I no longer use the "sportmurphy.com" email listed elsewhere online. try myspace/facebook if you have something to say or ask.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
I'm too depressed to write anything worth posting; it wouldn't be overstating things to call it despair.
So instead of the posts I write and delete daily, here's a pretty nice online write up found at:
http://rockbites.org/rockbitesDaily.html
As with the Long Island Press piece, this will probably vanish in a few days, which is why I'm putting it up here. I am grateful for these web reviews, but it's all so fucking ephemeral. So is everything else, I guess.
A reluctant Sport Murphy releases 3rd LP
A true outsider to the music industry, encouraged by friends, returns with a heartfelt tribute to a lost brother.
Texas born singer/songwriter Mike 'Sport' Murphy and his nephew Peter Vega were raised as brothers and remained very close into their adult years, both ending up in New York city. They appear together as kids in a home photo on the cover of Murphy's third full-length, Uncle. When Peter died at the World Trade Center in September 2001 performing rescue work as a member of Brooklyn Ladder 118, Murphy "...decided to withdraw from the world, and that included making music." But the trauma was only one factor in his decision. He already had one foot out that door-in his own words, Murphy "loathes" the music industry. He'd rather just make music for the folks he knows. Six years ago when he finished his wonderfully eclectic solo debut Willoughby (a Charles Ives-to-Brian Wilson project that followed a several-year stint fronting NYC folk/punkers The Skels), Murphy self-released the LP and then simply handed it out free to friends.
But the good folks at indie label Kill Rock Stars (Olympia, WA) picked up Willoughby and gave it wider distribution in 1999, gaining Murphy some recognition in the US press and winning him some new fans. Murphy composed a second LP for KRS, Magic Beans (2000), and was working on a third. But when the press and the public "generally ignored" Magic Beans, Murphy says he stopped work on its follow-up and "...destroyed the recordings and the arrangements." Then the suicide pilots brought down the twin towers.
Murphy wrote recently, "After Pete's death, the thought of making songs remained unappealing, and I certainly didn't want to mine my family's heartbreak for the sake of tune fodder. Only the idea of 'speaking' to Pete enabled me to view another work as anything more than meaningless, and that's all I've tried to do."
Kill Rock Stars released Murphy's new album, the 22-track Uncle, three weeks ago for the US. It is a patchwork scrapbook of Murphy's years with his younger brother, an outpouring of grief and anger, an a celebration of family and friends in the face of evil and unfairness.
Directed as it is to Pete, Uncle feels clean of demagoguery and cheap bandwagoneering. And the album has enough humor and variety to stand as a piece of heartfelt entertainment untethered to those horrible moments 17 months ago. The themes of evil and love that run through Uncle are timeless. Through simple honesty of emotion, Murphy has kept these songs unburdened by the sort of gang-mentality self-righteousness imbuing, for example, Paul McCartney's embarrassing anthem, Freedom. Murphy, like his friend Irwin Chusid (of Songs In The Key of Z), and like Kurt Wagner (of Lambchop), plays with musical genres and styles with sly joy. On this disc you'll hear simple folk ballads (No Fair), Brian Wilson/Bruce Springsteen tributes (Paul La Grutta), quirky novelty (Behistun), evocative pop (The Late Days Of Summer), and a nine-second ditty called You Lousy Stinking Scumbag. Scattered among the songs are recordings of Pete and Sport as children.
Some two dozen friends helped Murphy bring this collection to fruition. There's a lot of sadness in this mostly-quiet record, but there's joy, too. Murphy says, "Uncle is an album for an audience of one and he'll never hear it."
So instead of the posts I write and delete daily, here's a pretty nice online write up found at:
http://rockbites.org/rockbitesDaily.html
As with the Long Island Press piece, this will probably vanish in a few days, which is why I'm putting it up here. I am grateful for these web reviews, but it's all so fucking ephemeral. So is everything else, I guess.
A reluctant Sport Murphy releases 3rd LP
A true outsider to the music industry, encouraged by friends, returns with a heartfelt tribute to a lost brother.
Texas born singer/songwriter Mike 'Sport' Murphy and his nephew Peter Vega were raised as brothers and remained very close into their adult years, both ending up in New York city. They appear together as kids in a home photo on the cover of Murphy's third full-length, Uncle. When Peter died at the World Trade Center in September 2001 performing rescue work as a member of Brooklyn Ladder 118, Murphy "...decided to withdraw from the world, and that included making music." But the trauma was only one factor in his decision. He already had one foot out that door-in his own words, Murphy "loathes" the music industry. He'd rather just make music for the folks he knows. Six years ago when he finished his wonderfully eclectic solo debut Willoughby (a Charles Ives-to-Brian Wilson project that followed a several-year stint fronting NYC folk/punkers The Skels), Murphy self-released the LP and then simply handed it out free to friends.
But the good folks at indie label Kill Rock Stars (Olympia, WA) picked up Willoughby and gave it wider distribution in 1999, gaining Murphy some recognition in the US press and winning him some new fans. Murphy composed a second LP for KRS, Magic Beans (2000), and was working on a third. But when the press and the public "generally ignored" Magic Beans, Murphy says he stopped work on its follow-up and "...destroyed the recordings and the arrangements." Then the suicide pilots brought down the twin towers.
Murphy wrote recently, "After Pete's death, the thought of making songs remained unappealing, and I certainly didn't want to mine my family's heartbreak for the sake of tune fodder. Only the idea of 'speaking' to Pete enabled me to view another work as anything more than meaningless, and that's all I've tried to do."
Kill Rock Stars released Murphy's new album, the 22-track Uncle, three weeks ago for the US. It is a patchwork scrapbook of Murphy's years with his younger brother, an outpouring of grief and anger, an a celebration of family and friends in the face of evil and unfairness.
Directed as it is to Pete, Uncle feels clean of demagoguery and cheap bandwagoneering. And the album has enough humor and variety to stand as a piece of heartfelt entertainment untethered to those horrible moments 17 months ago. The themes of evil and love that run through Uncle are timeless. Through simple honesty of emotion, Murphy has kept these songs unburdened by the sort of gang-mentality self-righteousness imbuing, for example, Paul McCartney's embarrassing anthem, Freedom. Murphy, like his friend Irwin Chusid (of Songs In The Key of Z), and like Kurt Wagner (of Lambchop), plays with musical genres and styles with sly joy. On this disc you'll hear simple folk ballads (No Fair), Brian Wilson/Bruce Springsteen tributes (Paul La Grutta), quirky novelty (Behistun), evocative pop (The Late Days Of Summer), and a nine-second ditty called You Lousy Stinking Scumbag. Scattered among the songs are recordings of Pete and Sport as children.
Some two dozen friends helped Murphy bring this collection to fruition. There's a lot of sadness in this mostly-quiet record, but there's joy, too. Murphy says, "Uncle is an album for an audience of one and he'll never hear it."
Comments:
Post a Comment