| I wanted excitement, adventure, decadence, depravity, anything, everything. I would never find any of it in this dusty, isolated cow town. If the band could get me out, could get me into that life I so craved, it was worth any indignity, any hardship, any torture. |
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 | | Mark Lanegan performing with Screaming Trees at Lollapalooza, Rockford, Ill., June 30, 1996. | | (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) | | |
| quote of the day |
| "I wanted excitement, adventure, decadence, depravity, anything, everything. I would never find any of it in this dusty, isolated cow town. If the band could get me out, could get me into that life I so craved, it was worth any indignity, any hardship, any torture." | | - Mark Lanegan, 1964 – 2022, in his memoir "Sing Backwards and Weep" | |
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| rantnrave:// |
Dust
He sometimes called himself Dark Mark and he had a pliable baritone that could express that darkness loudly with a young rock and roller's flannel rasp or softly with an old folksinger's weathered singsong, both of which he could employ without regard to whatever age he was at any given time. It was one of the great voices to emerge from Seattle in its grunge heyday and he used it generously in a career that took him from the SCREAMING TREES, a much-loved hard rock band that stood somewhere in the middle of its friends in NIRVANA, SOUNDGARDEN and ALICE IN CHAINS without becoming as big as any of them (the Trees peaked, commercially speaking, with a soundtrack song), to the three decades of solo albums and collaborations that cemented his reputation as something much more than the sum of his own parts. Following his own arrow, he made three albums with the cellist from BELLE AND SEBASTIAN, a handful with that hard-rock super(ish)group and an astonishing version of that LEAD BELLY song with the help of two members of Nirvana, who'd famously cover it again a few years later. He sought out numerous other collaborations while building a long discography of his own as a rootsy rock singer songwriter with good range and enviable quality control.
MARK LANEGAN didn't get there easily. "I spent my life trying every way to die," he sang on the last album he released, adding, "Is it my fate to be the last one standing?" There were scrapes with the law, drug and alcohol addictions, a period of homelessness and other setbacks. He was as deeply loved by his peers as he was by his cult following. Among the musicians whose unexpected generosity he credited with saving him at various times were COURTNEY LOVE and DUFF MCKAGAN. He lived a fast and hard rock star life for some of those years but never quite lived *as* a rock star. For much of this century he maintained a day job painting Hollywood sets while still going about the business of being Mark Lanegan, stretching his sonic palette on albums like BUBBLEGUM and BLUES FUNERAL, which added electronics. He relapsed in 2004 and appeared to have been clean since.
In his later years, Lanegan also published several books, including his 2020 memoir, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP, and 2021's DEVIL IN A COMA, which told the story of his near death from Covid the previous year. He spent several months in an Irish hospital, some of that time in a medically induced coma. "The woefully inadequate amounts of Seroquel, Xanax and OxyContin I was being given were not going to put me down for more than a few minutes at a time—probably since I'd been self-administering elephant-sized doses of the same s*** on and off for years," he wrote. "It never occurred to me that there might come a time when I would legitimately need some."
He died Tuesday, at 57. Terribly young. No cause of death was given. The universe owes it to him, and us, to let him come back one more and write one last song about it.
Dot Dot Dot
It turns out the perennial debate about whether there's a meaningful difference between mixtapes and albums can have significant legal implications. MEGAN THEE STALLION is suing her label, 1501 CERTIFIED ENTERTAINMENT—again—in a case that hinges on whether her 2021 "batch of unreleased freestyles and loosies" is an album or not. She says she owes 1501 only one more album under her artist contract. The label expects more... SNOOP DOGG's purchase of DEATH ROW RECORDS, which still isn't a done deal, won't come with the TUPAC and DR. DRE albums that were originally on the label, Billboard reports. Those three albums accounted for about 60 percent of the label's revenue in 2021, the magazine says.
Rest in Peace Also
Procol Harum singer-pianist-composer GARY BROOKER, who wrote most of the British classic rock group's songs with lyricist Keith Reid and occasional help from Johann Sebastian Bach... BILLY BANNISTER, longtime road manager and emcee for the Temptations.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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| whiskey for the holy ghost |
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 | | MAGNET Magazine |
| | RETRO READ: Mark Lanegan: The Man Comes Around | | By Andrew Parks | | Mark Lanegan has been a grunge misfit, a folk-blues drifter and a gutter-dwelling addict. But whenever he appears to sing in that bone-chilling baritone of his, Lanegan is simply known as the gravest voice of his generation. | | |
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 | | Zogblog |
| | Making Stems Stick | | By Zack O'Malley Greenburg | | Kanye West's new album has audio stems in the news. He's part of a rising tide lifting boats like AudioShake, a startup founded by alums of Google and Plaid. | | |
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 | | Complex |
| | Believe It or Not, Rappers Struggle Too | | By Amber McKynzie | | New Jersey storyteller Topaz Jones once tried to be perfect, but quickly learned self-acceptance is the true key to success and survival. | | |
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 | | Holler |
| | Ten Year Town: Erin Rae | | By Jof Owen | | Erin Rae speaks to Holler about growing up in Nashville, what living there still means to her and how the city has changed over the ten years she's been playing in and around it. | | |
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| what we're into |
 | | Music of the day | | "The River Rise" | | Mark Lanegan | | From "Whiskey for the Holy Ghost" (1994). | | |
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| Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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