Mad Season as an adult. I was a 90s child and loved Nirvana, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Silverchair, Pearl Jam, Bush etc. I'm ashamed to say that I was not big on Alice and Chains. Actually, there were some songs that I thought were by Nirvana that were actually by AIC!!! =/ Nirvana was so huge at that time. I say that my soul weeps because I have a hell of a greater appreciation for Layne Staley and feel that he as a vocalist and AIC were very underrated and did not get their due until after Staley's passing. I discovered Mad Season after recently binging on all of the songs by AIC. What a gift/gem!!! They are truly a super band and were magical! I envy those who were able to experience music like this in person. Also, the depth of these songs is something we do not have much of today. Thank you so much for sharing your reactions and your musical knowledge!!
@@TaylorJohnHardin that way the lyrics make more sense. Starting with "for 10 long years": I think he's referring to his long relationship with Demri not his dr*g use. The relationship was turbulent - "...the leaves to rake up". "For a little peace from God you plead, and beg" because she was very sick with the heart infection (endocarditis).
Layne Staley was ALWAYS better live than studio version. Mad Season is definitely more blues-y than grunge. For me with Mad Season it was the way Layne sang WAKE UP, and ARTIFICIAL RED, and then RIVER OF DECEIT, everyone else may like LIFELESS DEAD and it's good because Layne sings it but WAKE UP, ARTIFICIAL RED and RIVER OF DECEIT are my top ones The band is Layne Staley singing, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam on guitar, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees on drums and John Baker Saunders (who was from Minneapolis but McCready met him in rehab there and dragged him back to Seattle with him after their rehab stint.) Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees sings of a few of the songs on the Above album. Layne Staley's vocal range can run rings around any other grunge singer (including Chris Cornell) in my opinion. Layne could sing the phone book and never hit a wrong note. Even at the end of his life, with no teeth and a lisp, his voice, wit and humor were all still there. Layne's voice and vocal range was so powerful he did NOT need auto tune or pro-tools until he lost his teeth and had a lisp around 1998, and even then he still killed the vocals. Barrett Martin (who played with Layne in Mad Season) said that when he stood to the side of the stage, he could hear the sound of Layne’s vocal resonance come out of Layne's body LOUDER than it did coming out of the speakers, Layne's voice was that powerful. The shows they did live at the Moore in 1995... Layne killed the vocals on every song he sang. Even "All Alone" was just an instrumental to begin with and then Layne went in and added the bare minimum of vocals and made it haunting. And ALSO on the Live at the Moore they covered John Lennon's I Don't Want to Be a Soldier... Layne's vocals are AWESOME on that, and the song's good up until they put a distortion pedal on the saxophone. But up until then Lennon may have wrote the song, but Layne perfected it. Layne drew the Above album cover art and wrote the lyrics to the songs he sang on the Above album so they're about his addiction and recovery/12 step, WAKE UP is basically telling himself to wake up from the 10 year love affair w/drugs Slow suicide's no way to go (of course that is what happened, after the KISS shows in 1996 to 2002 it was a 6 year long slow suicide. My Top 5 Mad Season songs: WAKE UP (Live at the Moore, 1995), ARTIFICIAL RED (Live at the Moore, 1995), RIVER OF DECEIT (Live at the Moore, 1995), a toss up between I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING (Live at the Moore, 1995) OR X-RAY MIND (Live at the Moore, 1995), I DON'T WANT TO BE A SOLDIER (Live at the Moore, 1995... John Lennon wrote it, Layne PERFECTED the vocals, the song is good until they decided to put a distortion pedal on the saxophone, then it's just noise). Aside from I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier... Layne wrote all the songs he sang on Mad Season and he drew the cover art for Mad Season's Above album. Back in 1994, near the end of the classic Seattle period, four musicians came together from a wide cross-section of Seattle’s heaviest bands. They included Pearl Jam’s lead guitarist Mike McCready, Alice In Chains lead vocalist Layne Staley, the not-from-Seattle-but-he-fit-right-in bassist John “Baker” Saunders, and Barrett Martin came from the bands Skin Yard and Screaming Trees. Mike and Baker had met in rehab in Minneapolis, and they immediately hit it off with their love of the Delta Blues and the bright clarity that comes from a newly sober mind. They played a series of secret shows at Seattle’s now-legendary Crocodile Café. The intent was to tighten-up the songs and try out the new material on a live audience, and during these shows, they realized a singular vision that would manifest in the studio a few weeks later. Mike McCready wanted to do demos, and Layne said screw that, we're doing a whole album right out of the gate. Layne had tried rehab 13 times, but he could never completely give it up. He tried quitting cold turkey on two of the last attempts at rehab, but that didn't work either. After he returned home from the second attempt at detoxing cold turkey, McCready started calling and then just showing up at Layne's condo with Baker in tow. They all got together and dragged Layne out of his condo, got him excited about doing ABOVE album, thinking if he was creative he wouldn't want the drugs, and for the length of time it took to do that, Layne was excited about the project, but it didn't curb his drug habit. Layne wrote the lyrics to the original songs he sang on the ABOVE album (not including Lennon's I DON'T WANT TO BE A SOLDIER.. even though, LAYNE PERFECTED that song), and he drew the cover art for the album. The vibraphone is done by a Seattle Jazz musician known as Skerik. The Above album was released internationally on March 14, 1995, on Columbia Records and it immediately struck a resonant chord with the public that sent the album into gold status within a few weeks. It peaked at #24 on the Billboard Top 200, and the album’s first single, “RIVER OF DECEIT,” was a bona fide radio hit in the United States, reaching the #2 spot on the American modern rock charts. All of this happened, I might add, without the band playing a proper, advertised show or any touring. They did the 4 shows at the Crocodile and the main show that got turned into a VHS/DVD Mad Season Live at the Moore. Mad Season essentially played a grungier version of the Blues. This unusual chemistry made us sound totally unique for our time, in an era of post-Grunge, formula rock that was beginning to dominate popular music then, as it still does to this day. Above was the only complete album of Layne Staley’s introspective, mystical lyrics, and in the almost 30 years since its release. Layne was an extremely intelligent, humorous, and gracious human being, and he cared about things like politeness and kindness to strangers, qualities that seem to be forgotten in today’s narcissistic, nihilistic culture. He laughed easily and talked openly with his fans, and his guest list at shows was always reserved for the young, marginalized people who couldn’t afford to buy a ticket. Those were Layne’s people, the ones without a voice, and through the power of poetic language, Layne gave them a voice. Barrett Martin's best personal memory of Layne "came when we were making the Above album and he was in the studio lounge reading Kahlil Gibran’s iconic book, The Prophet, a book I highly recommend everyone read at some point in your lives. I told him I had read it as a teenager, and I liked the part about the arrows you fire into the world to keep the darkness at bay. Layne said that as musicians we were like burning arrows, arcing across the sky. We started talking about what it meant to be an artist with a spiritual message and I can tell you that Layne deeply felt that he had a spiritual message to convey in his music, even if his lyrics were dark. And that is because darkness must exist first in order for light to emerge in contrast to it; the two are inseparable parts of the same continuum. "This theme is evident in all of Layne’s songs, both with Mad Season and Alice In Chains, and that is because he existed in a realm between darkness and light, a place where he could see both. So please remember this: Layne was very young when he wrote and sang those lyrics, he was only in his mid-twenties (Layne was ONLY 27 when he was with Mad Season in mid to late 1994 through April 1995, before he returned to AIC to record Tripod), yet he said a huge amount with that incredible voice." Several years after Layne’s passing Barrett Martin got a call from an old friend in Massachusetts who had a couple of young children. While on a family drive through the countryside, he was playing the Above album when the last song on the album, ALL ALONE, came on. One of the little ones in the back seat asked if there were angels singing on the song, a question that he relayed to Barrett over the phone. “Yeah, he was a certain kind of angel,” Barrett said, “a dark one perhaps, but an angel all the same.” Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said Layne sang like an angry angel. After Layne died and Baker died, McCready wanted to restart Mad Season with Chris Cornell singing and Chris had learn how Layne sang the songs before he could put his variation on it. Layne was so much more than his drug addiction. He was able to come up with lyrics and harmonies off the top of his head. He knew enough to know that Jerry Cantrell was playing with the wrong people and gave him contact info for Sean Kinney and Mike Starr. He wrote the lyrics for the songs he sang on Mad Season's Above album and drew the cover art for that album. Layne was a genius in his own right. He was able to figure things out in a snap off the top of his head. Layne just had his demons. At the age of 34, he looked more like an 80-year-old man. He knew he screwed up, between the drugs and his own depression and then his former fiancee dying, Layne just couldn't find a way to dig himself out of his own mess, and at the end with his teeth problems and organs failing on him, he gave up trying. He lost sight of who his true friends were and who was using him. He was never going to give up the drugs. Instead, he tried to attain the same high he felt the first time he did drugs and could never achieve it. Layne's story is more tragic and haunting because you can actually watch and hear him deteriorate over the 12-year span: from the mild use of drugs in 1990 all the way through 1996 when he was deep into a heroin addiction to dropping to 90 pounds by 1998 to 86 pounds when he died in 2002. Layne kept his humor and wit even to the end of his life.
Such an incredible record, it's so soothing in autumn.
Nows the time! :):)
This whole album is a masterpiece from beginning to end. I love McCready's solo on this song.
The solo has an improv feel so I was surprised to hear him do it note for note :):)
I can't agree more Wake Up speaks to me completely and thankfully I woke up and got out of the misery of addiction. Such a beautiful song.
@@lanecore75 thats amazingg! happy 4 u!
@@lanecore75Amen Brother, 🙏🙌❤!!
Truly one of the absolute most amazing concerts of all time!! God willing I can get out of the hell, I'm trying but with the massive trauma from a couple of wicked motorcycle accidents living in pain, it's no way to live.. I'm praying that these specialists Dr's I finally got in with can get my pain under control with the least medication possible, and get my health back up.. turned 49 a couple of years ago and my health just went downhill like a switch...
God bless you guys, and I am using music to help me get through it all...
Hands down one of my favorite albums from the 90’s. Absolutely perfect. Love your videos. You so totally get it.
Best collaboration of the 90's.
Best supergroup for sure
Agreed! Been listening since I was 10!
Temple of the Dog is pretty special too. 💙👍🏻✌🏻
I love how you appreciate the amazing talent of Layne Stalet
👍
Layne Staley was his own species.
For real!
Yes.....
As mark Lanagan stated… “Layne wasn’t of this world, he was… otherworldly.”
FINALLY someone reacting to Mad Season!!🔥🔥🔥💜💜💜
Love em!
Man this is incredible! It’s amazing how brilliantly good he sounded considering the damage and abuse afflicted on his body. I imagine what he could have sounded like had he turned his life around early and took complete care of his body. I bet he would have had multiple solo albums and projects out at this point… he has been my favorite for many years now.. you do a killer job on these videos! It’s so good seeing Layne get all the love he deserved! Keep ‘em coming my man 🤘🏻
Thanks!
I was at a Mookie Blaylock show with Alice in the early days..That show was like this Moore show..Epic..
@@boneyardmilitia1836 you saw Mookie! dope!
Layne is my favorite singer of all time too! Even at 75% (unplugged) he's still better than almost everyone at 100%.
Agreed!
Layne is just in another world amazing voice! You’re spot on
I remember first hearing this on the radio in high school and immediately dismissing it as part of that 60s/70s revivalism that blipped in the mid-90s. Pretty stupid on my part, it's gone on to be one of my top 10 favorite albums. I really love the balance of soft and loud with Mad Season, I'm certain they're wearing their influences on their sleeves when they played, but their unique qualities as musicians don't make it sound like a pastiche. Wake-up is definitely a highlight, the groove, the solo, the vocals, it's blues-y, beatnik-y, acid rock-y. It's an album getting better with time and sounding more out of time and place as it ages. Great snapshot of a group of artists trying to cope the best way they could. Appreciate the video ✌️
Thanks for the comment! 🔥❤
Another cool video dude!
YES Mad Season to me is the most underrated band/best side project of all time!
Thanks! That's what I thought! :)
My favourite Mad Season song ever. It’s so effective in its presentation.
Seattle Blues at its finest..
Oh yeah! One of my favorite sounds :)
Great sideproject!! I love this, thank you!
Mad Season for the supergroup win, 100%.
👍🤘
Traveling WIllburys are probably the best super group
@@jamisonmcguinness😂
Thank you for this, having someone who also values Layne voice and Madseason in general is great, also, amazing vocal technique (your notes are on point)
Thank you :)
For me thats the most heartbreaking live performance and song that wrote Layne…. You are so missed and loved Layne… beautiful soul gone too early..
❤❤❤
Love this song rock in power brother Layne
Perhaps the best rock singer of all time!
My 2 absolute favorite supergroup albums, both 1995. Mad Season and Down - NOLA...perfect albums
Everyday this song keeps me focused and honest love this side project and agree best side project ever.
🤘❤
I love your reactions... first up was Love Hate Love. Yeah I'm hooked.
My top 3 all time Pink Floyd. Bowie. AIC/Mad Season. Well 4
Yeah Layne my #1 vocalist all time. Oh and Pavarotti (lol but seriously)
Great list! Lots of good harmony in those artists!
Mad Season - “idk anything” live at Self Pollution Radio Broadcast!!
Will check it out!
chills
Man, wake up, amazing LS
6:21 he is screaming bellowing pain here. He is so good.
My man......HOW did you not know Barrett Martins name.....also Baker laying down that base?????
haha no kidding!
I remember when Above came out I was on a road trip with my best friend to Cape Cod of all places. It was beautiful out, we were in a Honda Del Sol with the top off, and just blaring these songs through everything a stock stereo could give. Young, dumb, and full of... well, you get it. We were so excited to hear anything new from Layne, and it didn't disappoint. Thanks for the memories GOAT, and RIP.
Oh yeah I get it.
@@TaylorJohnHardin Thanks Taylor, I dig your videos.
I’m from the time of grunge but was a classic rock and roll girl all the way. I have been listening to AIC for about six days or so. Nirvana was my first introduction about 6 months ago. So needless to say grunge is mostly new to me. I’m absolutely loving it. The mtv unplugged AIC is some of the best music I’ve ever had the luck of finding.
Oh yeah!! I'm a classic rock guy as well. Grunge is just the next iteration:):) thanks for watching
1:44 lol thats literally my reaction everytime i listen to layne’s singing
Exactly! Haha 👍
McCready is not talked about enough in terms of great guitarists
So true
Best super group and best super group track
Agreed.
TIMES were heavy in the PNW in these days but the music lives on..sad that most folks did not.
For real.. 😥
Sadly most of my musical heroes are gone. I feel lucky that the music lives on.
For sure, I spent some time Buckley, spending a lot of evenings at a club with live music 7 nights a week over inn Puyallup. Got to jam with one band and played foxy lady on the guitarist's beautiful white Stratocaster, flipped it over and played it upside down too..
*There's always a right handed guitar around so I learned a lot of stuff with the strings backwards..
Anyway, truly amazing time to be alive and the music, well here I am, still, fully in love with Layne and all of these phenomenal musicians 🙏😁🙏❤️
@@SeanEnginetechnology dope! I'm in puyallup currently haha
all of the AIC and Mad Season music I listen to is all live, imo he is one of the few singers that sounds better live, the studio does his vocals no justice at all; Layne has been my favorite vocalist since 1990😊still haven't heard anyone that can touch him, probably never will and this is just me opining ✌🏻
Así es😊
Wasn’t a Layne Staley side project. It was a collaboration of friends who were great musicians that put an album out. Like Temple of the Dog. 👍🏻✌🏻
So true! This ain't no side work!
Little late to the party here but, damn a young Mike Mcready on guitar is the pinnacle here.
ABSOLUTELY LOVE MAD SEASON!! WAKE UP YOUNG MAN!! I LOVE MIKE FREAKIN MCCREADY 🎸🔥 AND BARRETT MARTIN AWESOME 🥁🔥 AWESOME BASS BY JOHN BAKER SAUNDERS AND THE ONE AND ONLY LAYNE STALEY!! BLUESY I LOVE 💙 LONG GONE DAYS FT. MARK LANEGAN 😊🩷🤘✌️SKEIRK 🎷
Long gone day is so good! :):)
My soul weeps a little bit because I'm just discovering Mad Season as an adult. I was a 90s child and loved Nirvana, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Silverchair, Pearl Jam, Bush etc. I'm ashamed to say that I was not big on Alice and Chains. Actually, there were some songs that I thought were by Nirvana that were actually by AIC!!! =/ Nirvana was so huge at that time.
I say that my soul weeps because I have a hell of a greater appreciation for Layne Staley and feel that he as a vocalist and AIC were very underrated and did not get their due until after Staley's passing. I discovered Mad Season after recently binging on all of the songs by AIC. What a gift/gem!!! They are truly a super band and were magical! I envy those who were able to experience music like this in person. Also, the depth of these songs is something we do not have much of today. Thank you so much for sharing your reactions and your musical knowledge!!
Thanks!!@
Love Mad Season! I like the live better. I bought the cd and didn't like it as much as the live.
It's real neat stuff!
they sound a lot better on this song at the moore than the studio version.
Love these guys, especially layne. Favorite singer for sure. I thought velvet revolver were a pretty good supergroup. Straight up RnR.
Velvet revolver were so good!
You don't think that this song is about his relationship with Demri and her struggle? The line "so an infection not phase" points to her illness.
very well could be!
@@TaylorJohnHardin that way the lyrics make more sense. Starting with "for 10 long years": I think he's referring to his long relationship with Demri not his dr*g use. The relationship was turbulent - "...the leaves to rake up". "For a little peace from God you plead, and beg" because she was very sick with the heart infection (endocarditis).
Telling when the guitar comes in ? And how the crowd loves it? These are things we know.
Yup!
Rooster demo reaction pls.
Layne Staley was ALWAYS better live than studio version.
Mad Season is definitely more blues-y than grunge. For me with Mad Season it was the way Layne sang WAKE UP, and ARTIFICIAL RED, and then RIVER OF DECEIT, everyone else may like LIFELESS DEAD and it's good because Layne sings it but WAKE UP, ARTIFICIAL RED and RIVER OF DECEIT are my top ones
The band is Layne Staley singing, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam on guitar, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees on drums and John Baker Saunders (who was from Minneapolis but McCready met him in rehab there and dragged him back to Seattle with him after their rehab stint.)
Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees sings of a few of the songs on the Above album.
Layne Staley's vocal range can run rings around any other grunge singer (including Chris Cornell) in my opinion. Layne could sing the phone book and never hit a wrong note. Even at the end of his life, with no teeth and a lisp, his voice, wit and humor were all still there. Layne's voice and vocal range was so powerful he did NOT need auto tune or pro-tools until he lost his teeth and had a lisp around 1998, and even then he still killed the vocals.
Barrett Martin (who played with Layne in Mad Season) said that when he stood to the side of the stage, he could hear the sound of Layne’s vocal resonance come out of Layne's body LOUDER than it did coming out of the speakers, Layne's voice was that powerful.
The shows they did live at the Moore in 1995... Layne killed the vocals on every song he sang. Even "All Alone" was just an instrumental to begin with and then Layne went in and added the bare minimum of vocals and made it haunting. And ALSO on the Live at the Moore they covered John Lennon's I Don't Want to Be a Soldier... Layne's vocals are AWESOME on that, and the song's good up until they put a distortion pedal on the saxophone. But up until then Lennon may have wrote the song, but Layne perfected it.
Layne drew the Above album cover art and wrote the lyrics to the songs he sang on the Above album so they're about his addiction and recovery/12 step, WAKE UP is basically telling himself to wake up from the 10 year love affair w/drugs Slow suicide's no way to go (of course that is what happened, after the KISS shows in 1996 to 2002 it was a 6 year long slow suicide.
My Top 5 Mad Season songs: WAKE UP (Live at the Moore, 1995), ARTIFICIAL RED (Live at the Moore, 1995), RIVER OF DECEIT (Live at the Moore, 1995), a toss up between I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING (Live at the Moore, 1995) OR X-RAY MIND (Live at the Moore, 1995), I DON'T WANT TO BE A SOLDIER (Live at the Moore, 1995... John Lennon wrote it, Layne PERFECTED the vocals, the song is good until they decided to put a distortion pedal on the saxophone, then it's just noise). Aside from I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier... Layne wrote all the songs he sang on Mad Season and he drew the cover art for Mad Season's Above album.
Back in 1994, near the end of the classic Seattle period, four musicians came together from a wide cross-section of Seattle’s heaviest bands. They included Pearl Jam’s lead guitarist Mike McCready, Alice In Chains lead vocalist Layne Staley, the not-from-Seattle-but-he-fit-right-in bassist John “Baker” Saunders, and Barrett Martin came from the bands Skin Yard and Screaming Trees. Mike and Baker had met in rehab in Minneapolis, and they immediately hit it off with their love of the Delta Blues and the bright clarity that comes from a newly sober mind.
They played a series of secret shows at Seattle’s now-legendary Crocodile Café. The intent was to tighten-up the songs and try out the new material on a live audience, and during these shows, they realized a singular vision that would manifest in the studio a few weeks later. Mike McCready wanted to do demos, and Layne said screw that, we're doing a whole album right out of the gate.
Layne had tried rehab 13 times, but he could never completely give it up. He tried quitting cold turkey on two of the last attempts at rehab, but that didn't work either. After he returned home from the second attempt at detoxing cold turkey, McCready started calling and then just showing up at Layne's condo with Baker in tow. They all got together and dragged Layne out of his condo, got him excited about doing ABOVE album, thinking if he was creative he wouldn't want the drugs, and for the length of time it took to do that, Layne was excited about the project, but it didn't curb his drug habit. Layne wrote the lyrics to the original songs he sang on the ABOVE album (not including Lennon's I DON'T WANT TO BE A SOLDIER.. even though, LAYNE PERFECTED that song), and he drew the cover art for the album.
The vibraphone is done by a Seattle Jazz musician known as Skerik.
The Above album was released internationally on March 14, 1995, on Columbia Records and it immediately struck a resonant chord with the public that sent the album into gold status within a few weeks. It peaked at #24 on the Billboard Top 200, and the album’s first single, “RIVER OF DECEIT,” was a bona fide radio hit in the United States, reaching the #2 spot on the American modern rock charts. All of this happened, I might add, without the band playing a proper, advertised show or any touring. They did the 4 shows at the Crocodile and the main show that got turned into a VHS/DVD Mad Season Live at the Moore.
Mad Season essentially played a grungier version of the Blues. This unusual chemistry made us sound totally unique for our time, in an era of post-Grunge, formula rock that was beginning to dominate popular music then, as it still does to this day. Above was the only complete album of Layne Staley’s introspective, mystical lyrics, and in the almost 30 years since its release.
Layne was an extremely intelligent, humorous, and gracious human being, and he cared about things like politeness and kindness to strangers, qualities that seem to be forgotten in today’s narcissistic, nihilistic culture. He laughed easily and talked openly with his fans, and his guest list at shows was always reserved for the young, marginalized people who couldn’t afford to buy a ticket. Those were Layne’s people, the ones without a voice, and through the power of poetic language, Layne gave them a voice.
Barrett Martin's best personal memory of Layne "came when we were making the Above album and he was in the studio lounge reading Kahlil Gibran’s iconic book, The Prophet, a book I highly recommend everyone read at some point in your lives. I told him I had read it as a teenager, and I liked the part about the arrows you fire into the world to keep the darkness at bay. Layne said that as musicians we were like burning arrows, arcing across the sky. We started talking about what it meant to be an artist with a spiritual message and I can tell you that Layne deeply felt that he had a spiritual message to convey in his music, even if his lyrics were dark. And that is because darkness must exist first in order for light to emerge in contrast to it; the two are inseparable parts of the same continuum.
"This theme is evident in all of Layne’s songs, both with Mad Season and Alice In Chains, and that is because he existed in a realm between darkness and light, a place where he could see both. So please remember this: Layne was very young when he wrote and sang those lyrics, he was only in his mid-twenties (Layne was ONLY 27 when he was with Mad Season in mid to late 1994 through April 1995, before he returned to AIC to record Tripod), yet he said a huge amount with that incredible voice."
Several years after Layne’s passing Barrett Martin got a call from an old friend in Massachusetts who had a couple of young children. While on a family drive through the countryside, he was playing the Above album when the last song on the album, ALL ALONE, came on. One of the little ones in the back seat asked if there were angels singing on the song, a question that he relayed to Barrett over the phone. “Yeah, he was a certain kind of angel,” Barrett said, “a dark one perhaps, but an angel all the same.”
Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said Layne sang like an angry angel.
After Layne died and Baker died, McCready wanted to restart Mad Season with Chris Cornell singing and Chris had learn how Layne sang the songs before he could put his variation on it.
Layne was so much more than his drug addiction. He was able to come up with lyrics and harmonies off the top of his head. He knew enough to know that Jerry Cantrell was playing with the wrong people and gave him contact info for Sean Kinney and Mike Starr. He wrote the lyrics for the songs he sang on Mad Season's Above album and drew the cover art for that album. Layne was a genius in his own right. He was able to figure things out in a snap off the top of his head. Layne just had his demons. At the age of 34, he looked more like an 80-year-old man. He knew he screwed up, between the drugs and his own depression and then his former fiancee dying, Layne just couldn't find a way to dig himself out of his own mess, and at the end with his teeth problems and organs failing on him, he gave up trying. He lost sight of who his true friends were and who was using him. He was never going to give up the drugs. Instead, he tried to attain the same high he felt the first time he did drugs and could never achieve it.
Layne's story is more tragic and haunting because you can actually watch and hear him deteriorate over the 12-year span: from the mild use of drugs in 1990 all the way through 1996 when he was deep into a heroin addiction to dropping to 90 pounds by 1998 to 86 pounds when he died in 2002. Layne kept his humor and wit even to the end of his life.
Thanks for the read! :)
They are up there for sure but I think the traveling wilburys are the best supergroup ever.
Too much talking
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