Mad Season is a grunge super group, meaning that it contains members from already popular grunge bands around the Seattle scene at the time, which is this case is Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees. They only released one album, Above (1995), and Long Gone Day is my favorite song from that album. Here are the lyrics:
Runs from cold to colder
Time to time the sky’s come down
To help me lose my way
Tears and lies for answers
You and open veins, God knows I’m gone
Girl I just want you to
Come on down
Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong, oh babe
Come on down
Long Gone Day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain
See you all from time to time
Isn’t it so strange
How far away we all are now
Am I the only one who remembers that summer
Oh, I remember
Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away
Long gone day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain
So many tears I’m starting to drown
The rain in heaven’s all come down
Silver spoons affix the crown
The luckless ones are broken
Fears and lies for answers
You and open flames
God knows I’m gone
And I just want you to
Come on down, hmmm
Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong
I want you to, oh, I just want you to
Come on down
I fear again, like then, I’ve lost my way
And shout to God to bring my sunny day
When I hear this song I am filled with the overwhelming emotions off loss. Especially, when the narrator asks if anyone remembers that summer they do.
“Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away”
Because Layne Staley joined Mad Season after leaving Alice In Chains I speculate that he is speaking in regards to his lost bandmates. They captured the moments of the summer in the music, saved, but the wind has carried those times away from them. This is what I meant when I said I think one of the main themes of Grunge is loss of “before”. What is the narrator craving so deeply here? The magic of his past memoires with his best friends? Why did he have to leave them?
“Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong”
So we can see here the narrator feels guilt over their actions, perhaps the actions that lead them to the separation from their group. We get the feeling of the self destructive nature grunge follows, and the anger turned inward towards yourself.
“So many tears I’m starting to drown
The rain in heaven’s all come down”
I just love the language here. I don’t have much to say about it. I’m sorry if this was a lack luster passion post! I’m just feeling so mentally drained today I can’t even get excited about grunge!
I have listened to Pearl Jam! Also, that’s so sad about him leaving his band. I do wonder what made him leave it or what happened in general.
I love supergroups in music, but I wasn’t aware members from Pearl Jam were in any outside Temple of the Dog. I also really enjoyed the song and your interpretation of it.
In this song, it sounds like the writer knows that he’s falling apart and is asking for something to help save him. I also thought the contrast between the sun and rain/tears. I do wonder what “silver spoons affix the crown mean,” — I guess it could be about how rich/famous people were born in money and will stay in money and no one else can ever catch up to them.