Music You May Have Missed – Mazzy Star
Mazzy Star
Hope Sandoval & David Roback
w/ contributions by Jill Emery, Keith Mitchell, Suki Ewers, Will Glenn, Kurt Elzner
Links: Wikipedia, Last.Fm, Fan Site
Albums: She Hangs Brightly, So Tonight That I Might See, Among My Swan
“Into Dust”
Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Inside me today
Around broken in two
Til your eyes share into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
Til my hand shook with the weight of fear
I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your fate
Under your fate
It was you, breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
Into strangers, turning into dust
Turning into dust
Turning into dust
When I lived in Berkeley, CA I was the night manager at a place called Gramma’s Rose Garden Inn. I was in my mid-twenties and while I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the books and movies I was going to write, I spent an equally considerable amount of time not writing and instead, kinda just . . . well, hung out on and around Telegraph Ave, doing my night manager gig, dealing with the occasional crazy guest (remind me to tell you about Charlotte Butterwing someday), and working part time at the local Waldenbooks. It was not a particularly good time, but neither was it particularly bad. Berkeley was a very in-between place and time for me.
One day, the cleaning staff came across a cd that had been left in a room. I don’t remember if the staff asked if I wanted it or if they merely put it with other lost items and I “claimed” it. The album was Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See. I still have that cd and, while I enjoy Mazzy Star’s other albums, this is the music I most associate with the band and the album I will listen to the most.
I could talk about Hope Sandoval’s strangely distant but intimate voice, I could talk about Roback’s guitar burrowing beneath the lyrics and exposing the harsh dissonance that lies within our experiences of loss and love and pain. And yes, there are influences of The Doors and Velvet Underground in this music, but there is sadness to much of Mazzy Star’s music that threatens to reveal the listener’s own emotions in ways that Jim Morrison’s machismo and Velvet Underground’s drug-fueled intellectualism often failed to achieve. But what I most want to talk about is the perfect setting to listen to So Tonight That I Might See.
Imagine you are in a dark bar. The light is gritty and the air is thick with smoke. It’s late, closing in 3:00 am and you’ve spent the night with a woman you met only six hours ago. Introduced by a friend of a friend kind of thing. Her green eyes have already swallowed up your heart and the taste of lip-gloss and whiskey sours will forever bring you back to this night in memory of her kiss. You are tired, but electrified by her touch. You hold her on the dance floor, your slow dancing slowing to barely more than breathing and embracing. Bodies tight. You can feel her heartbeat and smell the dark, almost cinnamon scent of her neck.
Mazzy Star is playing in the background.
Fade Into You Official Video Link
Flowers in December Video:
Blue Flower Live:
So Tonight That I Might See Live in Paris 1993:
Roseblood: