Bloggery

I should never check my phone first thing before I'm even out of bed, not that it would have changed the one news event that has me more upset than anything going on in the current maelstrom that is the 24 hour news cycle.

David Roback, co-founder of the 90's music group Mazzy Star, is dead at 61.

My initial reaction was "Fuck off!" Nope. It was the real thing. I had to write something, so here it goes.

It was the 1990s in Dallas, Texas. Like so many decades, it was one you look back on and think, 'why the fuck didn't I appreciate what was going on then like I appreciate it today?' That goes double for music. I had picked up a copy of Mazzy Star's "So Tonight I Might See" after hearing it's big single "Fade Into You" on the radio (back when there was still a vestige of decent commercial radio stations, but that's a whole other tangent). Dave Roback and Hope Sandoval created nothing short of magic. "Into Dust" is another track on this collection of beautiful melancholy that made me stop, close my eyes, lean my head back, and fade from the world for 5 minutes.

There wasn't a lot of music then, or since, that had such a profound impact on me. It was beyond "music for depressed people". It was reflective. David Roback penned what was going on inside us, and Hope gave voice (and what a voice) to those lovely dark corners of our hearts. "Look On Down from the Bridge" off the album "Among My Swan" is a haunting goodbye, and the track I'm listening to as I write this. The gentle organ makes it appropriate for a memorial/appreciation piece.

David was no rock star. He was notoriously private, and didn't feel obligated to participate in the cult of personality that was (and still is) the music business. To David, music should just be about the music itself, without all the distractions. You should be able to just close your eyes, lean your head back, and just experience it. When I was trying to find an appropriate image for this piece, I couldn't think of one better  than what I wound up with: Hope in the foreground, David in the background, shades on, and trying to avoid the spotlight.

And today I feel like we have been cosmically ripped off.

To use the popular vernacular, Mazzy Star is a mood, and more than appropriate on this grey, rainy day. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put my headphones on and fade from the world for a bit.