What can you say about Alice In Chains? They were and still are a great band. Why they are not already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I have no idea it's a travesty. In 1992 the released their landmark Dirt LP. In a previous post and video I did the song Angry Chair and talked about seeing them live. They followed up this LP with a 7 song EP called Jar of Flies. It was equally a good release but was a rather large departure from Dirt showing off an even wider range of musical ability especially from a songwriting standpoint as Dirt was a pretty heavy record yet Jar of Flies had mostly acoustic based content. Nutshell, I Stay Away, No Excuses, and Don't Follow are still huge classics in their catalog.
They say it was never released as a single on some websites I've looked at but No Excuses was definitely the first video on Jar of Flies and I don't know why a company would pay for a video for a song that wasn't a single. So on some of these websites out there I'm calling bullshit. It was the first single. Many also claim lyrically this song is about fighting a heroin addiction. The problem with this dubious claim is that Layne Staley did not write the lyrics for this song. Like most AIC songs everything was written by Jerry Cantrell. The song is actually about Cantrell's friendship with Staley and the frustration of having a friend addicted to heroin and not getting it together. The lyrics partially seem to be a type of call and response with part of them being about excuses someone would give for why they need to do something or dismissing someone's fears.
Musically like most AIC songs it's tuned down a half step. So in the video when it looks like I'm playing an A it's actually a G#. It's not a particularly difficult song to play but there are some nuances you should know about. You will need to pay attention to the strumming to get it right. When you are playing the A# make sure you catch the B & E strings on the upstrokes. During the chorus on the F# stick mainly with downstrokes on the bass strings. Now of course your hand will be moving both directions to keep rhythm but you only actually strike the strings on the downstrokes. As you move to the G# you can catch those B &E strings a little more but still not much. Once you get to the A# then go full on with your strumming. This sounds the most accurate to me when I play along with the track. You can judge for yourself in the video below
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