I've made no secret of the fact that I love Alice in Chains's sound, their style, their vocals, their songs, their texts (dark as they are) and their extraordinary ensemble, unity of affect. This is obviously a personal reaction and while I consider that my opinions about rock music are as valid as anyone's, I freely admit that there are groups and songs that appeal to me for what possibly are non-musical reasons.
Music preference is a much-studied phenomenon in the field of psychology of personality. My own doctoral dissertation dealt with music preferences (choral music) among 6th and 8th graders. In my study, I found that boys may have different musical preferences from girls; at least, at that age. My study in fact found very significant differences in musical preference according to gender. Mine is one of the few studies that did find such significance. The results of my study may partly be accounted for by the fact that I was studying their preferences for "standard" repertoire choral music as contrasted with their liking (or not) for a piece from the 13th century that was highly idiomatic and rather primitive and raw compared with the others. The girls greatly preferred the choral music that was traditional; the boys were significantly more likely to prefer the 13th century piece.
I had to find other studies to corroborate my own findings and the only one I found that focused on preferences according to gender was done in the early 1980's with male and female college students. That study found that women were more likely to prefer pop and R&B/soul. Men were more likely to prefer hard rock and heavy metal. The study was done in the 80's before alternative rock became known; or before rap became a global musical genre. Also of course, as the subjects were all college students in the 80's, there weren't many minorities represented who might have preferred other genres such as rap or funk or Motown/soul. The author of that study and I both concluded that music preferences are different according to gender although there are exceptions to the rule of course. I could only find information that might explain this in the field of psychology where studies have shown that males are far more likely to take risks, to search out the different, the individualistic, the non-mainstream in the arts as well as in other areas of life. That we, in our culture, encourage boys to be individualistic and adventuresome; girls on the other hand are enculturated to be in groups and to conform, to maintain the peace or the status quo generally.
Psychology aside, the fact remains that people have musical preferences. I'm no different. So my blogs and my comments on Twitter and on MySpace are colored by the lens through which I form my own musical preferences. If the results of the foregoing study can be believed, I'm one of a minority among women whose popular music preferences tend to correspond more closely with those of my male peers than with my female peers. I like some mainstream pop and R&B but now I find I much prefer rock: the harder and more metal, the better.
My close friends, those who do not love classical music best, love folk music. Not indigenous ethnic folk music, but music by Peter, Paul and Mary or Bob Dylan (although he's arguably not a folk artist), or the Kingston Trio or Pete Seeger or the Weavers. In my case, being closely associated with the women's community, most of my friends love women's music. Holly Near and Cris Williamson etc. I actually actively dislike folk music of this type with the exception of a few individual songs. For me, this music is close in sound and affect to country western music and I find it boring or annoying in the extreme. Give me a hard rock or heavy metal band ANY day. Or else give me jazz or classical music. I try to be tolerant. It's hard at times. My friends just get OFF on that folk music. Or women's music. Whatever you call it.
Getting back to Alice in Chains: what IS it about them that sets me on FIRE?? I can give all the usual musical reasons and somehow they don't answer the question adequately. Other groups have a wonderful sound, great harmonies, use odd meters, feature good vocalists who sing in harmony and so on the list grows. Of course, Alice in Chains are a total "package" and include all of those features. But so does Pearl Jam. STYX. And Yes. But THEIR songs do not reach my innermost soul the way Alice in Chains's music does. Metallica comes close with a few of their songs. But I find Metallica's songs almost self-consciously perfect examples of the genre. For all its power and drama and vibrancy, their music is neat and tidy. Theatrical in a classic way.
Alice in Chains's music on the other hand is not neat and tidy. There is an emotional vulnerability and rawness; a refusal or an inability--to "suck it up and deal"-- about Alice in Chains's music that prevents them from being neat and tidy. Oh, they are a perfectly timed and united ensemble; yet their music is not spare and clean in the mold of Metallica. Metallica's music roars in a rather polite, even stylized. way. Nothing about Alice in Chains is stylized. Maybe that's where the term grunge comes from?
If bands were photographs, Alice in Chains would be black and white photos. Not retouched or airbrushed. All of the warts and blemishes and wrinkles plain to see. No vivid colors. Just shadows. There is nothing grand opera about Alice in Chains. No; they are more like Wozzeck or Lulu perhaps. Music that is more like outward manifestations of silent screams from a tortured soul, backed by men who are totally dedicated to giving voice to this inner rawness, this terrible demon that was slowly sapping the life out of Layne Staley. His beautiful voice cuts right through to the core of my being. Strangely enough, Jerry Cantrell, successor to Layne's frontman position, has captured the essence of that inner anguish albeit with a more tenderly vulnerable tone. He is backed by Will DuVall whose pure and shining voice lends an ethereal sense of beauty to their album/requiem.
I know of Kurt Cobain's tragic death and I know other rock stars have died young from drug abuse or other reasons, including murder in at least one case. Yet none of them have captured the personal essence of suffering and slow mental deterioration in quite the same way as Alice in Chains.
As with most people, my own life has had its share of suffering. A lot of that suffering has been repressed or suppressed, whichever term you care to use. I learned at an early age that no one really cares about your sufferings beyond a few sympathetic words or a pat on the shoulder -- very few do at any rate. So I paid two therapists to care. My time with them was money well spent. But at the time, I was focused on one aspect of my life and in retrospect, I stopped working with them too soon. I should have continued until I dug right down to the root causes of my issues.
But it's happening now. I AM digging down. And what's doing it is the rock music. Particularly grunge and heavy metal. Music has been the main avenue through which I've traveled to build my self-image, my self-esteem. Music has always, since early childhood, been the one area of life that has given me more than I gave in return. My life's work has been in music. All my passion, my love, my joy has happened in connection with music in some way or another.
Unlike women who marry and have a family, I never married--to my great sorrow. Nor did I have children. My career has taken the place of a family. I never intended for that to be the case. As a young woman, I dreamed of a husband and children. Like all women. But it was not in the cards. For a woman, and maybe for a man too, this is one of life's goals: to mate and procreate. To be thwarted on both counts, for a woman especially, is to feel like a failure on many fronts. So I am quietly grieving these past few months. Paradoxically, I'm also happier than I have been for a long time partly because I feel ALIVE in a way I haven't felt in many years. Sad feelings are better than numbness.
My personal griefs find release and affirmation in the music of Alice in Chains. I cannot equate my suffering with Layne Staley's. For many reasons. But the music that is borne out of his suffering allows me to take my own griefs out and examine them and hopefully, ultimately, to find closure and resolution in a way that Layne was unable to do. He was unable because his addiction to heroin and cocaine turned his sorrow and suffering into fear and paranoia so intense he would not allow anyone to visit him in his last weeks when he locked himself in his apartment and waited for death to release him from an existence that had become intolerable. I thank God/dess that I am not addicted to substances nor to alcohol. I know such addictions are horrific and very painful. I grieve for people who get caught in such horrific traps.
My fondest dream is to somehow tell Jerry Cantrell all of this. He's a "friend" on Facebook and on MySpace and I follow him on Twitter. I don't want to intrude on his life. But I wish he could know how deeply I love his music and how much I admire him for stepping way outside his own comfort zone into Layne's footsteps as the frontman of his band, for putting out this album that cost the 4 of them great emotional pain even though it was apparently also cathartic. Of course, I have read that Jerry was in high school choir all four years of high school and was president in his senior year, so I'm probably pre-disposed to admire a product of public school music education that has made such an impression on the music world and on the insignificant life of this very devoted music lover and Alice in Chains fan.
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