Alice in Chains - Rooster

     I'm doing my part to contribute to Throwback Thursday tonight, and while I'm not presenting anything tonight you shouldn't already be familiar with, I will hopefully spark a little debate --  or at least some contemplation -- along the way.

     OK, so my girlfriend and I went for a little unexpected road trip today, for reasons unimportant to the discussion at hand, and while listening to the radio and talking about music, I uttered what many of my generation (and many other generations besides) may consider to be an unforgivable blasphemy: I like Alice in Chains more than Nirvana. Like, a lot more.

     Of course, as a fan of music around the age of thirty, as a guitarist who grew up jamming Nirvana songs right alongside Zep and Rage and the rest, I fully understand and appreciate the impact Nirvana had, and in some ways continues to have, on modern music. I've just thought for a long time that Nirvana were, in a word, overrated, and the older I get the more entrenched in this opinion I become.

     I know musical taste is subjective, but from where I'm standing Alice in Chains was just a better band (I say was because I mean Layne Staley-era Alice here). Kurt could write a good song, and he could definitely do a bit of darkly introspective lyrical content now and again, but the combination of Cantrell and company's musicianship and songwriting together with Layne's dark honesty and unique perspective simply produced more interesting material, and more material I still really dig to this day.

     Like tonight's song, one of everybody's favourite Alice in Chains songs. "Rooster", from 1992's seminal Dirt, was written for Cantrell's father, who served in Vietnam. I don't know if it's my absolute favourite Alice in Chains song (though it is up there) but given the choice I'd put it on over virtually anything in Nirvana's catalogue. Let the vitriolic responses commence!