Mark Sandman
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| Mark Sandman | |
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| Born | September 24, 1952 Newton, Massachusetts, USA |
| Died | July 3, 1999 Palestrina, Latium, Italy |
Mark Sandman (September 24, 1952 – July 3, 1999) was an American singer, songwriter, musical instrument inventor and multi-instrumentalist.
An indie rock icon and longtime fixture on the Boston/Cambridge music scene, Sandman was best known as the lead singer and slide bass player of the band Morphine. Sandman was also known as a prominent member of the Boston blues band Treat Her Right and the founder of Hi-n-Dry, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based recording studio and independent record label.
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[edit] Early life
Sandman was born into a Jewish American family in Newton, Massachusetts. "I was kind of a dreamy child—a Curious George baby," he once recalled. "As a child, people told me they thought I'd grow up to be a poet. You have to wonder what kind of kid someone would say that to."
He graduated from college but worked a variety of blue-collar jobs, including construction, taxi driving, and commercial fishing. Sandman once noted he would often earn considerable overtime pay, which allowed him to take leave of work and travel outside of New England to places such as rural Colorado -- the setting for a number of Treat Her Right and Morphine songs, including "Thursday", "The Jury", and "I Think She Likes Me".
Three tragic events impacted Sandman's life and would later influence his music - he was robbed and stabbed in the chest during a robbery in his cab, and both of his brothers died at relatively young ages. These events would later be recounted in the Treat Her Right song "No Reason".
There are very few other details publicly known about Sandman's personal life. Fans have often speculated that many of Sandman's songs were autobiographical, which to this day remains unconfirmed. Although Sandman served as an unofficial spokesman for Morphine, he avoided answering questions about his personal life or his professional experiences outside of the music business. This was most notable in a famously contentious interview conducted by journalist Seth Mnookin for the now-defunct online music magazine Addicted to Noise.
Sandman was reported to have been particularly secretive about his age, becoming angry with any reporter who expressed an interest in revealing it publicly. Some speculated that Sandman was sensitive to the fact that he was generally 10 to 20 years older than most of the indie rock figures popular during the 1990s.
[edit] Music career
Along with Morphine, which he formed in 1989, Sandman was also a member of the bands Sandman, Candy Bar, the Hypnosonics, Supergroup (with Chris Ballew), and the Pale Brothers. He also performed as a guest with the Boston jazz band Either/Orchestra.
His instruments were extensively altered and sometimes built by hand to create unique sounds. In Morphine, he played primarily a fretless two-string slide bass guitar, but he also was known to play a unitar (named after the one-stringed instrument in American blues tradition), and three-string slide bass. He sometimes paired bass strings with one or two guitar strings, creating the "basitar" and "guitbass". Ballew would later use both instruments in The Presidents Of The United States of America.
For Sandman, the result was a murky, slurring sound that, particularly when paired with the baritone saxophone of Morphine's Dana Colley, created what Sandman termed "Low Rock". His baritone singing completed the sound. "We're just baritone people," he once told an interviewer. "And the cumulative effect of all these instruments is that it sounds really low, but you can still hear what's going on between the different instruments. It hits the body in a peculiar way that some people like a lot."
As a lyricist, Sandman's songwriting was influenced by the gritty styles of pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson and crime writer James Ellroy.
During Morphine's active years, the band released five albums and one B-sides compilation. They toured extensively, both domestically and internationally, and became the second act signed to Dreamworks Records.
During the 1990s, Sandman continued to expand his Cambridge-based home recording studio with second-hand instruments and equipment, calling the studio Hi-n-Dry. Hi-n-Dry became Morphine's unofficial home and they recorded many of their signature tracks using Sandman's unique homegrown production methods.
[edit] The Twinemen
In addition to his work as a musician, Sandman was also an amateur photographer and artist. He created a comic entitled The Twinemen, starring three anthropomorphic balls of twine who form a band, become successful, break up, and later reunite.
The Twinemen comic also showcased Sandman's signature technique of combining a simple pen or pencil drawing with watercolor paints. Sandman's art and photographs were showcased on the official Morphine website and later featured in a DVD released with the Sandbox box set.
Colley, Treat Her Right and Morphine drummer Billy Conway, and singer Laurie Sargent would later adopt the Twinemen moniker for their own band as a permanent homage to Sandman.
[edit] Death
On July 3, 1999, Sandman collapsed on stage at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Latium, Italy (near Rome) while performing with Morphine. He was soon pronounced dead of a heart attack at the age of 46. Sandman was survived by his girlfriend Sabine Hrechdakian, his parents Bob and Tel Sandman, and his sister Martha Holmes. Morphine immediately disbanded following his death, though the surviving members briefly toured with other musicians, creating Orchestra Morphine as a tribute to Sandman and the band's music.
Following Sandman's death, Hi-n-Dry became a commercial record label and studio, recording and releasing the work of Boston-area artists. The label and studio is managed by Sandman's former Morphine bandmates Conway and Colley. Hi-n-Dry issued a retrospective box set of Sandman's music called Sandbox in 2004.
[edit] Memorials & Tributes
- The intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Brookline in Cambridge, Massachusetts' Central Square is named in Sandman's honor.
- The Mark Sandman Music Education Fund was established by his friends and family in order to give children in the Cambridge and Boston area an opportunity to learn musical instruments.
- Following Sandman's death, Chris Ballew, Dana Colley, and Billy Conway recorded and released a tribute song entitled "Gone Again Gone". It was available online as an MP3 file for a limited time.
- As a fellow bassist who admired Sandman, Les Claypool had an audience chant some "Yo Ho's" in honor of him at a show with Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, which can be seen on his DVD 5 Gallons Of Diesel. Claypool also has a Sandman sticker on his bullet microphone.
[edit] Quotes
- "I was kind of a dreamy child—a Curious George baby. As a child, people told me they thought I'd grow up to be a poet. You have to wonder what kind of kid someone would say that to." [1]
- "I don't know why I picked this bass, maybe 'cause it was so... freaky lookin', I suppose."
[edit] Trivia
Sandman's songwriting was influenced by the gritty styles of pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson and crime writer James Ellroy.
[edit] References
- Citations
