Wow, a hundred days of writing! It’s been a while since I’ve managed to write every day, but it was a new year’s proposal and I plan to stick to it.

I had another song ready, but I decided to leave it for post two hundred. Besides, it seems that destiny chose Alice in Chains. How so? After re-listening to Nelly Furtado’s explode for yesterday’s post, YouTube’s autoplay went for an Alice in Chains song. Then another, and a third one. Before I’ve realised, I had listened to them for over two hours while editing and doing other menial school work.

Life of a teacher, eh?

When my brother paid for Multivisión, a cable-like provider here in Mexico in ’93, I was the only one at home when the technician guy came around. He placed the antenna and then lined it towards Cerro de la Estrella, as this was a wireless type of cable. Not entirely satellite TV, it was a microwave signal, so a good alignment towards the main transmitter  was a requirement.

So the guy was at the roof, doing the final bits of adjusting, yelling if the signal improved or not. It was like when we tried to watch satellite tv in Tampico in the less than reputable parabolic antenna dish my aunt had. Once the signal looked ok, the technician came down, checked all the channels and produced a series of papers I had to sign. He did a last check, explaining me how to use the remote and he stopped at MTV Latino.

“Ah, you kids like this channel, hope you enjoy!”

The video playing was an eerie song, recreating the Vietnam War. Two vocalists, one harsh, one melodic. They sang about a rooster being snuffed. I walked the technician to the front door and by the time I came back, the song had already finished. I was intrigued, but had no way to know who sang it.

A year later, every time Alice in Chains came up, I’d switch the channel. I found them off-putting and felt their songs threatening. However, one day I was half asleep and No Excuses came up. That one I loved. Then a few days later, Rooster was on and it was the song I heard, the very first MTV latino video I saw!

It took me a while to fully comprehend what Alice in Chains was about. I was 100% sold on Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Not so much on Nirvana, although I felt shocked when Kurt Cobain died, and revisited their albums, liking In Utero and Unplugged the best. I loved Mad Season’s only album and Layne Staley’s vocals felt more at home there on a first impression. Alice in Chains really clicked with me in ’99, and I can’t explain why. I was re-reading some guitar magazines and one from ’95 had a long, heartfelt interview with Jerry Cantrell. I kept coming back to it and I bought their self-titled swansong at El Chopo. Grind is a brutal album opener and the album keeps upping the ante at all times. Then I bought the unplugged. Then Jar of Flies. Last was Dirt. The rest I haven’t bought yet, but I’ve listened to them plenty.

It’s weird. I kinda outgrew both Pearl Jam and Nirvana, but Alice in Chains and Soundgarden resonate more and more as I grow older. Stone Temple Pilots feels evergreen for me. Maybe their lyrical work is what still grabs my attention.

For a long ass time I forgot how much I loved Rooster until one evening in 2014. I had finished interviewing Moving Panoramas after SXSW and Leslie Sisson proposed going for a beer and food at The Workhorse. We talked for hours and I had one of the best chicken burgers of my life there. When Rooster came up on the jukebox, I told her the story about the technician from ’93. That story was 21 years old back then. Now it’s 33 years old. It’s weird how such a long time can be summarised. So many things that happened in those decades, and some memories are still as fresh as they come.

See you tomorrow.

-Sam J. Valdés López