Digital sounds

Morphine memories and Radio Ryko online

by Matt Ashare

LAST SONGS: a tune written as a tribute to the late Mark Sandman has been released for digital download, and his final album is coming soon.

On February 1 of next year, Dreamworks will release Morphine's The Night, the album the band had completed shortly before frontman Mark Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage in Italy last July 3. In the meantime, the band is making available for digital download a recording of "Gone Again Gone," a song written and recorded by former Presidents of the United States singer and guitarist Chris Ballew as a tribute to Sandman. Ballew, who once collaborated with Sandman in the band Supergroup, performed the song at the Mark Sandman memorial concert in Central Square this summer, but the downloadable version, credited to Moveable Bubble and featuring Morphine saxist Dana Colley and drummer Billy Conway, is a studio recording that was made while Ballew was in town for Sandman's funeral. It will be available through February 1 at Morphine's Web site and other online retailers (Liquid Audio, CD Now) for $1.99. Proceeds benefit the Mark Sandman Music Education Fund.

Meanwhile, Morphine's former label, Rykodisc, has teamed up with http://www.sputnik7.com, an online digital entertainment network, to make Radio Ryko a reality. Accessible through http://www.rykodisc.com, the Web radio station has begun broadcasting round-the-clock programming featuring songs by artists from inside and outside the Rykodisc family. Programmed by Mike Marrone, founder of WHTG FM and Rykodisc's former national head of promotion, the free-form Web radio station is promising the kind of diverse, multi-genre mix that isn't available in the world of commercial radio -- everything from Nine Inch Nails and AC/DC to Duke Ellington and Johnny Cash. Twelve new hours of programming are being uploaded each week, and Radio Ryko eventually intends to expand to include daily live segments.