Alice in Chains - Lupo's

Tonight was Alice in Chains, obvious possible reservations there, but it was good, much better than I expected.

I'll cut to the chase, William DuVall. He was really great and sounded very much like Layne Staley. It did take some getting over though. These harsh, personal lyrics coming out of this very clean, handsome, different singer. In fact, I'm sure he gets this all the time, but I was reminded of Mario Van Peebles. In fact, wasn't there some movie where he was supposed to be some hard hip-hop guy and I just didn't buy it, even though he's a decent actor?
Musically, I'd have to say this almost has to sound better than the last stretch with Layne himself. I've seen concert footage where he just went all wrong, he was just all sick, and falling apart, literally. I have no doubt that this was in every measurable sense a way better show.
The thing that struck me was that when you listened to Alice in Chains in the 90's, there was a very real urgency about it, here was a guy basically self destructing in front of the world and writing painful lyrics about it. You really had a sense that "I want to see this guy, and I really hope he pulls out of this". I didn't. He didn't. Seeing someone else performing those, with AiC, made me feel like something was different. But the music, what matters, was perfect, they were having fun, and they made the audience have fun. You can sort of equate it to Trent Reznor, except that he pulled out of it, and puts on shows now, with a different intensity, but intense none the less.
If I had to pick one part that bugged me, and it's minor, it's that every show I go to, I always seem to get stuck in front of either the drunken pixie who thinks she should scream along with Amanda Palmer or Melora Creager (during quiet songs), or the drunken Jock who thinks he should scream along off key with whoever right in my ear. During the acoustic part of the set (total time, like 2.5 hours), they encouraged the audience to sing. Much of the audience shouldn't do that. So the acoustic part lost a bit for me personally beacuse all I could hear was some jock yelling.
But the electric sets which bookended the show drowned out any such nonsense, and completely blew me away.
This show was filmed for a concert DVD. The director warned us "not to fuck it up" because if we did, they were just going to go back to LA and have a one-off show to film the thing. I really hope we didn't fuck it up too bad.
No photos this time, I wasn't quite close enough for the Treo, and didn't even try. We were going to bring a camera, but I'm glad we didn't since it would obviously have been turned away, at the very least because of the filming. Besides, I never get around to uploading them anyway.
I'm starting to think this whole deal is a bad lifestyle choice, getting home at 3am on a Tuesday for the second time in like 3 weeks for the same reason, but damn, it's still fun.