Please post your thoughts, comments and observations.
Try to be as detailed as possible.
Musically, this is one of my favorite MTV unplugged shows, along with Aerosmith and Queensryche. The songs picked work beautifully in their acoustic environment and the band is as good as ever. The video gives you insight into how much Jerry Contrell's backing vocals contribute to the songs, both in this live video but also in retrospect, in the studio albums as well. In fact, without Jerry's vocals, where he takes the lead on many songs, this would not have been a great show and leads to my next point...
Visually this an extremely hard show to watch. As a recovering addict myself, it is really sad to see Layne Staely up there. When he takes off his sunglasses, there is nothing behind those eyes and he is clearly way deep into addiction. Probably high, strung out, most likely both, and his performance shows it. I saw Alice in Chains in the early 90's, opening up for Megadeth and Anthrax, and we are looking at two different people here.
Knowing that he dies from that addiction a short time later only adds to the misery. Many never find a way out and hit rock bottom. My heart aches for them.
Bill Maher said if you take away drugs you might as well throw out half your record collection.