R.I.P. Mark Linkous

This past Saturday, the world and the music business lost another gem. Following in close friend Vic Chesnutt's fatal footsteps, brainchild and leader of the band Sparklehorse, Mark Linkous, killed himself in a Knoxville, Tennessee alleyway.

Sparklehorse's music was melancholy and sad, at times honest and delicate, and even loud and cynical. Linkous' voice was soft and gentle, almost a whimper rather than a whisper. Much of his sonic kindness can be attributed to the southern gentleman attitude that comes with growing up in rural Virginia, where he was born and spent most of his life--even recording his first two albums in his small house hidden away in the forest.

Linkous was depressed for the better part of the past two decades, which his music often reflected--either metaphorically or obviously. Yet at first glance, one reading select lyrics might picture Linkous to be the joyous type; filled with love and a passion for all earthly delights. As here, from the song "Don't Take My Sunshine Away":

"Your face is like the sun sinking into the ocean
Your face is like watching flowers growing in fast motion
All your kisses are swallowed, like the morning's hollows
All vines and tree nuts will come unwound
baby you are my sunshine, my sunshine,
please don't take my sunshine away"

Sadly, Linkous' sunshine was taken away...years ago. He suffered a debilitating accident stemming from a drug overdose that left him wheelchair-bound for the following six months in 1996. At the time, Sparklehorse was touring with Radiohead.

It seems like Linkous had a true grasp and understanding of the beauty of nature and the possibilities of kindness and truth in people, but only as a metaphor. Speaking from lyrical interpretation alone, Linkous seemed to have trouble dealing with the fact that nothing lasts forever; beauty fades, the sun sets, and the opposite of light is an endless abyss of black. From "Someday I Will Treat You Good":

"everything that's made is made to decay
well I'm shrinking bones in the sun
won't you tell me why that
the beautiful ones are always crazy"

At times, maybe Linkous saw himself as the ugly stain on a masterpiece landscape. Almost as if the world were perfect except for him. In the song, "It's a Wonderful Life" (an ironic middle-finger to journalists) his careful, precious falsetto claims:

"I'm a bog of poisoned frogs"

And then:

"I'm the dog that ate your birthday cake"

Throughout the near two-decade run of Sparklehorse, you can almost hear Linkous sink further and further into depression. The general tone of his albums speak volumes about his deterioration. The 1995 debut LP, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, is lo-fi and angry at times--almost frustrated at the unchangeable--and drenched in loud guitars and distorted vocals. But within all the noise are precious gems of folky, melodic alt gems, like "Hammering the Cramps".

After Sparklehorse's debut and Linkous' momentary death (the 1996 overdose stopped his heart for a few minutes) came 1998's Good Morning Spider. Although Linkous says most of the album was recorded prior to the overdose, one new song was written in honor of the care he received at London's St. Mary's Hospital. "Saint Mary" is an honest plea for his nurses to hurry him back to his woody home in Virginia where he could "taste the clean dirt in his lungs and the moss on [his] back" and all he needs "is water, a gun and rabbits". Tracks like "Sick of Goodbyes" have the warmth and tempo of something upbeat and potentially promosing, but the lyrics remain consistently unable to deal with the tragedy of life:

"the night comes crawling in
on all fours
sucking up my dreams
through the floor"

About the "incident" in which he temporarily died, Linkous said, "It scared the hell out of me at the time. When you're in a really desperate situation and you really think you're going to die, it makes you realize how quickly things can be over."

Countless lyrics and quotes here and there make his suicide seem like some sort of expected event, as if it were just a matter of when and where. But in recent years, one could look at his musical output and hope for a happier ending.

In 2001, Linkous decided he was looking for artistic growth, so instead of handling all of the production and instrumentation he'd done on the first two records, he decided to open up his doors and get help from a slew of talents, including Flaming Lips production guru David Fridmann, longtime idol Tom Waits, and friends PJ Harvey, Nina Persson and the late Vic Chesnutt. The result was the beautiful and tragically somber It's A Wonderful Life.

But of course, the tone of depression prevailed. In the ominous "Eyepennies", it's clear that Linkous wasn't really thinking of life as something he enjoyed. His lyrics would get darker and more dismal. From "Eyepennies":

"Blood suckers hide beneath my bed
And black fumes of skin so gently bled
I slept with a cat on my breast
Slowing my heart stealing my breath"

After It's A Wonderful Life, Linkous recorded songs for the next Sparklehorse album, but the depression overwhelmed him. The end result was a mix of previously released, re-recorded and a few new tracks, ushered in with the help of producer genius Danger Mouse. The bipolar 2006 release Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain would be the last Sparklehorse record. Although a well-produced, technically different album, it was obvious that Linkous was losing his will. About the album, he said:

"Well, I'd quit working for a while and it started to get really difficult to live and pay the rent. So it was really getting down to the wire where I had to turn a record in. I had some stuff written that I didn't put on the last album, because they were just really pop songs. They felt like anachronisms on the last record. So I saved all these little pop songs."

The best thing to come out of the 2006 album was the collaboration with Danger Mouse that led to the yet-to-be-officially released Dark Night of the Soul project that brought together former contributers like Vic Chesnutt and Nina Persson, and other big names like James Mercer of The Shins, Frank Black/Black Francis of the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes and The Flaming Lips, among others. The album along with a 200-page photo book by David Lynch is expected to be released sometime this year after a legal battle with Danger Mouse's label, EMI.

Then on March 6, for whatever reason, Mark Linkous went into an alleyway near a friend's house in Knoxville, Tennessee with a rifle, sat down, and shot himself in the heart, ending his painful, tragic life. To most it wasn't any big surprise, but that didn't make it hurt any less. A southern gentleman with a soft voice and an honest heart who simply couldn't cope with the how and why of life and death.

Listening to Sparklehorse, I've always had the mental image of driving in a car late at night in the rain on a dark, wooded road. Linkous' quiet whisper almost beckons you into the darkness--somewhere where the rising sun and time can't do you harm.

For you, Mr. Linkous, from your own tongue:

"Its time for you to rise
And evaporate in the sun
Sometimes it can weigh
a ton"

Stem Cell Research Good, Religious Nuts Bad

The ongoing debate in Republican and Christian circles over the use of embryonic stem cells in research for otherwise incurable diseases is puzzling and hypocritical.

The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children recently accused President Obama of violating constitutional rights of a frozen embryo and "enslaving" it like the Nazis did Jews during the Holocaust.

Their lawsuit suggests that "government funding of human embryo stem cell research and experimentation is what led to the Nazi experimentation on concentration camp prisoners during World War II."

These religious nuts are not only completely ridiculous and scientifically ignorant, but they're apparently also anti-Semitic.

The fact of the matter is that embryonic stem cells have real potential to reverse the painful, crippling effects of increasingly common diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

This would in turn give people who are already alive and capable of feeling pain and suffering a second chance at living their life. But these anti-stem cell groups call it murder of "human life." The embryos used for medical research consist of 50 to 100 individual cells, which the last time I checked is far less than a living human.

These groups are adamantly against this type of "murder" but are also completely willing to send young, 100 trillion-celled human life to war, knowing full well there will be real-life casualties.

But don't worry, these religious circles who hate potentially curing dreadful diseases can justify the death of soldiers and civilians in war by praying for their safety.

Instead of praying for the soldiers they know are likely going to die, how about praying for the Alzheimer's or Parkinson's sufferers who are being denied a likely cure to their miseries.

Well, that would just be a nose dive further into hypocrisy. You can't pray for them to get better when you're already praying for federal judges to basically kill them.

And if "enslaving" embryos is just like Jews being enslaved during the Holocaust, what about those being actually enslaved by degenerative neurological diseases? They probably wouldn't stoop to a comparison like that.

What ever happened to helping the meek?

When Will We Learn to Legalize?

I'm no economist, but I know in order for a product to sell, there has to be a market for it.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also knows this, which is why she said Wednesday, "[The U.S.'s] insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade."

Well hot damn. This shouldn't be news to anyone. We're a nation of stark-raving mad drug fiends. Whether legal or not, Americans, like anyone else, enjoy the escape and relaxation their normal, anxiety-laden lives don't naturally have.

That's why we have a Starbucks or Caribou Coffee on every street corner in America; we need the fix.

Cigarette laws take away the personal accountability we once had, turning us now into whiny, thumb-sucking babies. But you can still smoke and get cancer and there is no violence over beating weeds.

America loves alcohol as much as any other nation; in 2007, we drank enough for every person in the country to guzzle seven bottles of liquor, 12 bottles of wine and 230 cans of beer. That's a lot, even considering that one third of the population doesn't drink.

All of these things are drugs, the most used and abused of our great nation. But can you imagine if they were illegal? Prohibition of caffeine; a coffee bean war with the Colombians. A nation of addicted smokers chucking grenades in the streets over a pack of Newports? Can you imagine what banning these substances would do to the remaining thread holding our economy up?

And could you imagine something as wild as the prohibition of alcohol? Good God, the madness.

But wait - didn't that already happen? From 1919 to 1933, the U.S. had a different war on drugs. Instead of battling Mexican drug cartels attempting to satisfy their loyal customers with the relaxing effects of marijuana, we were doing the same thing to gangsters and rumrunners trying to satisfy the country with booze.

Any idea what happened there? The late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said in a 1997 interview about the legalization of drugs: "Look at Prohibition: all it did was make a lot of criminals rich."

That it did. And it also resulted in a whole lot of gunfire, murder and definitely didn't help the slumping economy of the times.

And look where we're at today. A third of the country doesn't drink.

How does this not make sense? Marijuana is illegal because it has been grandfathered down as a bad thing. Well guess what, it's medicine in 13 states. 

Now Washington is planning on upping border security with a $184 billion program to take and destroy billions of dollars in potential product. Along with drugs, they hope to get a hold of the military-style weaponry the drug cartels are using - but they wouldn't be stealing those, they'd be taking back what was theirs, since 90 percent of the weapons and equipment come from the U.S.

New flash, kids. You won't have a problem with guns, drugs or the economy if you legalized marijuana. 

Instead of spending billions on prosecuting, protecting, fighting, incarcerating and burying bodies every year, why not make billions by selling it?