Newsgroup: it.fan.musica.rem
Titolo: [OT] : altra grave perdita per il mondo del rock

La notte scorsa è morto Layne Staley ... che tristezza ...
know me broken by my master
teach thee on child of love hereafter
into the flood again
same old trip it was back then
so I made a big mistake
try to see it once my way 
drifting body its sole desertion
flying not yet quite the notion
am I wrong ?
have I run too far to get home ?
am I gone ?
and left you here alone
if I would could you ?
(Would ? - Alice in chains)


Ma voi avete appreso questa notizia per caso pure da fonti
italiane(tg,giornali,ecc.)?
Io no...ma mi sembra strano che non l'abbiano diffusa.L'avranno fatto,spero.
Cmq,mi dispiace molto,anche se non lo conoscevo molto bene.
Sono sempre pezzi della storia della musica che si disperdono...e
poi,cavolo,aveva solo 34 anni...
Che tristezza!

Io no...ma mi sembra strano che non l'abbiano diffusa.L'avranno fatto,spero.
Io l'ho saputo attraverso una Mailing List dei Pearl Jam, due 
giorni fa. Cmq ieri c'era un articolo pure sulla Gazzetta del
Mezzogiorno. Se c'era qualcosa *addirittura* sulla Gazzetta,
sicuramente la notizia sarà stata pubblicata un po' ovunque.
ciao

 italiane(tg,giornali,ecc.)?
io l'ho vista su un giornale con un paio di giorni di ritardo, mi pare
fosse metro, uno dei quotidiani gratuiti di milano.
Francesco
-- 
"I see your money on the floor I felt the pocket change
Though all the feelings that broke through that door
Just didn't seem to be too real"

La notte scorsa è morto Layne Staley ... che tristezza ...
Sul board degli AIC ho trovato questo ricordo di Barrett Martin
Barrett Martin -- of Screaming Trees, Tuatara, and Mad Season -– has 
opted to not talk to the press about his late friend and Mad Season 
bandmate, Alice in Chains' Layne Staley (allstar, April 22), but took 
the time to share this with all: 
"Another one of our best and brightest has fallen. Layne Staley died 
alone in his Seattle apartment sometime last week. We are all very 
saddened at the end of this remarkable man's life, but whatever the 
cause of his death, it is unimportant, because death is really just 
the punctuation mark on the life itself. 
As an ordained former Zen monk, I learned to meditate on death 
frequently -- it is one of the primary practices. In doing so, you 
eventually come to realize that life and death are one and the same, 
two sides of the same continuum. If life can be expressed as a 
circle, then birth and death are literally the same singularity on 
that circle. Chief Sealth, Indian leader of what became Seattle, once 
said, "There is no death, only a change of worlds". Now Layne Staley 
has changed his worlds. 
I learned long ago that a person's addictions and obstacles are 
merely the outer veneer that hides the true spirit within. If you 
were fortunate enough to know Layne, you would know what I'm talking 
about. If we look at his strengths and talents, his gift to us 
becomes clear: His life was expressed in his words and in his music. 
Listen to them! He said a lot in a very short period of time. 
One of the things that always stuck with me about Layne was an early 
conversation we had about our past day jobs. He and I had both worked 
as carpenters, and we talked about our lives before and after musical 
success. We both agreed that music was, by far, a much more difficult 
profession that required a tremendous amount of discipline and 
physical fortitude. You could leave the tool belt at the job site 
after a day's work, but you carried the music with you long after you 
left the studio or the stage. It WAS your life. He approached 
his "work" like a skilled craftsman and I think that is why any 
musician who has had to truly work for a living, can express 
themselves in that blue collar, working man kind of way, the way 
Layne did. When he was at his peak of greatness, he was awesome to 
behold. His command of his voice and natural charisma was a very rare 
combination indeed and those of us who toured with him and saw him 
onstage remember the power he held. His unique vocal style has been 
frequently imitated since the heyday of the Seattle music scene, but 
none will ever really come close to his mastery. He was most 
certainly "a natural" and one couldn't have imagined a more perfect 
embodiment of a rock singer. Surprisingly, behind this outer image, 
was a very intelligent, gracious and humble man. 
When Alice and the Trees toured together over the course of 12 months 
and in as many countries, I saw a different side of Layne. His guest 
list, for example, was not for friends or elite patrons of the rock 
circuit; it was for the kids who couldn't afford to by a ticket. I 
remember an argument he had with a tour manager who needed Layne's 
share of the list for some VIPs. Layne refused to give it up 
saying, "Those people can afford to buy their own tickets, those kids 
out in front of the club cannot". He refused to budge on this and 
that's when I knew he really had backbone. Because those kids were 
the ones he thought should really see his show, those of the 
dispossessed. 
I remember wandering around European cities with him and talking 
about the age and history of the places we were in, marveling at the 
architecture, the differences in style. He really had a keen 
intellect and a wicked sense of humor and he always made us laugh at 
the profane. 
A couple years later when we formed our own band, Mad Season, we 
talked about how our life experiences, together and separately, had 
brought us all to this singular point. The point of deciding to 
create together, with the focused intention of making a great record. 
And that is exactly what we did. We made the record we wanted to 
make, about how we felt, musically and spiritually. I have always 
felt that it was the finest rock record I ever had the privilege of 
making, and I think the rest of the band would agree. 
Unfortunately, we lost Baker Saunders, the bassist, a couple years 
ago, in a similar manner. Now there are only three of us from that 
band left, but the music we made together is the statement of that 
friendship and trust. And I think that is what defined Layne as an 
artist: because he made the kind of music he wanted to make, not what 
the trends dictated. He cut a wide swath through popular music with 
his style and it helped define the trends that are still being copied 
today. He lived what others pretended to. And then he wrote about it. 
My best memory of Layne was when we were making the Above album. He 
was in the studio lounge reading Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. I had 
read it a few years earlier so we started talking about what it meant 
to be an artist and have a spiritual message. I don't need to get 
into the specifics of the conversation, but suffice it to say that 
Layne Staley felt as though he was on a spiritual mission through his 
music. Not a rock mission, a spiritual mission. And I think that is 
evident in his words and in the timbre of his voice. When you hear 
it, you know it. He was an authentic artist in a time of imposters. 
I'm not going to quote The Prophet, you can read that for yourselves. 
But I would like to quote a Japanese death poem in the form of Jisei, 
the art of writing a final poem moments before one's death. This one 
seems to best describe how I felt about Layne Staley, in his life and 
his death. 
My sword leans against the sky.
With its polished blade I'll behead
The Buddha and all of his saints.
Let the lightning strike where it will.
(Shumpo Soki, Zen Master, died January 14th, 1496 age 88)
--Barrett Martin"