Ok, Yeah....Frightened Rabbit, The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Yeah, so life has taken many turns since I was posting my thoughts about making turned vessels or building sailboats ( or racing them).  There are so many things to take and hold my attention...job changes...art, marriage, fatherhood.  Trying to talk about life, adding value...  I don't know it all needed to take a back seat. So, back into the fray.

Music is a major component of my life.  I love music, love how it can color periods of life.  To this day, whenever I hear ELO, "Out of the Blue", I think of high school finals, writing papers etc.  When I lived in the mountains and had a 40 minute commute, I was constantly on the hunt for new music.  I would listen at Tower or Borders Books, listen to the radio and try to recall the bands I heard.  For a while I had Emusic, an early subscription service, that was cool.  Now there is streaming music, which is a horrid way to listen to music, mainly because it doesn't pay the musicians equitably.  It is notoriously unethical.  Still, it is a great way to find music.  When I hear something, I screen capture it and try to buy a CD from the artists site.  Failing that, it's off to Rasputin's Music to look in the used bins.

I can think of no worse way to stumble upon an artists work than to read their obituary.  I know it is a phenomenon, that there a surge of press that comes with a band members death which increases their exposure.  In the case of Frightened Rabbit, it is all the more tragic because it appears to have been suicide.  I had no connection to this band, found them through an article written by a devastated fan, now I love their music. Some of the most, "human" music I can think of.

Still, the experience is not unlike the endless remakes of King Kong, where I ask, "Does the monkey die in the end?", knowing full well that he does.  My point being, I wish there was a happy ending and there isn't.  My experience of the music always has a mental asterisk after it, which though annoying, doesn't diminish the music in anyway.

Just a thought....