| On the road Records Bio ... Furthermore OK, so one day there's a bunch of people sitting in a motel room, listening to Mercyful Fate's Don't Break the Oath on a boombox whose woofers are completely shot. If these people were all insulin-dependant diabetics then the scene might not seem so squalid, but they're not, so it does. It's a ground-floor room, and the blinds aren't what they used to be, so you can see in through the window if you get the right angle. Which is exactly what you do. Because you are always perfectly prepared for any eventuality, you have brought your camera. It's a nice camera, but like all nice things, it's capable of doing something awful, given the right set of circumstances. Eugene O'Neill says that everybody's got one thing they're always going to regret, but John Darnielle says that if you give people the right chemicals and enough time to themselves, they can permanently disable their internal regret mechanisms. You can only call songs âconfessionalâ if there's actual evidence of a crime, and we will admit nothing - but we can tell you that all of the songs on the enclosed album are based on people John used to know. Most of them are probably dead or in jail by now. Five of them once set up temporary camp in his studio apartment in Portland, Oregon, sketching out plans for their weekend and openly discussing how much they might be able to get for his stereo, were they to steal and sell it. One of them, responding either to the Muse or to the staggering quantities of methamphetamine in her bloodstream, sat herself down at John's desk and saw fit to compose a doggerel ode in praise of a speed-metal band. She pressed her ball-point pen so hard against the paper as she wrote that the words are still visible on the desk's walnut surface today. A few of these people may have righted their ships by now and sailed on to calmer waters. They may even have changed their names and become famous. There is always hope. | |
|
