![]() One of those seared-in-the-brain childhood memories.īut at that age, if it wasn't in a BMG or Columbia House catalog ("10 albums for one penny!"), I pretty much couldn't buy a CD in question. Morphine's "You Hear It First" snippet wasn't well preserved I've struggled to find it online over the past 20-plus years, but I can pin it to a specific era and a specific friend who I watched it with. The cable channel would occasionally air five-minute vignettes about up-and-coming bands, usually when they'd signed to mid-level record-contract deals. I found out they existed the same way a few thousand people from my generation did: by a quick-hit report on MTV News. Theirs was a unique sound: just bass, drums, saxophone, and vocals, swirled together in a style that Sandman dubbed "low rock." Saxophonist Dana Colley played his baritone sax like a guitar, while Sandman's unique slide-bass style favored thudding chords and far-from-subtle grooves. Sandman was best known as the lead singer and bassist for the Boston-area rock trio Morphine, who rose to mid-level, college-radio fame in the mid-'90s. If you've heard of the musician in question, Mark Sandman, you likely travel in some select music circles. But if any performer was going to vanish just as I teetered into my concert-going years, at least this one had some surprises for me five, 10, even 20 years later, all just a few mouse-clicks away. I will never see my favorite songwriter in concert, right in front of me, reacting to my cheers and enthusiasm. I've thought about this for decades from a few perspectives: as a former full-time music critic as a frequent chronicler of how information is presented and exchanged online and perhaps most of all, as a music fan who had one freaking band slip through his hands. You gotta be there.īut what about when you can't? What recourse is there when you're in love with an artist or performer who you can't physically interact with for any number of reasons? A television broadcast or DVD doesn't capture the same thing as a theatrical production or a concert. I'm a firm believer in the power of a live performance. Getty Images / Tim Mosenfelder reader comments 67 with
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