Unplugged Rock: Down In The Hole by Alice In Chain

If you're looking for an easy song with very cool acoustic guitar chords and easy to sing along (just don't sing this song in front of your parents and public places), here is the song you might want to try to master. Down In The Hole, both lyrics and music can really take where you've never been before. And it is definitely one of my favorite songs by Alice In Chain,  the long forgotten band by the main media.

Some gigs are as much about the circumstances surrounding them as the performance itself. Nirvana's Unplugged may have succeeded in the face of adversity, but Alice In Chains' MTV performance on10 April1996 in Brooklyn was even closer to never happening.

The band were well on the way to falling apart: after two years off the road, it was their only performance as a five-piece with second guitarist Scott Olson, but also one of the final appearances with a frail Layne Staley. After this show, his ongoing heroin addiction would lead him to live as a recluse in Seattle during the six years before his death.

On the night, main songwriter, co-vocalist and guitarist Jerry Cantrell had his own problems: a bout of food sickness (from a dodgy hot dog) meant he was sick immediately before and after the set.

Nevertheless, Cantrell and his Guild helped the band turn in one of the most starkly powerful demonstrations of their gifts in one of the all-time great MTV Unplugged performances.

The Seattlites were no strangers to the approach -1992's Sop and 1994's Jar Of Flies EPs both demonstrated a whole other side to their twisted riff age. That evening also showcased the power wielded by the vocal harmonies of Cantrell and Staley, even when the metal side of the band was
stripped right away.

Of all the fan faves the band played that night, their darkest song of all, Down In A Hole, is rendered the most haunting by this treatment. Without the layers of distortion found on the original version on 1992's Dirt, the picked verses and starkly confessional lyrics about the descent into addiction bring a new level of intensity, beauty and human fragility to their melancholy.