Rare Layne Staley Recordings Up for Auction

Blabbermouth reports that the rare recordings that surfaced earlier this year of now deceased Alice In Chains front man Layne Staley, have been put up for auction on ebay by Ron Holt. The auction ends Friday Dec. 30 around 6 p.m. ET The recordings are from a project titled 40 Years Of Hate, that Staley and Holt, who is a Seattle-based musician and songwriter, worked on before Staley’s AIC days.

The post has a $5000 price tag with a current bid, as of this writing of $1,025. There is a reserve bid on the item as well, which has not been met, and most likely close to the $5000 dollar price tag.

This auction is for the recordings only, and not the publishing rights to the unfinished tracks. Holt will take separate offers for publishing rights. There are six tracks in all, although earlier reports this past May by Blabbermouth have said that there were eight unreleased recordings found and were being restored and mixed by Seattle-based audio designer Jesse Holt. With the name connection, could those be the tracks in question, or separate recordings?  One of the rumored songs “Things You Do,” is not listed as part of the track listing. Holt never made it clear who his source is for the Staley tracks, or if they would see the light of day.

Alternate mixes of two of the tracks “Party People,” and “I Don’t Care,” have surfaced on YouTube.  Also the track, “It’s Coming After,” was released by the band Second Coming, which featured former AIC members James Bergstrom and Johnny Bacolas.

The item description posted on ebay is as follows:

Up for sale is a rare one of a kind item. This is a 1 inch 16 track studio master from 1988 featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. Prior to Alice n Chains, Layne Staley worked with Seattle musician and songwriter Ron Holt on a project they called ’40 Years of Hate’. The band featured former AIC member James Bergstrom, up and coming Seattle drumming talent Davis Martin, Ron Holt, Layne and Jerry Cantrell.  The music was a mix of industrial, rock and funk rock. The songs were never fully recorded and exist here in an unfinished state. Jerry Cantrell was slated to play guitar on this session but never did. Jerry played on the 4 track demos of these songs. So the tracks that were recorded were: bass guitar, synthesizers and drum machine programming – Ron Holt, drums – James Bergstrom, percussion – Davis Martin, back up vocals by the group and then a track of time code on track 8.
There are 6 songs with Layne’s singing.

Party People
It’s Coming After (Released on Second Coming’s L.O.V.Evil CD) 
Throw Me Down
Tell Me How To Love You
Dance It Up
I Don’t Care

The songs were digitized years ago. Alternate mixes of these songs were leaked onto YouTube. The songs I Don’t Care and Party People can be found there. The song It’s Coming After was released by Seattle band Second Coming featuring Jesse Holt, former AIC members James Bergstrom and Johnny Bacolas.

This is an extremely rare item. The tape was baked once and digitized. The digitized tracks exist and can be made part of the sale. But publishing rights are not a part of this sale. Are NOT. This auction is for the physical tape and box only. Offers on the songs themselves will be considered. 

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have. Thank you for your curiosity and love for Layne. 

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