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Never liked anything they recorded once they signed, but when they were a club band in Seattle I saw them a few times and liked them a lot despite the obvious pop metal influence. Somehow it seemed fresh with them, but when I heard what they did to the songs on Facelift I was really disappointed. Over produced in all the wrong ways.
I met Layne in the Last Exit coffee shop right before they changed the name of the band from Diamond Lie (which was their seriously hairspray metal incarnation) to Alice in Chains, and he was a really nice guy. He was tripping pretty heavy on acid at the time, and I was doing a radio show in Bellingham called The Happy Death Jam and he thought the name was the best thing ever (at least while he was tripping right then...)
The other time I sort of hung out with him was at a post show party in their practice space, where he was fucked up and accusing my friend of calling him a faggot when he was putting makeup on in the bathroom before the show. I had to intercede and explain that my friend wouldn't call anyone a faggot under any circumstance and it somehow cooled him down.
So when I heard about his death way back when it was weird since it was somebody I'd known a small amount and seen play a few times and enjoyed. Never knew the bass player, but weird hearing about people from that old scene dying at 44 when that's how old I am, and I still feel like life is just getting started in lots of ways.
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