DISCLAIMER: These won’t be proper reviews -as if I could write those- or have interesting technical tidbits on them. These are more of a “ah, that song reminds me of…” thing. Like the part you skip on a recipe. So it goes.

Album: Above.

Release date: March 14, 1995.

Track: 1.

Moods: Rumination of feelings. Moment of clarity.

I wasn’t a fan of Layne Staley’s vocals. Even if Rooster was the very first song I heard on MTV Latino, and loved it, Layne’s vocals were unnerving to the point of off-putting. It wasn’t until No Excuses came along that it all clicked with me. I was deep into grunge when I was a teen, and the two bands I still listen to this day are Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Sometimes the hits, sometimes the b-sides.

Two good friends, Memo and Paco, were superfans of everything grunge, and they played guitar, jamming to whichever song they obsessed over that week. Memo lent me Above and the other-worldliness of the album carved a lovely niche in my heart. Desperate, yet soothing. Heartbreaking, yet hopeful. I taped the album and wore it down, like the STP Core one I had. And just like Core, it took me a long time to actually buy the CD. Looking back, I have no reason for it, it was one of those “I’ll do it later” sorta situation.

My commute in 1995 was about an hour or so from house to school, so my denim backpack had a healthy supply of tapes. If it rained, out comes Mad Season. I wanted to live in Seattle back then. I haven’t been there yet. I’ll do it later.

Layne’s tortured vocals convey anguish like no one else can. In retrospective, it feels I avoided him because I felt my pain and my fears reflected through him. His dark sense of humour, like on that MTV promo where he climbs out of a garbage bin, felt too close to home. His appearance on the Alice in Chains unplugged broke my heart. He was falling apart, and everyone knew what was coming.

Wake up is one heckuva way to open an album. Things are disintegrating, but there’s still a quick moment of respite, to regroup, to think, and plan something new. That explosive rage, cathartic and almost Wagnerian in strength, yields back to a calmness. Have you ever had a fit of anger so intense that you feel depleted afterwards? At least you got it out of your system.

I bought a copy of Above in late 2001. I got stuck in traffic and stood up a good friend (sorry, Claudia). She waited for over an hour at Insurgentes metro station, not the best place in the world to be waiting for a terminally ill person. In frustration and need of relief, I bought the album, in fact, I did retail therapy but I can only remember Mad Season’s Above from that day. It’s an album I always hold dear, and even if it’s not raining, I’ll still listen to Wake Up when I need a moment of catharsis.

-Sam J. Valdés López