FOR THE LOVE OF A MOTHER

I read a great story this week thatI'll share with you here via the means of cutting and pasting., but to fill you in on the backstory, one of my favourite bands that ever (briefly) walked the planet (back in the late 80s) were called Mother Love Bone. One album down - Apple - and they lost Andrew Wood - their vocalist/shining star/reason for existing - to a heroin overdose. The rest is pretty much history with some members of the band going on to form Pearl Jam...

Anyway, here's the story (courtesy of consequenceofsound.net - though I would certainly question their statement that Mother Love Bone were a 'grunge' band all the way from here to eternity):

Prior to forming Pearl Jam, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of Seattle grunge band Mother Love Bone alongside frontman Andrew Wood. The band was together for only two short years before Wood tragically died of a drug overdose just days before the release of their debut album. However, in the years since, Gossard and Ament have kept alive the spirit of Mother Love Bone, as they’ve frequently performed “Crown of Thorns” with Pearl Jam, and reunited with the other surviving members for a benefit concert in 2010. 

Recently, Gossard and Ament got wind of the dire living conditions experienced by Wood’s 70-year-old mother, Toni, and launched a fundraising campaign on her behalf. Together, the band and their fans raised over $75,000 for Toni, which she’ll put towards replacing her house and landscaping for a garden.

“Toni is such a magical woman. Her spirit is so close to Andy’s, to whom she gave so much love, humor and spark. If you’d ever seen Andy and Toni together, you’d see the connection,” Pearl Jam wrote on its website. “Toni is now in her 70’s and living in a leaky, dilapidated trailer with bad wiring, while still being a part time caregiver. The more Jeff and I learned about her situation, the more we felt we couldn’t ignore it.”

In an interview with The Kitsap Sun, Toni said, “I always go and whisper to my teller, ‘How much do I have left?’ because my account’s always verging on setting off all kinds of bells and whistles. And she came back and said ‘I don’t think you have to worry.’”

It's good to know that out in the big, bad world that keeps on spinning and doesn't give a flying fuck about anything at all so long as it can keep on spinning, there are people who still have the time to give a damn about something they didn't really have to.

I've told this story to so many people this week who didn't know who Pearl Jam are let alone Mother Love Bone that I figured it more than worth posting here.

Your turn. Go do something for the world instead of checking in to see how popular you are on your social network of choice. Then you can come back and watch this Mother Love Bone video for Stardog Champion: 

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DISAPPEARING EYEBROWS

It's the call from upstairs everybody dreads. You never think it can happen to you but it can strike at any time. "Dad.. can you come upstairs now please!"

Figuring the worst - a smoking plug socket maybe or a flooded bathroom - I tore up the stairs (after ignoring the first cry for help just to make sure it really was important) to find Rhiannon sitting on her bed crying her eyes out.

"What's happened, honey?"

"I'm sorry! I've accidentally shaved my eyebrows off. I didn't mean to - I didn't know that your razor was turned on all the time..."

Do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face while trying to explain that a razor isn't actually turned on, it's just sharp all the time? She made me promise not to tell anybody but then went and told all her friends one by one anyway, so I don't feel bad about doing the same. Every time I think about how you can possibly shave your eyebrows off by accident, it makes me properly laugh out loud. Not in the text way... Laurel & Hardy laugh out loud. Was it wrong to tell her they will probably grow back in a few days?

•••

I don’t know why they do it. It’s probably to keep jobs when there is no need to keep jobs but when an artist is marketed in his home country when, given half the chance, the rest of the world would be interested as well, well it’s a waste. No, not a waste - it’s a crying shame.

In this instance, I’m talking about Matt Nathanson and wondering why I’ve only this weekend discovered him. For the record, it wasn’t a spoon-fed link, that’s for sure. I’ve stopped looking at all that data driven garbage. It was something I read. If I can remember where I saw it, I’ll add it later.

Anyway, here’s this guy - largely undiscovered by me and I assume many others - who has seven albums of the most glorious acoustic based material under his belt and I’m totally knocked out by him. You can find his back catalogue and anything you might need to know at his site if you find yourself in a similar boat (new album out now and a tour with Kelly Clarkson currently ongoing) but what I’m thinking as I look harder is how long it took him to do it his own way. The first album is almost twenty years old now but I adore the journey he has been on. It probably hasn’t been easy - if I know songwriters at all, he’s probably thought of throwing in the towel more than once but from a listening perspective, I’d like to let him know, I’m stoked that he didn’t.

This weekend has been a genuine pleasure to work my way through with Matt hanging around in the kitchen - figuratively speaking of course, although he's quite welcome to come and write here any time he wants. It’s not very often I find new material that I know will last. If you like acoustic based material, Matt’s the very guy to call on.

Still on the subject of not knowing ‘why they do it’, I was going to take the kids to check out John Carter this evening but I couldn’t find one single screening of it in a 40 mile radius that wasn’t still flogging the dead horse of 3D. Can’t we just go and see a movie because it’s great and not because things might appear to be ‘coming towards us’? All that’s happened in this scenario is that four people who would have gone to see it, didn’t - and for all the batterings it’s gotten in the press, I still think it looked pretty hot, so by my calculations, they really needed some people on their side.

Meantime, I leave you with a video clip of a song that I can't quite believe came out as long ago as it appears. 1990 I believe. Where on earth did all the time go?

Currently reading: Denise Mina, The Last Breath