Morphine
| Morphine | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Indie rock , jazz rock , low rock |
| founding | 1989 |
| resolution | 1999 |
| Last occupation | |
| Mark Sandman | |
| Dana Colley | |
| Billy Conway (from 1993) | |
percussion |
Jerome Deupree (until 1993, from 1998) |
Morphine was an American indie rock / jazz rock band that existed from 1989 until the death of their front man Mark Sandman in 1999. During this time she released four studio albums, a fifth, The Night , was released posthumously in 2000.
history
Morphine was founded in 1989 by Mark Sandman, singer and bassist of the band Treat Her Right , and the (baritone) saxophonist Dana Colley. Together with drummer Jerome Deupree, the band signed a record deal with the Boston record company Accurate / Distortion in 1991 and released their debut album Good there , but soon switched to Rykodisc , where Good was re-released on September 8, 1992. During the recording of the second album Cure for Pain Jerome Deupree was replaced by Billy Conway for health reasons. The album Yes followed in 1995 with this line-up . The change to the major label DreamWorks Records in 1997 and the fourth album Like Swimming released on March 11th of the same year should bring Morphine the hoped-for breakthrough, but this did not materialize. The video for the single Early to Bed was nominated for a Grammy in 1998 in the "Short Form Music Video" category, but lost to Got Till It's Gone by Janet Jackson .
In 1998 Jerome Deupree began rehearsing and performing with Morphine again. In the following months Morphine, now as a quartet, recorded the album The Night . Even before it was released, however, on July 3, 1999, Mark Sandman suffered a heart attack while performing at the Nel Nome del Rock Festival in Palestrina and died on the way to the hospital. The band broke up a little later.
The Night was finally released on February 1, 2000 and received largely positive reviews; so it rated the music magazine Rolling Stone with 3.5 out of 5 points. On September 26, 2000, Bootleg Detroit , a recording of an appearance from March 7, 1994, was Morphine's only live album on Rykodisc .
Under the name Members of Morphine , since 2014 Vapors of Morphine , Dana Colley and Jerome Deupree have performed together again since 2009. Deupree left the group in November 2018 for health reasons.
Style and reception
The style of the Morphine releases is characterized by slow rhythms and Dana Colley's saxophone playing, and guitars are almost completely dispensed with. This combination of jazz , rock and blues elements , first made popular by Morphine, was later referred to as Dream rock , and by Mark Sandman himself also as Low rock . Sandman's bass playing in particular is considered to be formative for the next generation of musicians such as Les Claypool .
Although they were denied a major commercial breakthrough or outstanding chart successes, Morphine earned a loyal fan base.
Discography
Studio albums
- 1991: Good (republished in 1992)
- 1993: Cure for Pain
- 1995: Yes
- 1997: Like Swimming
- 2000: The Night
Live albums
- 1997: B-Sides and Otherwise (compilation of B-sides and live recordings)
- 2000: Bootleg Detroit
Singles
- 1993: Buena
- 1993: Thursday
- 1994: Cure for Pain
- 1995: great sex
- 1995: Honey White
- 1997: Early to Bed
- 1997: Murder for the Money
- 1999: Eleven O'Clock
Individual evidence
- ^ Greg Prato: allmusic: Like Swimming. Retrieved February 28, 2010 : "And although the album contains its share of highlights, it turned out to not be as strong as its predecessors were and failed to break the band through to the big time."
- ↑ 1998 Grammy Awards. Retrieved February 28, 2010 .
- ↑ Matt ASHARE: Mark Sandman: 1952-1999. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 11, 2010 ; Retrieved February 28, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Laut.de biography: Morphine. Retrieved February 28, 2010 .
- ^ Greg Kot: Morphine: The Night: Music Reviews: Rolling Stone. (No longer available online.) March 2, 2000, archived from the original on November 14, 2007 ; Retrieved February 28, 2010 .
- ↑ Members of Morphine on MySpace.com. Retrieved February 28, 2010 .
- ↑ Matt Ashare: Dream rock: Morphine's addictive music is seducing a phalanx of fans. (No longer available online.) May 27, 1994, archived from the original on May 15, 2008 ; Retrieved February 28, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Christian Kollasch: Review of Cure for Pain . laut.de, accessed on February 23, 2016 .
- ↑ Stephen Thomas Erlewine: allmusic: Morphine. Retrieved February 28, 2010 : "During the mid-'90s, Morphine gained a sizable cult following in America, primarily due to good word of mouth, heavy college airplay, and positive reviews."
