Retro Videos of the Week: "Would?" by Alice in Chains and "Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots

Continuing the string of '90s alternative Retro Videos of the Week, this Friday will mark the 25th anniversary of the release of two seminal grunge albums -- Dirt by Alice in Chains and Core by Stone Temple Pilots.  

I was never that much into Alice in Chains back in the '90s, even though they seemed to be one of the bands that somehow straddled the line between metal and grunge.  In later years, I have grown to appreciate them more.  After the modest success of the band's debut album, Facelift (which featured "Man in the Box," which was an MTV favorite as grunge broke), Dirt really pushed Alice in Chains in to the forefront of the grunge genre, with songs like "Rooster," "Them Bones," "Angry Chair," "Down in a Hole," and "Would?"  Dirt reached #6 on the Billboard album charts and eventually went quadruple platinum, making it the band's best selling album.  "Would?" is my favorite song by the band. Layne Staley just wails on this one.  In addition to its appearance on Dirt, it was featured on the Singles soundtrack, and the video is co-directed by Singles director Cameron Crowe.

STP, on the other hand, was one of my favorites.  When I received my first CD player in the fall of '92, Core was one of the first three CDs that I received that birthday.  What an album.  It's probably one of the top three grunge albums, along with Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten.  Kicking off with those opening a cappella lines of "Dead and Bloated" -- "I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed" -- STP's debut album was a force to be reckoned with, producing grunge hits with "Sex Type Thing," "Plush," "Wicked Garden," and "Creep" (not to be confused with the Radiohead song of the same name that came out around that time).  Core got up to #3 on the Billboard album charts and has gone platinum eight times over in the U.S., making it STP's best selling album.  "Plush" is my favorite song from the '90s, so I'm going with that. Does it get any more '90s than "Plush" and its video? If I had a Stone Temple Pilots tribute band -- and I haven't foreclosed that possibility -- I'd name it The Eyes of Disarray.