Moist finds a 'Silver' lining

(Nov. 17, 1994)

To sell 200,000 copies in a country of 26 million is a major feat. Make that a double-platinum feat for Vancouver rock quintet Moist and its debut Chrysalis/EMI album "Silver."

"It's a very schizophrenic lifestyle, where we'll come out of Canada," singer David Usher said recently, "and we'll go to Europe or America where it's just starting and no one knows us yet, and then you go back to Canada and you're suddenly the cliche rock star. It's very strange."

Just how big are they in Canada? Group members have seen fans camped outside their parents' homes. Police even searched the apartment of one obsessed fan and found letters addressed to Usher.

"She was talking about how I was her dead husband reincarnated," Usher said, with a laugh. "Things like that are odd, but I guess it's a part of the game."

Moist formed in 1992, played live for the first time in January 1993 and, after EMI Canada caught wind of their frenetic demo tape, they were quickly signed. Their following has ballooned ever since.

The single, "Push," is making headway in America, while their third Canadian single ("Believe Me") is out.

Eddie Money cashes in on 'Love & Money'

(June 8, 1995)

To this day, Eddie Money can't walk into the offices of Bill Graham Management. There are too many pictures of the legendary rock promoter lining the walls to remind Money how much he misses him.

Nearly 20 years ago, the raspy voiced rock singer from New York was rejected left and right by record companies. No one wanted him ... until Graham took him under his wing, managed his career and got him a deal with his Columbia-distributed Wolfgang Records.

The rest was money in the bank: five gold- or platinum-selling albums and 23 chart singles, including Top-10 hits "Take Me Home Tonight" and "Walk On Water."

"He was like a father to me," Money said recently from his Los Angeles home, pausing to hold back his emotions. "He was the kind of promoter that always gave back to the community. He was a very giving man and never really blew his own horn. He did so much for me ..."

Money's voice trails off. He thinks back to 1991 when Graham was killed in a helicopter crash during a storm in Northern California.

"Seeing how rainy it was that night, I think that maybe for a minute he thought he was invincible, because he had to be a fool to fly in weather like that."

In Graham's memory, and with the help of Bill Graham Management, Money has left Columbia to revive the Wolfgang imprint. His new album (the 11th of his career), "Love & Money," was released May 30, on the heels of the trademark-Money single "After This Love Is Gone."

It's a record, Money said, that would make Graham proud.

"I wanted to go in and make a great record and not really care how many units are sold or how many formats there are on the radio," he said. "I wanted to make a record where less was more and the quality and the vocals came first."

For the most part, Money achieves his goal, never straying far from his familiar rock-edged spirit. Amazingly, at age 46, his voice is in fine form. He attributes it to a drastic change in lifestyle: eliminating his vices (drugs and alcohol) and embracing his growing family (he and wife Laurie have four children, with one more on the way).

"I feel better that I'm in the driver's seat and I didn't have to do something that I didn't want to do," Money said. "This is the life."

BWF (before we forget): The Money album discography - "Eddie Money" (Wolfgang/Columbia, 1977); "Life For the Taking" (1978); "Playing For Keeps" (1980); "No Control" (1982); "Where's the Party?" (Columbia, 1983); "Can't Hold Back" (1986); "Nothing to Lose" (1988); "Greatest Hits Sound of Money" (1989); "Right Here" (1991); "Unplug It In" EP (1993); "Love & Money" (Wolfgang, 1995); "Shakin' With the Money Man" (CMC International, October 1997). ... Cash in on Money on the Web @ www.cmcinternational.com.

Davy Jones vows 'Justus' for the Monkees

(Oct. 24, 1996)

A pair of TV producers created them, then broke them, but they could never cage the Monkees.

Inspired by the Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night," the Monkees' NBC sitcom debuted 30 years ago on Sept. 12, 1966. They were the ultimate prefabricated image (long before the Archies and the Partridge Family), each member chosen for his personality, comedic ability and passable musical talent.

The music, at least in the NBC brass' eyes, seemed to be secondary. Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork sang on the slickly produced songs that accompanied each episode and subsequent albums, but they didn't play their own instruments. Session players did it for them. And the songs were penned by high-powered writers, among them Neil Diamond, Carole King, John Stewart and Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

Music supervisor Don Kirshner got what he wanted: The Monkees scored four straight No. 1 albums, three No. 1 singles, an Emmy Award for best comedy series and endless merchandising.

His dream faded when the Monkees developed minds of their own, wanting to take their show on the road and prove to audiences that they weren't trained primates. For good measure, they even brought along Jimi Hendrix to open a few shows for them in 1968 (He got booed most of the time, but what did they know?). By August that year, "The Monkees" was off the air.

It's funny how little things have changed in 30 years: The Monkees were dismissed then and are dismissed now, even with the release last week of "Justus" (Rhino), the first album written, performed and produced by all four members.

Skeptics aside, Jones says they're together again for two simple reasons: They truly like each other, and they finally have the time simultaneously to devote themselves to a variety of Monkees projects (such as a Disney Channel retrospective airing this month, a CD-ROM, a book, a movie next year and a tour).

"The Monkees is a very safe place for the four of us," Jones said recently. "We know each other so well ... better the devil you know than the one you don't.

"We feel very comfortable with each other. We have no bones about struggling through a guitar part or drum part. We help each other, and that's what friendship is all about. That's what we have, a long, ongoing, till-death-do-us-part friendship.

"No matter what the media says, Mike Nesmith didn't want to tour for all those years, not because he hated the Monkees - he doesn't hate the Monkees - he just didn't have the time. I had the time, Micky had the time, Peter occasionally had the time. Mike Nesmith's career started with the Monkees. We all got our start with the Monkees. It's not all wake up, live and breathe Monkee songs, but it's a major part of our lives."

It's so major that the Monkees open "Justus" with a raucous remake of "Circle Sky," an unconventional Monkees track off "Head," the soundtrack to their bizarre 1968 movie of the same name (co-produced by Jack Nicholson). The refrain of "Looks like we've made it once again" sounds like a Monkees mantra.

"Every time we ever get together, which is not obviously public knowledge for the most part," Jones said, "the first thing we play is 'Circle Sky,' the four of us with guitars. It gives us a laugh, because it's like being back together 30 years ago.

"Throughout the album, there's a lot of personal lyrics, statements, whether it be 'Never Enough' or 'It's My Life.' This doesn't have to be a best-seller. It's just the joy in doing it. That's the way we feel about it. Hopefully, people will have fun with the album when they listen to it. We're not trying to say, 'Look at what we can do,' because we could always do it. It was just a case of having the opportunities to do it."

Those opportunities opened up once Nesmith closed down his production company.

"After 30 years of knowing each other," Jones said, "we've all gone through the marriages and the divorces and the ups and downs of life. We all picked the kids up from school, changed diapers and all that. Now we have more in common than we had before. We've all soiled our hands with life, you know.

"Familiarity doesn't always have to breed contempt. Now, humility breeds contempt, so we're not going to humble ourselves anymore and just wait outside the studio until the tracks are put down, because we can do it ourselves. It only took us a couple of weeks to do it. It might not be the best drumming in the world or the best lead guitar, but it is us. Just us. It's our life and we're taking over now. That's what we're basically saying with this album."

In their hey-heydays, the Monkees recorded some exceptional pop songs and clearly influenced a generation of future rockers, among them R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. He has said the Monkees meant more to him than the Beatles.

Why then have the Monkees not been considered for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Call it "rockism," the practice of rock discrimination.

"The Monkees were not known for musicianship," Jones said. "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is supposedly zeroing in on musicians. However, there have been singers who have gone into the Hall of Fame because of their record sales or acceptance.

"I think the Monkees influenced not only R.E.M. He (Stipe) says he wouldn't let them be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the future till the Monkees do. It would like to be in the Hall of Fame one day, yes, but that obviously is a thing that has to be decided by whomever.

"I don't think we would be unworthy of it."

BWF (before we forget): The Monkees album discography - "The Monkees" (Colgems, 1966); "More of the Monkees" (1967); "Headquarters" (1967); "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd." (1967); "The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees" (1968); "Head" soundtrack (1968); "Instant Replay" (1969); "The Monkees Greatest Hits" (1969); "The Monkees Present" (1969); "The Monkees Greatest Hits" (Arista, 1976); "Then & Now ... The Best of the Monkees" (1986); "Pool It!" (Rhino, 1987); "Listen to the Band" box set (1991); "Justus" (1996). ... Romp with the Monkees on the Web @ www.rhino.com.

Rick Monroe serves up 'Legends Diner'

(Feb. 5, 1998)

If you want it done right, do it yourself. That's Rick Monroe's philosophy and he's sticking to it.

"It's rough," the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter said recently of releasing his debut album "Legends Diner" through his fledgling independent label, Divorce Records. "But at the end of the day, you know everything's been done because you've done it, or if it hasn't been done, it's because you didn't do it.

"If anything else, it's been a great learning experience. I don't know where the future's going to go with it, but I have definitely have enjoyed the process of learning how it's made and what really goes on."

Other labels were interested in Monroe's cohesive guitar rock, but he said he wants to follow the indie road as far as he can.

"I don't want to be forced into a situation," he said. "It can get too big and too difficult to cover all the bases."

"Legends Diner," Monroe said, documents where his life was shortly after going through a divorce (hence the label name).

"There's an amount of anger on the record," he said. "It's funny how all the songs came off on that slant. It kind of had an L.A. edge to it. Somebody said it's like a music soundtrack for living in L.A."

One of the most poignant moments comes in the first single, "Life Goes On in L.A.," an ode to Monroe's friend, record promoter Charlie Minor, who was shot to death in his Malibu home in 1995.

Monroe, who was born in Clearwater, Fla., and raised in Winter Park outside Orlando, always knew he would be a musician.

"When I was a real little kid, I was a big Jim Croce fan," he said. "My mom had all his albums, him and James Taylor. I used to sit around and play that. When I got older, I got into the hard rock scene. I had long, bleached-blond hair and I was in a band and we opened up for Motley Crue. That was the pinnacle of that. Then I really wanted to go back to what I grew up digging; that's when I picked up the acoustic guitar again, taught myself how to play and played in coffeehouses. It built up from there."

What would he say to a customer at Tower Records who came across his CD and was considering buying it?

"I would tell them I think a lot of people miss good, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll," Monroe said. "It's a quality record. If you like rock, check it out."

BWF (before we forget): Sit down a spell with Rick Monroe on the Web @ www.rickmonroe.com.

Ian Moore sets the tone with 'Colors'

(April 23, 2000)

Ian Moore has this gut feeling a change is gonna come in the music industry.

And not a moment too soon.

"There's a direct relationship to the consolidation of the record companies to the consolidation of the radio stations and venues and magazines and the fact that there's a lot of really, really lightweight, superficial music out there," the Washington state-based singer-guitarist said recently. "I have a feeling that there's going to be a reaction to that. Even in the mainstream media, fans are going to want something else.

"I studied music. I wanted to be a journalist or a musicologist in college, and you look at trends and it's happened 50 times. This is not the first time we've been sitting here looking at trends and going, 'God, is there anything good on the radio anywhere?' Then you'll have a time when a great crop of artists will come through and it gives everybody hope, and then you get watered-down versions of what they're doing and it becomes obsolete, yadda-yadda, ad nauseam."

Moore has his favorites, the ones who give him hope for the future.

"There's a lot of them under the radar," he said. "On the road, we're listening to a lot of Yo La Tengo, and I'm a huge fan of Neutral Milk Hotel. I think The Flaming Lips on adult radio is pretty damn funny; the fact they've made it through is pretty cool. There's quite a bit of great music being made."

Moore's debut Koch Records album, "and all the colors ..." (released March 14), would have to be included. Powerful tracks such as "Float Away" and "Magdelena" further enhance his standing as part of a rare breed of pop purveyors dedicated to taut melodies and insightful lyrics without pandering to anyone.

"What's been interesting about this record is, we've gotten really good reviews across the board," Moore said. "We've had a couple of dogs, but for the most part, it's been pretty positive. Even in the positive reviews, there's been so much division over what this record was.

"I told (publicists) Gabe (Tesoriero) and Jody (Miller) that they should juxtapose a bunch of press quotes because they're literally all over the map. People's interpretations of this record are everything from like last night somebody described it as very experimental pop a la Adrian Belew; the review before compared it to a rootsy version of Radiohead; CMJ called it rootsy, guitar-driven alt-pop. I'm loving it. It's an indication that people understand things through their own filters of what they know and that we're doing something that's not sounding like everybody else."

Moore simply wanted to create a good pop record.

"I wanted to make something that was smart, sonically interesting, not too intellectual," he said. "I wanted the songs not to be spare, but well-produced, and I wanted there to be a lot of emotional texture to the record."

Shades of Moore's pastoral home north of Seattle infuse "and all the colors ... ."

"I love the Northwest," said the Austin, Texas, native. "I'm attracted to the environment. I do a lot of outdoors stuff, and it's just a beautiful place to be. You've got phenomenal mountains and the ocean there and very progressive people in Seattle and Portland. It's a very different world from Texas. I'm probably going back to Texas in a couple of years, which I have kind of mixed emotions about. I love Texas, but I'm really loving the environment up here."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "Buddy Holly. I cleaned my dad's van and he gave me five bucks, and I bought a Buddy Holly 45, 'That'll Be the Day.' "

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "I was literally going to shows in my mom's womb, but the first one I remember going to was either the Beach Boys at an arena concert or Abba. I love Abba. Me and my brother saw them, they were great. I still know all their songs. Everybody does. I was a huge Beach Boys fan, but this was probably in the mid-'70s and they weren't very good and Brian Wilson obviously wasn't touring with them."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "I got some a Byrds reissue, the new Yo La Tengo and the Beachwood Sparks. They're on Sub Pop; they're this kind of weird mix of indie rock and the Dead and the Byrds. I'm really digging that."

BWF (before we forget): Catch up with Ian Moore on the Web @ www.ianmoore.com. ... The Ian Moore album discography - "Ian Moore" (Capricorn, 1992); "Live From Austin" EP (1994); "Modernday Folklore" (1995); "Ian Moore's Got the Green Grass" (Hablador, 1997); "and all the colors ..." (Koch, 2000).

IAN MOORE'S 'MODERNDAY FOLKLORE' (July 20, 1995):

After a stint playing guitar for Joe Ely, Ian Moore made a name for himself two years ago with his self-titled debut Capricorn album.

The reviews nationwide were dazzling and flattering, often citing his soul-bearing voice and rapid-fire guitar, but through it all, Moore fought hard to maintain his sanity.

So far, he's winning that battle.

"I live in Austin, Texas, and it's a really small town, when you think about it," Moore said recently. "Austin's a really good example of a town where a lot of times great musicians don't get their due. Not that I consider myself to be lesser a musician than anyone else in town.

"Some people get the breaks and some people don't. These are my peers and my friends. It's really difficult."

In the beginning, it's fun to be the "next big thing," on par with other noteworthy musicians, Moore said, but then reality strikes back.

"It's a whole other thing when you go into a record store and there's a bunch of guitar players you've known for years working there and they've maybe given up on the fact of going without a day job. It's hard really. ... You don't know how to communicate with them. I end up a lot of times of being meek because I don't want to come across as arrogant."

Chances are, Austin is quite proud of Moore. His second full-length Capricorn album, "Modernday Folklore," was released June 27 to immediate critical praise. Unlike his debut album, which was deeply personal, Moore touches on a wide variety of societal topics (blind conformity, male sexuality, religion) and takes them down a diverse path.

"Production-wise," Moore said, "I wanted to do more like Sly Stone's style of production, which is very soulful and interactive, and create an environment that's really emotional, but not be afraid to make any mistakes.

"I was inspired by the (Rolling) Stones' 'Exile on Main St.,' in terms of that album being so varied, on so many different tangents. They weren't afraid to shift thematically from one thing to another."

Moore dabbles in blues, hard rock, psychedelia and a heart full of soul, of which the best example is the track "Lie." On it, he laments the drug-induced fall of Sly Stone in the 1970s, and even throws in a few lines from Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher" at the end.

"What's funny is, I met him in L.A. once and didn't even know it was him," Moore said. "I had just played a set, and he was in this corner and he goes 'Hey, man, I like your stuff.' I said thanks, and then he disappears.

"And later, my manager goes 'Did you know Sly Stone was here tonight?' And it slowly seeps into my brain, 'Oh, man, that's who I was talking to.' " Moore knows he won't succumb to the vices that ruined Stone, but he does have a fear of falling.

"The more successful you are, the more people want you to fall at some point," he said. "But I'm enjoying what I'm doing too much to let that ever happen to me."

Third time's a charm for Debelah Morgan?

(Aug. 6, 2000)

Debelah Morgan has been on the brink of stardom for so long and had so many opportunities slip by, she would have every right to feel snake bit.

With "Dance With Me," her third album on her third label in the past six years (out Aug. 15 on Atlantic), the R&B-savvy pop singer knows she's running out of time, but she has never been more sure she's going to make it this time around.

Now that the tango-flavored title track, its unbeatable hook taken from the classic "Hernando's Hideaway," debuted July 29 at No. 91 on Billboard's pop chart, the former Miss Teen Black Arizona and Miss Black Teenage World was right about her instincts.

"I've just learned in this business that patience sometimes can be the best thing," Morgan said recently, "because there's so many variables that need to be in place for a person to be successful. If you feel you have yourself at a certain level, sometimes it's best to wait until the other elements are there."

Morgan has had to wait a long time. Her first album, "Debelah," came - ironically - on Atlantic in 1994; a few years after getting dropped, she signed with Motown. Even though "Yesterday," the first single off her "It's Not Over" album, peaked at No. 56 in 1998 and sold more than 200,000 copies with little radio airplay, the album was mired in the Seagrams-Universal merger.

Based on "Yesterday's" sales, "It's Not Over" certainly would have cracked gold (more than 500,000 copies), but Morgan's management chose to wait it out and not release the album.

"Honestly, it was a good thing," Morgan said. "It gave the international department, PolyGram at that time, to send me to 14 different countries, and that in itself was an amazing lifetime experience, but while I was over there and just so busy with all that, PolyGram was becoming Universal and they were changing hands and my management realized that if this album were to come out under the current system that they would not be able to do it justice. Everyone was so afraid of doing their job, because they didn't know if they were going to have a job. So a lot of key people were very concerned with interviewing and doing the whole musical chair thing in this business. During that process, I had three different product managers. There was a lot of changing going on in my life.

"Basically, I was able to ride out the storm. They moved me to Universal after the Motown experience, and Universal - not to downplay them because they're great at what they do - they weren't necessarily into having a woman of color doing an album that had more of a pop flavor. And so much time had passed, we needed to add new songs and remix some to make it fresher, and they weren't into that.

"That gave me an opportunity to rethink, 'Gosh, this is your shot. Do you want it to be something you really believe in or something you hope will make it?' I realized that it has to be something I really truly believe in. I was having problems with the other producer that was involved, and there were financial issues. They did some sneaky things, and it allowed me to get out of that deal."

Amid the chaos, Morgan was holed up in the basement of her Phoenix home with her brother, Giloh, writing and arranging songs for what became "Dance With Me." Universal ultimately passed on it, but Atlantic quickly stepped up to the table and offered her another deal.

"When Atlantic heard it at the first meeting, my managers said everyone was so ecstatic, so excited," she said. "They said, 'This is exactly what we've been wanting. We want someone to be like a new young Whitney or a new young Mariah who's not afraid to sing pop music with an R&B vocal.' They didn't want to change a note. They said, 'We want it. Can we sign her?' The irony for me is that my first deal was with Atlantic, so I'm back here again."

Morgan admits her confidence was rocked by the Motown/Universal experience, but therapy and hypnotherapy kept her balanced, as did having managers David Sonenberg and Scott McCrakin of DAS Communications looking out for her best interests.

"My faith kept me going, the belief that this was something in my life I had to endure and go through," she said. "To me, failure isn't the end; failure is the beginning. Failure is a lesson; you will only fail that lesson if you don't recognize what it is you were supposed to learn. For me, I thought, 'Okay, this didn't work out, so how do I make this better? What did I do wrong?' I really analyzed myself ... 'you didn't have the best lawyer here, you didn't do this here.'

"It's so easy when people are talking about you as a commodity for you to start losing touch with the fact that you're a real person, you have real feelings. ... At the end of the day, I was using up all those emotions to write songs. There's no way I could do anything else."

Traveling the world, including performing for the newly elected democratic president of Nigeria, convinced Morgan that music was the common dominator.

"No matter where you are, who you are, everybody wants to be loved, everyone has been in love," she said. "No matter what language you're singing in, it's all the same emotion. When I was traveling, when I was on Motown, people kept saying, 'It's been years since Motown released an album that was pop music,' and it made me realize what a big hole in the market there was for that type of music, singing pop music in a soulful way.

"When I came back, I wasn't going to allow myself to be pigeonholed within America the way that they market music. I was going to sing music that I really love. If the rest of the world didn't have a problem with it, then I felt I had to take a chance here also."

How does she like her chances now?

"I don't know," she said. "I've been through so much. I will say that once this is released, I will feel good because this is something that I believe in. And up to now, the response from the record company and radio people has been great."

Atlantic, ThermaSilk and Macy's are teaming as sponsors for Morgan's multi-city mall tour that begins Aug. 16 in New York and stops in major markets through Oct. 28. In each city, fans can win a "Dance With Me" weekend in New York, which will include tickets to a Broadway show and ... cha-cha-cha ... tango lessons with Morgan.

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "The first Whitney Houston record, from my own allowance. I had to sing 'The Greatest Love of All' for a wedding when I was maybe 11, so I had to get that album so I could learn it."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "M.C. Hammer at the L.A. Coliseum in the late '80s. It's funny, he performs forever because there were so many people on the show, including Bobby Brown. I remember my parents came along, we went as a family, and my mom fell asleep during M.C. Hammer. That bass is so loud and after sitting for four hours, it desensitizes you."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "Christina Aguilera and Toni Braxton's albums. There's a song called 'Spanish Guitar' on Toni's album that I really like. Even though I prefer pop R&B, I love listening to different types of music. I enjoyed Toni's album, even though it's more urban, and it's nice to hear a newcomer like Christina."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Debelah Morgan, visit www.atlantic-records.com. ... The Debelah Morgan album discography - "Debelah" (Atlantic, 1994); "It's Not Over" (VAZ/Motown, 1998); "Dance With Me" (Atlantic, 2000).

IT'S FAR FROM OVER FOR DEBELAH MORGAN (Aug. 30, 1998):

Debelah Morgan may be a former beauty queen, but nothing has been handed to her on a silver platter. She works hard for the money.

The singing sensation, who has a striking five-octave range, has a second chance at stardom with her debut VAZ/Motown album, "It's Not Over," out Oct. 27, shortly after the release of her leadoff single, "Yesterday."

"I had another album and another record deal, and I was dropped," Morgan said recently. "It's only through those experiences that you dig deep and get even better and climb even higher. Of course, it's not the best feeling in the world to be told you're dropped and you have people laughing at you and you have your moments of desperation and despair.

"But I just remember saying to myself, 'I'm not going to be a victim by this, I'm going to be a survivor, I will survive this somehow someway.' It helped me keep going. It also showed me you can never relax and feel like you've reached as high as you're going to get, because you never know what life is going throw you. You could get a curve ball and end up over here or over there. Then you get over there and something else happens. It's a part of life. Accepting it in stride and knowing that it's not personal, that it's how life is, you can focus on what positive things you have."

"It's Not Over" has it all: tender love songs, old-school R&B, dance, even a twinge of alterna-pop. Morgan, who followed in Ce Ce Peniston's footsteps as a former Miss Teen Black Arizona and Miss Black Teenage World, wrote or co-wrote seven of the album's 15 tracks and co-produced with Grammy-winning producer Vassal Benford (Toni Braxton, Oleta Adams).

"We wanted to reach a wide variety of people," Morgan said. "I really didn't want to be pigeonholed or stereotyped into one particular type of music. I really wanted to reach the world and for the focus to be the music and the melodies and the words, for people to focus on that instead of 'She's that kind of singer, so we won't listen to her.'

"Myself, I love all types of different music, so I couldn't really only be strictly very urban or just a pop singer. I needed to really express myself in a lot of different ways."

With such an absorbing voice, it wasn't hard for people to overlook the beauty-queen stigma and take her seriously, Morgan said.

"The pageant experience was really only secondary," she said. "Music was always my first love, performing was always my emphasis. When I did the pageant, it was a fun experience and I got to perform more, and I was always involved heavily in the community."

Morgan isn't taking anything for granted. She feels blessed.

"I'm honored to be an artist on a label that's had a history of such classic performers, people who are part of our musical history," she said. "I feel so lucky to have a wonderful job like this, and I just want to do my part and no matter what happens, I will be a survivor and continue to write, perform and sing. Whatever the impact is, we'll deal with that.

"I just want to join the ranks. There's room for everyone."

BWF (before we forget): "Yesterday" debuted at No. 79 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart in late September.

Members of Morphine carry on in Mark Sandman's name

(Feb. 6, 2000)

Closure is one of those dreadful psycho-babble terms so overused by therapists and other mental-health experts that it's rendered useless.

Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley hates that word as much as the next person, but he can't come up with a better way to describe the feelings he and drummer Billy Conway have about "The Night," the group's final album with lead singer-bassist Mark Sandman.

Sandman collapsed and died of a heart attack during a July 3 concert last year at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Italy, outside Rome. He was 46.

Before the band left for its European tour last year, Sandman delivered the final tapes of "The Night" to their label, DreamWorks Records. Recorded over two years at his Hi-N-Dry home studio in Cambridge, Mass., Sandman oversaw the production and had taken the trio's non-traditional rock sound - a power trio built around a two-string slide bass, a baritone saxophone and drums - to the next level.

"The Night," a fitting tribute to Sandman's minimalist, unpretentious vision, was released Feb. 1.

Colley and Conway have had little time to grieve since Sandman's death. They organized a memorial concert in his honor, worked on the artwork for "The Night" and have formed the nine-member Orchestra Morphine, which will perform songs from "The Night" in a series of concerts over the next 30 days and possibly into the summer.

They do it, Colley says, because Sandman would have wanted it that way.

"We're trying to find a process that makes sense and keeping our eyes out there on the horizon and just trying to reel it in day by day," Colley said recently. "What needed to be done was, from day one, get the record going, get it out there. Mark had sequenced it, so it was like 'let's get the artwork together and put it out there as it should be.' It's a celebration of Mark's life. We thought, 'Rather than sitting on it and waiting, the time is now to do it.'

"Ultimately, you feel the loss, but at the same time you realize that this is an important thing to do. That keeps you focused. In a way, it is closure. It's not a fun word, but that's what this is, closure. It wraps up everything nice and neat."

For the Orchestra Morphine tour, Colley shares lead vocals with Christian McNeill and Conway's longtime girlfriend, Laurie Sargent. (Sargent was lead singer of the Boston rock group Face to Face in the 1980s; they had a Top 40 hit with "10-9-8" in 1984 and appeared as the backup band in the film "Streets of Fire," for which Sargent sang actress Diane Lane's vocals.)

The lineup also features original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree, as well as Russ Gershon (tenor and soprano saxophone, vocals), Tom Halter (trumpet, fluegelhorn), Evan Harriman (keyboards) and Mike Rivard (four-string bass).

Colley credits Sargent with helping him and Conway deal with losing their friend and band mate.

"She was kind enough to help Billy and I out by singing these songs," he said. "When we were trying to get these songs together for a memorial concert after we got back from Italy, she helped us a lot. She said, 'Till you get someone else to sing them, I'd be happy to help you rehearse these.' As it turned out, she sounded so great, it made sense for her to sing more. She's an incredible singer and performer and her energy is welcome. It didn't matter whether a man or a woman was singing these songs. It works because the songs hold up to it. These songs can be sung by anybody and given a different feeling."

Closure will be especially bittersweet this summer when Orchestra Morphine likely will tour Europe, culminating in a return to Palestrina.

"We want to take it back to the Palestrina, where we were when Mark died, and have a send-off so the fans can have a place to go with their feelings," Colley said. "I can still remember their faces. It was dead quiet that day. No one moved, no one went anywhere.

"I think a lot of people feel somewhat at a loss, but it's hard for them to share it with people around them because other people might think, 'It's just another singer, why do you feel so bad?' Our fans had a great musical connection and personal relationship with the band and with Mark. They need a place to come, hear the music and celebrate what he did."

Before forming Morphine in 1991, Sandman led the Boston blues-rock quartet Treat Her Right, with Conway on drums. Their self-titled debut RCA album was a moderate success in 1988, climbing to No. 127 on Billboard's Top 200 and staying on the chart for four and a half months. The bluesy single, "I Think She Likes Me," distinguished by the blues-driven guitar of David Champagne, cracked the Top 15 on the album rock tracks chart.

After two more albums, the band dissolved in 1991, allowing Sandman to explore other musical avenues with a variety of side and solo projects.

"I first met him when he was playing onstage at a place called the Rat," Colley said. "My band was playing the same night, a five-piece band called the Collers, a pop band that played as much tambourine as saxophone.

"I remember seeing Mark play guitar and singing and realizing, 'Hey, this guy's good.' It had some kind of soul to it. It wasn't some kind of Elvis Costello ripoff or a Jam wannabe, which seemed to be everywhere in the '80s. This was something that was going back to more roots rock, something I listened to when I was growing up and something that was never a hit. Punk polished off every kind of respect for everything before that. To listen to anything before (punk) was automatically passe. Hearing those inclinations in Mark's approach to music was really refreshing."

Then Sandman dreamed up Morphine, an outlet for his pop-noir narratives and affection for low-end sounds.

"We wound up playing together in a room, just me and him," Colley said. "He had a one-string slide bass he was working on and I had this baritone sax that was given to me by my father. I was learning that, and he was learning his handmade instrument. A kind of light bulb went off, certainly in his head. I was like, 'Cool, okay, I'll jam.' I had no real anticipation of making anything out of it. Morphine was just a fluke, really. You just don't expect those kinds of things to happen and to have that kind of impact."

Morphine quickly became a critics darling. Their debut album, "Good," was initially released by Accurate/Distortion in 1992, then was picked up and reissued two years later by Rykodisc. The band's fan base blossomed with each subsequent album - "Cure For Pain," "Yes" and 1997's "Like Swimming," jointly released by Rykodisc and DreamWorks.

"People enjoyed hearing it because I think it retained the energy of what we were listening to and what was going on in clubs at that point, like a real heavy grunge thing," Colley said. "It retained that energy but doing it with different instruments. It wasn't guitar, bass and drums. It was two-string slide bass, baritone saxophone sometimes or tenor sax or sometimes both baritone and tenor sax together and drums tuned in a way that was unique.

"The taste of the day was that cracking snare and driving bass drum, but this was more of a total sound of drums. That was a different approach; it found its way into the ear, in a live setting, when a lot of people then were trying to hit people over the head with a fuzz pedal or something. The power trio is a beautiful thing, and we did mold ourselves after that. Some of my favorite bands are trios, like Hendrix and a lot of the jazz trios. There's a magical energy about them, especially with Mark singing and playing. It really allowed me a lot of room to develop as a musician."

They had their disagreements, as all bands do; what tears up most bands only made them closer, Colley said.

"I did tell him how I felt about him," Colley said. "In fact, he probably thought I gave him a lot of stick and stuff, but you're all trying to get the best and you don't want to compromise, so therefore if you're mad at someone, you're almost obligated to tell them right then and there. We had that kind of relationship. I felt like I could tell him I didn't agree with him; he might not like hearing it and we might end up arguing about it, but the end result was 'The reason I'm telling you this is because if I didn't love you, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't say anything.' "

In the end, Sandman died doing what he loved best: playing music, with his friends, and for their fans.

"That's something that's almost unbelievable in itself that it happened that way," Colley said. "Still, you're never ready for it. We really miss him."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "I think it was a Beatles single. I used to buy a lot of 45s. I remember having the 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' 45, and I think 'I Am the Walrus' was on the other side. I played it over and over again. I liked the 'I Am the Walrus' side better because it was so trippy for my little ears. I think the first full LP that influenced me was Led Zeppelin's first album; my dad had brought it home because one of his students loaned it to him. I remember listening to it for the first time and feeling like I was pinned to the wall. It was fascinating stuff."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "David Crosby and Graham Nash at Tanglewood (in 1972), and there was some talk that everyone else was going to be there, that Neil Young and Stephen Stills were going to show up. But they didn't show up. Crosby and Nash were playing electric guitars, just the two of them, and there was a complaint from a neighboring town and they were forced to turn down the guitars, at which point they said, 'Well, half the set we learned on electric guitar, so we're going to have to take requests.' They sat down in chairs with acoustic guitars and people shouted out requests. They took one after the other. There was a rapport between the musicians and the audience that was special, you could tell."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "I just went on a little binge recently. I got Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic,' and I got the Pixies' 'Doolittle' and a Leftover Salmon record and an early Sly & Robbie CD."

BWF (before we forget): Shortly after Sandman's death, the Mark Sandman Music Education Fund was established in Cambridge to benefit music-related programs for children. Donations can be mailed to Morphine, Box 382085, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Morphine fans can find more news on the Web @ www.morphine3.com. ... The Morphine album discography - "Good" (Accurate/Distortion, 1992, Rykodisc, 1994); "Cure For Pain" (Rykodisc, 1993); "Yes" (1995); "B-Sides and Otherwise" (1997); "Like Swimming" (DreamWorks, 1997); "The Night" (2000).