Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Goals beyond
The courts have their say on Mark Sandman’s recorded legacy
BY MATT ASHARE

On November 16, 2004, a tiny Cambridge label named for the recording-studio loft that had once been home to the band Morphine — Hi-N-Dry — released Sandbox, a three-disc set comprising a DVD and two CDs of previously unavailable audio recordings made by the late Mark Sandman. Distribution of Sandbox was at once blocked by an injunction filed by Morphine’s former label, Rykodisc, which claimed it had the rights to six songs on the set. However, in a decision handed down two weeks ago by a New York judge, Ryko’s initial injunction was lifted, and the label’s copyright claim on those songs was denied. In the short term, that means Sandbox, which is being distributed by Kufala and Hepcat, is now legal. Beyond that, it opens the door for future collaborations between Hi-N-Dry and Rykodisc on a comprehensive Morphine box set. And it sets the stage for future Hi-N-Dry compilations of as yet unreleased Sandman recordings.

A long-time fixture on the Boston music scene, Sandman began his career playing "low-end" guitar in the bluesy Treat Her Right, a foursome who were signed and dropped by RCA in the ’80s. That experience taught him a lesson or two about dealing with the music business, but it did little to dampen his enthusiasm for music itself. By the early ’90s, Sandman, who continued to gig with Treat Her Right, was at the center of an evolving group of musicians whom he played with in guises including the stripped-down trio Morphine, the horn-driven Hypnosonics, the quirky Supergroup (with future Presidents of the United States of America frontman Chris Ballew), and the more folkish Pale Brothers (a collaboration with mandolinist Jimmy Ryan of the Blood Oranges). When Sandman booked monthly residencies at the Plough & Stars and the Middle East, it might be under the name Sandband or just Sandman.

Out of all of this confusion, the line-up that best embodied Sandman’s musical aspirations was the guitar-less Morphine, with Sandman on two-string slide bass, Dana Colley on baritone saxophone, and Jerome Dupree on drums. Billy Conway would replace Dupree as Morphine began to reach an audience beyond Cambridge. But in the beginning, Sandman had to release Morphine’s first album, 1992’s Good, on his own Distortion label through Either/Orchestra leader Russ Gershon’s Accurate imprint.

Sandman’s instincts were on target. Within a year of Good’s release, the then Salem-based indie Rykodisc had signed Morphine to a five-album deal that would include reissuing Good. By 1995, Morphine had begun to cultivate an international following and attract the attention of major labels. Before the fourth album was released, Sandman had signed a deal with DreamWorks whereby the last two Ryko albums would be partly funded and distributed by the new mega-label. In July of 1999, however, while Morphine were in the midst of supporting what would be their final studio album, The Night, Sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on stage in Italy.

In the meantime, Sandman had created his home studio and was continuing to experiment with different bands, instrumentations, and recording techniques, committing all of it to tape. As Conway recalls when I catch up with him on the road in New Jersey with Twinemen, a foursome including Colley who grew out of Morphine’s demise, "One of the things I learned while going through the all of those tapes is that Morphine was a venue for a prolific songwriter. And only the songs that fit Morphine became Morphine songs. But Mark was writing all kinds of other material for other outlets. Even Dana and I, who were around when a lot of that was recorded, were overwhelmed. I kept thinking that while the rest of us were sleeping, Mark was recording."

If anything, Conway is understating the quantity of music Sandman committed to tape. Hi-N-Dry, which was also his home, was always ready to go. Anyone who was around at the time knows that when Sandman wasn’t on the road, he was writing new material, reworking old material, and recording all kinds of ideas for his many projects. Aside from Conway and Colley, no knows this better than Paul Kolderie, the producer/engineer Sandman worked with on most of his recorded material.

Over coffee at his current studio, which is located in the space once known as Fort Apache’s Camp Street location, Kolderie, who submitted what many consider to be the key affidavit in the Sandbox case, recalls the process that went into creating the contested demo recordings. "We were working on what was going to be the next Morphine album in ’98. All summer we worked up in Mark’s loft, recording with different people, writing songs, refining songs. There was a whole pool of material that we were trying to coalesce into an album. Lyrics would move around. Sometimes he’d incorporate bits and pieces of things we’d worked on years before. So we whittled it down at the loft with lots of people."

According to Kolderie, Sandman was looking to move Morphine forward. "He was desperate or eager to expand the sound of Morphine because this was album number five and the one before it, Like Swimming, had been seen as a dead end critically. And maybe it was rightly criticized for being more of the same. It was a hodge-podge of stuff we had around because they were on the road a lot and it hadn’t been a good time for writing. But you get penalized for being consistent, because critics are looking for David Bowie/Madonna–type of reinventions. So we were incorporating piano and he was making new instruments like the tritar and unitar. Some days we wouldn’t even record anything: we’d just mess around with different instruments. It was a nice time. But things fell apart because DreamWorks weren’t into what they were hearing. They wanted hits, not moody excursions. But Mark paid for everything himself and basically did whatever he wanted."

page 1  page 2 

Issue Date: April 1 - 7, 2005
Click here for the Cellars by Starlight archive
Back to the Music table of contents

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group