OK, I've been missing for a while. I'm in the midst of trying to graduate, and all of my "Ensemble Sound" priorities have been put aside until after December 19th.
But for now, I'll post articles that I write for my class if they are at all relevant to music.
Last week I had to write an obituary for my reporting class. Of course, I chose Jeff Buckley. Though he's been gone since 1997, the man's work still deserves to be recognized.
www.JeffBuckley.comOfficial MySpace
Jeff Buckley gave the world grace. And not only true grace, but also the 1994 album "Grace" that would forever change Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
Buckley was taken from this earth on the evening of May 29, 1997, when he decided to go for a swim in Wolf River in Tennessee and drowned. He was only 30 years old. Drugs were not a factor.
Buckley was with one of his friends, Keith Foti, on the east bank of the river when he disappeared. According to Foti, the singer was fully clothed when he stepped into the water while listening to music. Buckley was in Memphis recording a new album to follow up "Grace."
This album is now known as "Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk." It was released in 1998, just a year after his death. It's a 2-CD, 20-song collection of studio four-track recordings. It was originally supposed to be titled, "My Sweetheart The Drunk." Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, demanded that all of the songs would stay where Buckley left them, even if parts were missing. The point of this was to preserve the legacy of his music.
And his legacy has been preserved. Many fans of Buckley believe he is one of the greatest musicians of all time.
"From the very beginning I knew what I was hearing was something like I'd never heard before, otherworldly and beautiful — like magic," said Thomas Biggs, a fan of Buckley since 2001. "His voice is the voice of my soul. His music changed myperception not only of music, but love, life and spirituality. Every note sunk into my soul and I felt every word. Somehow this guy whom I'd never met knew exactly how to express every thought, emotion and desire I'd ever had, past and present, and they were all flowing out in angelic waves. To say that Jeff Buckley is important to me is a huge understatement. It's more of a delicate balance between deep appreciation and religious zealotry."
Born in Orange County, Calif., in 1966, Buckley was a music-lover at a young age. His step-father, Ron Moorhead, introduced him to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Pink Floyd. His mother was also a classically trained pianist and cellist, and Buckley would frequently sing around the house with her.
But Buckley truly took to music at the age of 5 when he found an acoustic guitar in his grandmother's closet.
He continued playing music, and after playing in various cover bands in high school, he attended the Los Angeles Musicians Institute, and then moved to New York in 1990. He went back to Los Angeles after seven months, then returned to New York to unenthusiastically participate in a Tim Buckley tribute concert at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Church in 1991. Tim Buckley was his biological singer/songwriter father. Jeff Buckley only met his father once when he was 8 before he died at the young age of 28 from a heroine overdose.
Though Buckley was hesitant to play at his father's tribute, his performance led him to move back to New York permanently in 1992 to pursue a solo career. His diverse performances in New York's East Village café called Sin-é led him to a contract with Columbia Records in 1993. Live at Sin-é, a four-song EP, was released while Buckley assembled a band to record his full-length debut, "Grace."
Though "Grace" wasn't a huge hit, many critics were impressed, and Buckley toured and promoted the album for almost three years during the "boy band" pop craze.
"I'm not sure he'll ever be fully appreciated, he's known for his beautiful voice, but he's a hugely underrated guitar player and arranger," Biggs said. "Even the artists he grew up listening to had admiration and respect for his talent. He was a rare, once in a millennia talent and had limitless potential to completely revolutionize music. In the era of Nirvana and the Spice Girls, he was truly unique."
And even though he is gone, his career lives on.
Lindsey Brooks, a fan from Georgia, explained what happened the first time she heard "Hallelujah."
"His voice hit me like no other musician's ever had. I didn't really discover him until the year of his death because of all of the articles on him at the time," Brooks said. "I don't think there are that many musicians out there anymore that understand love and live music the way Jeff did. He is the tear that hangs inside our souls forever."