Then he’d come up to you, and you’d be like ‘Oh, wow, a frog.’ Then he’d turn it around, and all its guts would be hanging out.” Needless to say, nobody’s too hungry when the food finally arrives.Īlice in Chains: Through the Looking GlassĪfter dinner, Cantrell, Kinney and Inez return with Staley to his house, where they stay up until 5 in the morning, smoking pot and playing video games. Staley talks about a childhood acquaintance who wrapped a kitten’s legs with twine and threw it into a lake: “I screamed, ‘No, man, take it out,’ but he was bigger than me, so I just watched it drown.” But the coup de grâce comes when Cantrell recalls the exploits of a neighborhood sicko: “He’d carve up these frogs and turtles and stuff on one side, but the other side would look completely normal. Then we’re on to the next topic: animal abuse. Staley counters with a story of a friend who received a blow job from an extremely drunk woman who vomited all over her partner midway through the act. Cantrell brags about a girl he recently picked up who chewed tobacco, causing him to experience a peculiar but pleasurable burning sensation during oral sex. Before their food arrives the members of Alice engage in a primitive heavy-metal ritual: gross out the journalist. Appropriately, the band is seated in a remote back room that doubles as a wine cellar. We’re like the Monkees or something.”Īfter they finish with Whirlyball, Alice in Chains return to downtown Seattle and stop at Umberto’s, the kind of family-style Italian restaurant where, if you drink enough cheap wine, you won’t care what’s under the blanket of red sauce. “Since our music is so depressing, everybody expects us to run around in black and whine about shit,” says Kinney. Instead, they play off one another like a depraved comedy troupe. Released in November, the band’s self-titled third album displays further growth, coupling improvisational jams with bleak rhythms and intertwining melancholy with menace.Ĭonsidering how dark their music is, you’d expect the members of Alice in Chains to brood offstage as well as on. But Alice in Chains silenced most of their critics with the 1992 album Dirt, a brooding disc of slow, savage riffs and Staley’s harrowing lyrics, which detailed his battle with heroin addiction. Starting out as a fledgling glam-metal outfit, Alice in Chains’ sudden move toward grunge after one album and one EP earned the derision of Seattle scenesters, some of whom dubbed the band Kindergarten, due to their sonic similarity to Soundgarden. They also lack the teamwork, and by the beginning of the second game, Staley has bowed out to play video games on his portable Sega system.Īlice in Chains may never make the WhirlyBall all-star squad, but they’ve managed to hang together, sometimes just barely, through almost nine years of hardship and continuing struggle. But despite a fine passing attack, Alice in Chains lack the rebounding and shooting ability to defeat their opponents. Even Staley, who minutes before was covertly mimicking and flipping off a drill-sergeant-like referee, seems to be having a good time. Kinney and Cantrell seem hellbent on defeating the opposing team, which consists of friends and bassist Mike Inez, who somehow didn’t wind up on the Alice squad. Alice’s drummer, Sean Kinney, came up with the idea of giving WhirlyBall a whirl, and although the other band members were initially reluctant, right now they’re all smiles. Before enduring the grind of formal interrogations, including Staley’s first major interview in more than two years, the band wants to have a little fun. Although WhirlyBall didn’t catch on as quickly as the Hula-Hoop, today a dozen or so such facilities dot the country, including this one, which is about a half-hour outside of Seattle. The game is WhirlyBall, a bizarre hybrid of basketball, bumper cars and lacrosse that was invented in 1962 by a Utah automotive-shop owner who received divine inspiration after watching his son improvise a game of hockey while driving a golf cart.
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