Song of The Week: Wish You Were (still) Here

With the suicide of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous weighing heavily on my mind the last few days, it's been a sad week. I've never experienced such heartache over the death of a person I did not know and the experience has been rather alienating. I did, however, receive several emails from strangers who read the piece I wrote on Wednesday, expressing their condolences and sharing with me their own struggles to deal with the death of Linkous. I have to wonder, if those of us who were fans could have reached out somehow and let him know how much he meant to us, would that had made a difference? Should I go down the list of my iTunes drafting 'Please Don't Kill Yourself' letters to all of my musical heroes? Ridiculous, I know, but these have been my thoughts this week.

For the Song of the Week, I wanted to pick the first song I ever heard by Sparklehorse, a song I heard in high school that led to a life-long musical co-dependence. It was in the days of Napster (wow, Napster) and I was searching through Radiohead songs when I came across one that was a collaboration between Radiohead and some band with a funny name I'd never heard of, Sparklehorse. The song ended up being an eerie, atmospheric, slow as molasses cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." For the longest time I thought Thom Yorke was singing the warbling vocals that I found so haunting, but maybe a year later I read an interview with Yorke where he talked about the collaboration and how Linkous had sung the words. That led me to buy Sparklehorse's first album, the awesomely titled Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, and eventually, purchasing everything I could get my hands on that Linkous had touched (from the Daniel Johnston tribute album he produced to his latest, a collaboration with Danger Mouse and director David Lynch, Dark Night of the Soul.) I don't expect to be over this incredibly sad loss anytime soon but the songs I have will always be there and might just mean even more to me over time.

Here now, the first song I ever heard by Sparklehorse, and no, that's not Thom Yorke singing.

Sad and Beautiful World: R.I.P. Mark Linkous

It's hard not to feel a little silly for being so saddened by the death of a pop singer. It's not something that you can tell someone and get a lot of sympathy for. You can't take the day off of work. There's no funeral you can attend, no wake, no shiva. Can you even 'miss' a person you never met? Despite my own self conscience awareness, I can't help but feel totally devastated by the loss of Mark Linkous, lead singer and driving force behind the band Sparklehorse.

Complicating the matter is the fact that aside from me, only about 7 other people have ever heard of the band. It's not like I can turn on CNN and watch thousands of fans flocking outside of Linkous' mansion, ala Michael Jackson. The very essence of Linkous and part of my attraction to his music was its utter secrecy. Every whispery lyric Linkous sang sounded like an intimate revelation between you and him; a secret shared by one sensitive soul to another. Linkous's music, evoking rustic beauty and often pain, had been with me since high school and has only grown more important in my life as I've gone through the ups and downs of adulthood. I could play a Sparklehorse song to celebrate a beatiful chilly fall morning or use it as medicine for my broken heart. Through some of the most disparing moments of my life, I have listened to Sparklehorse and found both an outlet and a salve. When Linkous repeats the line, "I will feel the sun shining down," it is both a promise and a prayer.

Linkous was no stranger to pain. While on tour with Radiohead in 1996 he overdosed on painkillers and passed out in a bathroom for 14 hours with his legs pinned behind him. He was paralyzed for quite sometime afterward and continued to have complications up until his death. He wrote the album, Good Morning Spider, largely from a wheelchair. Still, Linkous always seemed to me a person who found hope even at the very bottom of the ocean. The kind of guy who knew the sun was millions of miles away but at least it was there. He was a musical genius and according to all of the artists he has worked with (Radiohead, Tom Waits, Pj Harvey, Danger Mouse, and Julian Casablancas to name but a few) was a quiet, caring and sensitive soul. I had taken Sparklehorse for granted, waited, depended, on new albums, more beautiful songs to guide me through my troubled times. And now Mark is gone and I don't know if I can listen to his music anymore. Not for a while anyway. This Saturday afternoon Mark Linkous shot himself in the chest with a rifle in Knoxville, Tennessee in an alley behind his friend's house after reportedly receiving a distressing text message.

He will be missed.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous

Sunday afternoon the family of Mark Linkous, frontman behind Sparklehorse confirmed that he had committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot. He was one of my absolute favorite artists and I'm too sad to even comment on this...

Under The Influence

Each month we pick an influential band or musician that you might not know so well and tell you how they have influenced those you do. This month we are looking at the crazy-ass, Casper-the-Ghost loving, singer/songwriter, Daniel Johnston. Johnston, a diagnosed schizophrenic, has often led a life that has overshadowed his music. That life was brought to focus a few years ago in the terrific documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, where we learned about his long list of inappropriate (to say the least) behavior. We learned, for instance, that Johnston once tried to crash a plane his father was flying on purpose because he thought he was already a ghost and also how Johnston once scared an elderly woman so much (believing that she was Satan) that she jumped out of an apartment window (a few stories up) to escape (she lived). But all that would be relatively uninteresting if it wasn't for the other thing that Johnston does - make heartbreakingly sad and sincere pop tunes. Although Johnston is far from a talented musician technically speaking, he has an uncanny knack for melody and the type of touching lyrics that only a self absorbed, clinically insane person could get away with. Much like the late Vic Chestnutt, it's Johnston's limits as a musician that emphasize how much he needs it in his life to express himself, elevating what could be written off as sloppy musicianship to a rare form of high-art. But don't just take my word for it. Here, a list of music-makers who cite Johnston as a major influence.

Kurt Cobain
Often seen wearing a t-shirt that depicted the front cover of Johnston's album, Hi How Are You? Cobain was both a huge fan and deeply influenced by Johnston's work, which can be heard in a song like "Pennyroyal Tea."

Sparklehorse
Mark Linkous, the brains behind Sparklehorse, is basically what Daniel Johnston would be if he were a fully functioning human being that didn't go around trying to kill devils all the time. Linkous has gone on to produce a tribute album for Johnston and his music is heavily influenced by the troubled singer in the best possible way. The two artists' parents have even become friends over the years!

Beck
While you might not hear it in a spazzed-out, electro-funk anthem like "Where It's At," take a listen to Mutations or even Sea Change to hear the super honest, lost-in-the-world-without-you tunes that Johnston does so well. Not sold? Beck also appeared on the tribute album, The Late Great Daniel Johnston and when you hear him do the song, you hear how easily it could have been one of his own.

Bright Eyes
Daniel Johnston has had such an impact on Conor Oberst that it's really hard to imagine Bright Eyes existing if there were no DJ. Oberst has, in fact, taken Johnston's song, "Devil Town" and made it into a crowd-favorite staple of his own live shows.

Sonic Youth
Though they cite him as an influence, frankly I don't hear it (unless you count the sheer dissonance in their music that for them is experimentation and for Johnston is, well, just how he plays). But there is no denying that they have great affection for him (and incredible patience) as is on display in the movie The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

My Favorite Things

What would be the point of having your own blog if you couldn't try and brainwash people now and then? With that (your brain) in mind, each month I will be doing a feature on nothing more than just a band I love. Today it is Sparklehorse.

Sparklehorse? Never heard of em' right? Don't feel bad, they're one of the best kept secrets in modern music. Here are the basics - the band is mostly the brainchild of Mark Linkous, an evil-mad-genius/country-bumpkin from the mountains of North Carolina. In 1996 Linkous, who is the first person in his family not to be a coal miner, toured with friggin' Radiohead, and half-way through the tour, overdosed on painkillers and passed out with his legs pinned underneath him for 14-hours. He suffered all kinds of damage and was in a wheelchair for 6 months. He even wrote a song on the album, Good Morning Spider, about one of the nurses in the hospital who treated him kindly. At one point he tried moving out to L.A. but missed his pastoral setting and went back to N.C. to a farmhouse where bears sometimes block the road and make it hard to get into town to buy groceries.

Compelling enough, but what's the music sound like? Well, ever wandered around a field in the middle of nowhere in October listening to the leaves rattle, the creek trickle, a train somewhere off in the distance humming down the track? It's kind of like that sometimes and at other times it's as though that train off in the distance has come roaring off the tracks right at you and the only thing you have to defend yourself is a chainsaw. Yeah sure, the chainsaw's not going to protect you, but it's going to sound awesome.

Linkous' vocals are often quiet - almost whispery at times - singing about finding bear teeth on the ground, or fiery pianos washing up on foggy coasts. He sounds like a naturalist philosopher, home-schooled and whiskey drunk. The music is sparse - banjos, tinkling badly tuned pianos, barely strummed guitars. At other times he's downright punk rock, his voice seething amid a summer squall of storms and electric guitars on the horizon - although he's still singing about carburetors and farm animals.

All this is not to suggest that there is anything terribly challenging about listening to Sparklehorse. You will immediately notice the influence of bands as ubiquitous as The Beatles and The Pixies at times, it's just that those influences have been filtered down through the Appalachian Mountains. To his credit, Linkous has worked with some of the absolute big names of big names in the music industry including: Tom Waits (his closest soul mate), PJ Harvey, Danger Mouse, Daniel Johnston, Frank Black, Beck, Bright Eyes, and the aforementioned, Radiohead. His music has also been featured in movies such as Laurel Canyon, Lords of Dogtown, Dandelion, Dawn of the Dead, and All the Real Girls.

His latest project was a collaboration between himself and Danger Mouse called The Dark Night of the Soul, in which they teamed up with David Lynch who listened to each song they wrote and took pictures for an accompanying book. Each song Linkous and Mouse wrote was then passed down to another musician (Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, The Shins, The Strokes, to name a few) to sing. The only problem is, because of Danger Mouse's run-ins with his record company over the Jay-Z/Beatles mix, The Grey Album, Dark Night of the Soul is being held up by the record company and its release, for the moment, seems dubious.

Album to check out first: Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot -yep that's how it's spelled. If you like it, my next suggestion is the woozy masterpiece, It's a Wonderful Life, followed by (post wheelchair/overdose album) Good Morning Spider and then his latest, and in my opinion, least consistent album, Slept for Light years in the Belly of a Mountain.

Check the video below for a Sparklehorse sampler: