Morphine’s ‘low-rock’ appealed to me within the first few minutes of hearing them. When Rykodisc put out ‘Cure For Pain’ it found its way into a play station at Tower, and getting those machine set-up every month was part of my job. I would often choose one of the discs to listen to while I sat at a station and stamped on sale tags. Mark Sandman’s voice with his two string bass and the baritone sax just created such a warm feeling, and I hate to sound cliche, but I was hooked quickly.

I was pretty proud to introduce a number of people to Morphine. They were a band that always seemed to pass by word of mouth more then radio airplay or shear popularity, and I felt like my role as a record store clerk was to sell as much of their music as I could. I would often play them at night in the hour before the store was closing and the sound often seemed to fit. I was working at Barnes and Noble in Seattle though when Mark Sandman died, and I remember being shocked by it. Even more shocking was the manager saying ‘well, guess we better order some Morphine’ in expectation of the opportunity to sell to the hordes of people that would come in searching for the band after the singers death. But (much to my pleasure) the hordes didn’t poor in, and we had a stack of Morphine discs on the shelves for a number of weeks. I suggested that maybe if we play them in the store we may sell some, but that didn’t fit well into B&Ns ‘Kenny G / Old Sad Bastard’ music format that often filled the air in the store. Whatever… but this was one of the many times where I felt I was no longer at the cool hip record store setting that I used to be in (and this was just one of the MANY things that told me that).

I will say though that if you know my music, there is quite a bit that has been inspired by Morphine. The orchestration of my masters thesis (low voice, three cellos and percussion) certainly owed a ton to Morphine, and the overall sound of my ‘Music For Bassoon’ (with it’s slow glissandos) came from the electric bass being played with a slide (though another part of that piece is ripped from Queen’s ‘Killer Queen’… just saying, it might be avant-garde classical, but what I listen to makes its way into whatever I am working on).

I haven’t listened to these records for a few years now… and playing them right now as I type this is reminding me how much I love them… can’t wait to hear them over the next couple days again.