# The Strange Magic of: Alice in Chains



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (and subject of an early Mozart opera), was Rome's greatest enemy, after Hannibal; it took three of Rome's finest generals--Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey--decades to finally defeat him. Legend has it that Mithridates sought to become immune to all poisons by ingesting a cocktail containing a minute amount of each poison every day, hence developing what Ralph Waldo Emerson called a "mithridatic stomach" in describing individuals seemingly obsessed by negativity: "In those persons who move the profoundest pity, tragedy seems to consist in temperament, not in events. There are people who have an appetite for grief, pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain, mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can soothe their ragged and dishevelled desolation." Layne Staley of Alice in Chains seems to have been such, but, sadly, his mithridatic stomach did not prevent him from finally being poisoned by the dark forces in his life. But while alive, he and the band created some of the most powerful, unnerving, shocking rock of his time. _Man in the Box_ will long endure as one of Alice in Chains' and Grunge's signature songs.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The _Dirt_ album is superb, probably the best album Black Sabbath never made. Not saying that AIC ripped them off, but those doomy riffs were mined from the same seam and Staley had something of the Ozzy about him.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

Whoosh. I loved them from the outset when I saw them third on the bill at the time of their debut album. These days few rock bands stay in my musical universe but AiC are one of the select few. Their re-energised line-up is as good as they ever were. 

(The Mad Season album is also a thing of sad beauty)


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Mad Season. The song _Wake Up_ is clearly Staley's desperate call to himself to break the addiction; it also reminds one of Andy Wood's similar injunctions against smack and the slow suicide on the spectacular Mother Love Bone Apple album. We all know how that ended--Wood, Cobain, Staley. Here the lyrics to Wake Up:

"Wake Up"

Wake up young man, it's time to wake up
Your love affair has got to go
For 10 long years, for 10 long years
The leaves to rake up
Slow suicide's no way to go, oh
Blue, clouded grey
You're not a crack up
Dizzy and weakened by the haze
Moving onward
So an infection not a phase
Yeah, oh

The cracks and lines from where you gave up
They make an easy man to read, oh
For all the times you let them bleed you
For little peace from God you plead, and beg
For little peace from God you plead
Ahhaahh, Yeah, Ahhaahh, Yeah, Ahhaahh, Yeah

Wake up young man, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
Oh, yeah

Wake up young man, it's time to wake up
Your love affair has got to go, yeah
For 10 long years, for 10 long years,
The leaves to rake up
Slow suicide's no way to go, oh
Slow suicide's no way to go
Wake up, wake up, wake up
Wake up, wake up, wake up


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I found another outlet for the _Man in the Box_ clip that was yanked since the initial posting: Alice in Chains at their most intense.....


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Herewith another Alice classic: _Down in a Hole_. Bleak stuff.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Ha, a band I listened to on heavy rotation with their Seattle peers in my younger days. I seem to remember NME giving away stickers with a smiley face and, "Cheer up Layne, it might never happen" printed on them. Which raises the interesting point, why did my generation (mid 40s today) spend their youth listening to depressing music filled with down-tuned guitars, feedback and self-loathing, while teenagers today seem to prefer stuff like Ed Sheeran? I thought parents were supposed to ask their kids to turn it down, not the other way round?


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2018)

chill782002 said:


> Ha, a band I listened to on heavy rotation with their Seattle peers in my younger days. I seem to remember NME giving away stickers with a smiley face and, "Cheer up Layne, it might never happen" printed on them. Which raises the interesting point, why did my generation (mid 40s today) spend their youth listening to depressing music filled with down-tuned guitars, feedback and self-loathing, while teenagers today seem to prefer stuff like Ed Sheeran? I thought parents were supposed to ask their kids to turn it down, not the other way round?


Maybe it's because the industry has the upper hand; pushing out anodyne, vacuous by-the-numbers tosh.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2018)

Stone






Still magnificent after all that history.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I like the new AIC, but not quite as much as the old AIC.

I've been listening to a lot of the Tripod (untitled) album lately, I think it is every bit as strong an album as _Dirt_. Lyrically it is probably better, I think Layne was still getting better artistically at the time of his death, I love this track he composed on Tripod.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Magnificent indeed! There is a dark, terrible majesty about Alice in Chains' music that sets it and them quite apart from many of their contemporaries. But Grunge was one of the most powerful and affecting genres in Rock history, long may it be remembered.


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