Alice in Chains: Jar of Flies

Everyone was a Kid Edition

This 7-song EP came out around the same time I was doing a radio show on the Campus of Grossmont College. The promo copy had little toy flies in the jewel-case spine. This is by far AiC's most touching work, and the only CD of theirs I kept during "The Great Purge" of my collection a few years back, when I needed money and Music Trader was buyin'. On the cusp of the band's return after frontman Layne Staley's death, I am hung up on the lyrics from the song "Nutshell":

"And yet I find, repeating in my head
If I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead"

Too bad. I return to this disc once in a while, often as fall arrives. There is a haunted quality to these songs, more so than the driving crunch that inspired Godsmack to form needlessly.