RIP Mark Lanegan

This dude had his hands in a ton of stuff. I grew up on Screaming Trees. He didn’t stop after grunge burned out and kept writing solid stuff. We keep losing heroes!

 

Today sucked. 2-22-22, dropped on me by close friends an hour before a 2 o’clock appointment.

I first saw Screaming Trees when I was 19 in 1996, no exaggeration years after I’d already put his music in my daily rotation, driving around my home town listening to a tape my sister gave me of Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, chucking beer cans out the window into the ditch.

I saw him solo many more times, all at crossroads moments in my life where it was hard to say if his music fueled the depravity or forced the reconciliation, last time was 4 years ago at Timber fest with him backed by Jeff Fielder on guitar and a string section.

He helped launch Queens of the Stone Age and collaborated with multiple artists- PJ Harvey, Layne Staley, Josh Homme, Unkle, Soulsavers, Kurt Cobain, Greg Dulli, Duke Garwood, Isobel Campbell

Some Strange Religion played Anthony Bordain out on his show he filmed in Seattle not long before Bordain offed himself. He and Bordain became close friends a few years before his death, a mutual connection of a taxing life spent on the road.

He said about Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley after their deaths that “Kurt was like a little brother, Layne was like a twin.”

He watched 4 major Seattle artists between Andrew Wood, Chris Cornell, Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain kill themselves, by drugs or more immediate measures, but himself survived several stints in drug treatment as well as Covid this last year that left him in an induced coma. A hard life cut short at only 57.

As a kid who grew up Irish Catholic a half hour from Seattle it’s no exaggeration to say I listened to his music daily, I’ve got playlists that he belongs on or helps create, alcohol fueled gospel. To my friends, many of whom have been in music most of their lives, it’s like watching the bathtub drain finally empty out, and after the last couple of years of nothing but death that many of us have experienced first hand, it’s just more fucking absolute shit news

 

Goddamn, man. Thank you for sharing that.

I have this conversation a lot with friends, and I wonder if it’s my age and my disconnection with music today or if it’s the real deal, but I don’t feel like we are replacing the losses we’re feeling with the pillars of music we continue to lose.

I still seek out music, actively. I also live romantically in the past like all stupid Americans in their 40’s. There’s been a lot to process in the last few years, socially. Music is a salve for bad times. When the bad times are centered in music it hits hard.

I listened to Hawk from front to back 2x just driving yesterday. Of all his stuff that strikes a different tone and it really picks me up. Think I’m gonna do the same this morning.

I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts, friend. Be well and keep your music loud.

 

Rewatching the Parts Unknown, Seattle episode now

 

Old guy here too living in the past. I miss the days of record store days. I do still buy physical media, but there are far less options for store now. Kids today are clueless and have no patience because they always search their smartphone for everything.

I think music is still there, it just way over saturated. Anyone with so much as a smart phone can make music and that is not necessarily a good thing.

We have lost a lot of great artists lately.