I first heard Mark Mulcahy's music three and a half years ago, at a live performance in Somerville, MA. I was blown away by the songs and by his performances of them and have been a huge fan ever since. A couple of months after the show I found an mp3 of one of the songs that I'd heard and I just had to blog it. I wrote:
A ways into the set Mulcahy took his hands off his guitar and he and the bass player and drummer applied their voices, just their voices, to this song. You could hear the sounds from the bar, separated from the lounge by a wall and a hallway. But the performance space was silent while the three men sang this. The sounds of the bar and pretty much everything else in Somerville dropped into the background.
A few days later Mark's management contacted me and asked me to take down the mp3, so I did.
The song is a dialog between two people who've been through something that far too many of this generation's young couples have been through.
A very recent performance of the song is now on YouTube, so I'm posting it for you all again. Great to see Mark is back on stage; I hope he comes through Boston soon.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 15, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Connecticut has produced musicians more famous than Mark Mulcahy, but few who have been more influential.
Just how influential is evident on “Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy” (Shout Factory), a CD and digital collection of songs by the singer, songwriter and one-time leader of the New Haven band Miracle Legion. After Miracle Legion, he fronted Polaris, which wrote the theme for the Nickelodeon show “The Adventures of Pete and Pete.”
The 41-song collection (21 on a CD, an additional 20 available online only) features covers of Mulcahy and Miracle Legion songs performed by artists that include R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the Pixies’ Frank Black, Fountains of Wayne’s Chris Collingwood, Dinosaur Jr. and the National.
It’s a loving tribute, to be sure, but not to Mulcahy. Rather, “Ciao My Shining Star” is a remembrance of his wife, Melissa Rich, who died unexpectedly a year ago, leaving Mulcahy to raise their 2-year-old twin daughters.”
Folks I've got them hungry blues
And nothin' in this to lose
People tellin' me to choose
Between dyin' and lyin' and
keep on cryin'
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain't you heard the news
There's another thing to choose
A brand new world
clean and fine
Where nobody's hungry
And there's no color line
A thing like that's worth
anybody dyin'
I ain't got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
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