but when she falls, she's lighter than air

I'm guessing that the Sisters have departed the stage by now, that their faithful fans have enjoyed the comeback show at Don Hills, and that the Earth has resumed spinning on its proper axis. I hope it was everything a Caulfield Sisters performance should be -- life-changing, psoriasis-curing, the type of experience that leaves you with your soul cleansed, your hedges trimmed and your cuticles sparkling. Or something like that.

Did the Sisters have another show scheduled for this week? I thought I saw one mentioned on the message board before it succumbed to all the spam.

Anybody who's still hanging around the tri-state area might want to check out Kristin's other band Gloria Deluxe peforming Must Don't Whip 'Um at the Philly Fringe Festival. The shows run Wednesday through Friday at Temple University.

Anyway, I just wanted to say welcome back. Now when's the world tour?

i hope it's got a face that i know

Yowza yowza yowza. I mean, damn -- when those Sisters pull a comeback they don't fuck around. No, they just go ahead and stage the most glorious resurrection since a certain Nazarene kicked a stone out of his way a couple of millenniums ago. Here are the tidings of joy from American Laundromat:

1. "The Caulfield Sisters will be playing a show on September 8th at Don Hills in NYC."


2. "In the next few weeks we’'ll be releasing the original demo version of Fine” on iTunes. The demo version is much different than the Say It With Fire –EP version and fans will love having this track in their collection."


3. "Cindy and Mary have agreed to allow American Laundromat to exclusively release the 3 Wheeler “Deal Breaker Demos” on iTunes. The 3 Wheeler demo was recorded after Pee Shy disbanded and before The Caulfield Sisters formed. The songs are a perfect blend of dreamy indie rock and smart pop we’'ve come to expect from The Caulfield Sisters. Mary herself is working on artwork for both the Fine single and Deal Breaker Demos."

Can it get any better? Oh yes it can: "Look for both in the next few weeks."

All I can say is: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I just need to faint somewhere.

The Don Hills show seems like it should be especially magical, since the club's calendar says the Sisters will be appearing with The Hornrims, whose members include Cindy's old Ybor City co-conspirator Joe Popp. Perhaps Cindy and Joe will bring back the old Ybor Orchestra while they're at it, maybe do an impromptu rendition of "Fiddle on the Griddle." We can dream, can't we?

No we can't. Not now. This is far too much great news in one sitting to possibly justify hoping for more.

OK, one final question: Will these iTunes releases be available in iTunes Plus? The only thing better than hearing new music from the Sisters is hearing them at 256kbps resolution instead of 128, plus not having to engage in annoying technical rigamarole to play them on your non-iPod player. That would make all this beyond perfect. But hell, I'll take them on eight-track if that's all that's available. (Hmmmm ...)

In any case -- thank you, thank you, thank you for the great news, and congratulations to everyone involved for all the hard work that no doubt went into making this happen. You guys rock.

days grow long as the days go on

Great news: Various folks who know much more than I do say the Caulfield Sisters juggernaut is getting ready to roll, to which all I can respond is a mighty yee haw. See these snippets from the American Laundromat message board plus the comments to my prior blog post for more. Really, I was just expressing my fears out loud so they'd turn out not to be true.

Meanwhile, anyone looking to get their sororal fix can listen to a few new songs featuring Kristin on her other, other, other band Gloria Deluxe. The GD is also working on two new albums, has a bunch of shows coming up in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chapel Hill in the next few months, and has set up a new website for Accinosco (a\k\a the Accidental Nostalgia Company), which is essentially Gloria Deluxe plus a bunch of supporting players. Think of them as the Talking Heads circa 1983, as opposed to the Talking Heads circa 1977. Sure, they're not the Sisters, but they've been known to put out a snappy tune now and again.

the girl's in the ground now

So is this the end of the Sisters? Have the Caulfields gone off to that great musical-literary rye field in the sky? Is it possible that a band that hasn't performed in public for almost two years might not technically, you know, exist?

Interpret this as you will, but Cindy's gone off and formed yet another band, according to this alert passed on by Caulfield Sisters mega-fan madtempest:

From: Cindy
Date: Jun 10, 2007 11:21 PM

My new band, MOSTLY WATER will be playing this Thursday June 14th at Matchless in Greenpoint.
557 Manhattan Ave at Driggs.
10 pm
For those of you who know Sarah P from Beacon's her band BEZOAR will play @11pm. So come on out and get blasted some sweet ass rock.

wheel

The Sisters' MySpace page offers similar tidings as well, without offering any details on what this means for the rest of the Trinity:

Cindy W from The Caulfield Sisters new band MOSTLY WATER play it's first show. Please come and behold AMPLIFIED AUTOHARP WITH LOTS OF PEDALS...

As always with Cindy's bands, Mostly Water sounds extremely intriguing, especially since we all are, of course (mostly water, I mean). No idea if she's drawing any parallels with the radical activist Canadian news site of the same name, but maybe she can work out a sponsorship deal with them. Perhaps we'll see her performing at G8 summits and anti-globalization rallies while the tear gas rains down. And then maybe, as the accordion feedback wafts over the barricades and into the shuttered conference rooms of the world leaders, Bush and Putin and Sarkozy and the rest of them will look up from their scripted talking points and say in unison: "Hey! Why don't we cut out all this shit and just fucking give peace a chance?"

Or maybe the Caulfield Sisters could come back to us and stage a glorious resurrection. Which seems more likely?

Anyway, if you're in New York on Thursday night, you know what you gotta do.

it's a sausage grinder

A few more thoughts on the no-longer-lost video:

• Comparing the Pee Shy video with the Caulfield Sisters' concert footage can be both fun and educational. For instance, ponder Cindy's sultry swaying-back-and-forth in "Little Dudes" (perhaps amped-up for purposes of the video) versus her ironclad gravitas when playing the accordion in "Some Candy Talking." In the latter, I was struck especially by how strong her upper arms must be, how she wields the instrument as if it were a part of her body, and especially by the epic way she fucks with it toward the end of the song. (She was messing with accordion feedback as far back as Who Let All the Monkeys Out?, of course, but not nearly to this extent.)
  
  There's probably not enough evidence here to say for sure whether Kristin is a better drummer than Bil. At the very least, she has more to do here than Bil did in "Little Dudes," which after all was originally an accordion-and-clarinet song with no drum part.
  
  To make the comparison complete, of course, we need to see Jenny performing one of her own post-Shy songs. So here she is rocking out on "Harbour" last October in St. Pete:
  
  


• For some reason, the Monkeys version of "Little Dudes" has always struck me as suffocating and inert, as if everyone had been locked in a tiny room unable to move, not at all as jaunty and organic as the original demo version from Don't Look. Fairly or not, I've blamed that on Rick Chertoff, the head of the Mercury/Blue Gorilla label, who apparently insisted on producing "the big hit" himself.
  
  Chertoff brought along his recording pal William Wittman, who had worked with him on Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, along with two-fifths of The Hooters. In my opinion, the results don't have nearly the fun or dynamism or even the melancholic twinge of the rest of the album, which was produced by Dean Wareham of Luna and Galaxie 500. Wareham really seemed to get what Pee Shy were about; I can't imagine a better recording of "Smoking Gun" or "Dance Motherfuckers" or "Red Ink" or "It's the Love" or "Godforsaken Baby."
  
  This is not to diss Chertoff, who after all had the supreme good taste to release not one but two Pee Shy albums and deserves major props for keeping their musical vision intact. But the band members apparently were smart to pick Wareham to produce the rest of the album. Anyway, their presence in the video seems to restore the song's personality somehow, even though the audio is identical to the CD version.


• It's easy to focus on what some consider the "perverted" aspects of the "Little Dudes" lyrics (I prefer the term "gleefully demented"). After all, this is a song that uses the word "pedophile" to humorous effect and references the ick factor of the Barry Williams/Florence Henderson dalliance. And it does appear on the same album as other classic Wheeler lyrics such as "dance, motherfuckers" and "bend over, want you to meet a friend of mine."
  
  But there's more to the song, as one of the commenters on that song-meaning website hints at:
  

  I don't really think it's about these women wanting sex with younger guys, but rather them wanting a 'relationship' without the complications that come with normal relationships with other adults (maybe even sex?).

  
  More to the point, I think, is Cindy's subtle feminist critique, for instance in the women's appreciation that the younger guys "never try to tell us what to do." They value their autonomy and don't want to surrender it solely for the sake of being with some guy, even though folks like the website commenter think that this kind of submission is just one of "the complications that come with normal relationships." Compromise is a part of any relationship, but Cindy appears to have a problem with the notion that it's supposed to be one-sided. And of course, the statement "when you were born I was already 10" would be no major obstacle at all if the genders were reversed, at least if both people were adults.


• Did Pee Shy belong on a major label to begin with? Cindy has said she doesn't think so. This video seems to revive that question, with its combination of the patented made-for-VH1 alternapop panning and color schemes, mixed with Cindy's circa-1993 just-learning-to-write-songs lyrical style and Pee Shy's classically unorthodox subject matter. It's a fascinating combination but clearly wasn't as marketable as Mercury had hoped. And from what I've read about the label's lack of promotion, whatever success the band had was due largely to the members busting their collective ass.
  
  On the other hand, the two major label albums made their music available to many more people than might have heard them otherwise, and have ensured that the CD's remain widely available in the Amazon Marketplace afterlife to anyone who wants to catch up on what they missed. So yay for that.

i told you, so don't lie

Oh. My. Fucking. God. Part II.

After 11-12 years of being locked in some forbidding, Dick Cheney-style netherworld in some record company's vault, the video for Pee Shy's "Little Dudes" single has finally surfaced. So for anyone who ever wondered what the Sisters were like before they were Sisters, back when Jenny was still in the mix, Bil was just being Bil and the Shy's classic configuration was fully and absolutely in command of Da House, feast your eyes:



I'm not sure if this video ever got any airtime in 1996, so for the past decade it's been an object of intense curiosity among Pee Shy fans -- as eagerly sought after as those original Velvet Underground acetates, or a missing Gutenberg Bible, or maybe even the lost tapes of the Butt Chakra sessions. Many have embarked on manic quests to find this footage only to be driven mad in the attempt, waking up years later, naked and in a drunken stupor, in the middle of some uncharted Antarctic penguin colony just as the ice sheet is breaking off into the sea amid an ecological apocalypse.

Did I say "many" have done this? I meant "none." Can you tell that at this point I'm basically just making shit up?

But that's a sign of how amazed I am to have stumbled upon this piece of Shy history. Look at how young they are! (Not that they're not still young now, of course.) Look at how much hair Cindy and Mary have, and Jenny's blond little 'do, and that wonderful clarinet waggling back and forth, and the ivory Bernini accordion that doesn't seem quite as beat up as in the Sisters' 2004 Rothko video. Mainly, just feel that vibe among them, back when the band was cohesive, still having fun and seemingly about to conquer the alternative-pop music world. (I was predicting the cover of Spin within six months. Of course, I also didn't think they needed to add a bass player. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong.) Witness the assemblage of charisma and brains and talent that so captivated audiences all the way from the Blue Chair record store to the Stone Lounge.

Now, granted, this video takes a somewhat creepy Mary Kay Letourneau-ish turn beginning around the 2-minute mark, freaking out even the child actors by 3:19. Clearly, this was just an attempt to match the light-hearted theme of the song, unless maybe the label was trying to provoke controversy. Either way, it seems unlikely that this approach would be able to fly nowadays (as one of the folks on the YouTube page asks, "Did Debra LaFave write this song?").

One could also question: Is the video even chronologically accurate? Jenny and Cindy were both pushing 30 when they wrote the song. "When you were born I was already 10." Do the math. I never got the impression that the real-life Little Dudes were 12, as is portrayed here. And what self-respecting Nineties kid was going to sit around playing Pong? Wasn't that a game for ironically detached Gen-Xers?

But that's just quibbling. The label's hopes for "Little Dudes" to become a sleeper hit never came true; one could even suggest that the company was way too fixated on this one song, when by '95 the band had written stronger ones that would have made much better singles. (*Cough* "Yellow Race Car." *Cough*). But at least they've left us this glimpse back to the early days of this musical dynasty, and for that the universe can be grateful.

Bonus round: Can't get enough of "Little Dudes" reminiscences? OK, maybe you'd like to join these folks, all of two of them, who are having a grand old time debating what the heck these cryptic lyrics mean. "I love this song because it's so perverted," writes one.

trying hard not to be the piece of cloth that it is

For anyone who's interested, looks like those message boards at American Laundromat are finally back. And there's a special corner all set up for discussions of everyone's favorite accordion-, bass- and drum-slinging trio -- even though it's accompanied by some disquieting hints that the Holy Trinity have retreated into their own state of Salinger-like seclusion:

What can we say about these ladies? Even though they are on a semi-indefinite hiatus, we still have the candle lit for an eventual reunion, new 48 song CD, and world tour...

Semi-indefinite? Isn't that term they used for the Iraq war? Or was that a "slam dunk"?

Anyway, this has me wondering anew what's going on with the Sisters' official site, which apparently expired on April 24 (looks like the name can be renewed for a year for only $30, according to these folks, in case anyone's thinking of getting them an early Christmas present). Or why the MySpace page for that Cinnamon Girl Neil Young tribute lists Cindy, not the Caulfield Sisters, as contributing.

I just hope all is well with them (aside from that whole new-motherhood, not-sleeping-for-two-years thing that Mary has no doubt been going through). Then again, Cindy has always said they're taking a zen approach to this Caulfield Sisters business. And it has always seemed like her projects take a long time to percolate. They happen when they happen, and the results are almost always glorious. So I'm happy to light another candle, set it by the window and wait.

there's a hand from behind and it cups my mouth

So I finally got around to packing and took a cab to the airport and now my Southwest flight has been delayed at least an hour because of bad weather and I figure, hey, I might as well use this free wifi connection they have here, and then I start to think about the YouTube video I posted here a few hours ago and start to wonder if maybe, just maybe some performance of the Sisters has been immortalized here in this corner of Googledom Rupert Murdochdom, and then ...

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I'm fainting. I need to lie down. I think I might have the vapors, whatever they are.

Watch. Just watch:



Update: My apologies for initially maligning YouTube by insinuating they were part of the Murdoch empire. I was thinking of MySpace. YouTube, of course, is part of the Google empire, which is collecting an enmormous database on all our web surfing, searching and purchasing habits, no doubt leading someday to some massive data leak that will embarrass 86 percent of the sentient beings on earth. Yes, I'm expecting lots of shamefaced questions about why I seem so interested in pee shyness.

Anyway, I still can't get over this clip -- many, many thanks to the person who posted it. Midway through watching it I realized with a shock that I was finally getting a chance to see the Sisters perform. The last time I witnessed Cindy slinging that accordion she was in Pee Shy, and it looks like she's picked up a few more moves since then (I don't remember her swinging it like a pendulum, for instance). Wondrous, wondrous, wondrous stuff.

in is the opposite of out

Believe it or not, I've had a lot of things to say here, just haven't been motivated to say them. But I hate doing what I really should be doing right now, which is packing, so here goes:

• American Laundromat got a new website a while back. Yay! But apparently they're running out of Say It With Fire, so y'all better hurry and stock up.


• Um, what's the deal with the Sisters' official site?


• Kristin's probably been on tour with Gloria Deluxe in support of the new show, Must Don't Whip 'Um, although I'm really just guessing about that.


• The amazing Gina Vivinetto has a a blog of her own to showcase her musings and let the lame-ass St. Petersburg Times know once and for all what sorts of coolness it's missing. What, that's not enough Vivinettiness for you? OK, go listen to Gina sing in her wonderful band The Peabodies, or go listen to her sing in her wonderful early-1990s band Bullwinkle (what? no 400 Blows? or Oh My Stars? and did anybody else here not know that "Mess" wasn't always a-capella?), or hell, go hassle Boulevard magazine to see if they still have any copies of that back issue with her award-winning short story "Avert Your Eyes." Still not enough? Well, in that case you might be out of luck.


• The current issue of Magnet magazine includes XIII, by Pee Shy's old stablemates Home, in its cover story on "Lost Classics," the "75 underappreciated albums that have graced our pages over the last 14 years," blah blah blah. Uh, didn't the cable channel TNT used to brag about having the Lost Classics, or was that something else? Home's mention is very appropriate and deserving, and kudos to the editors for noticing XIII and not mindlessly joining the usual critical stampede for XI. But ya know, I keep looking and for some reason still haven't found the item about Pee Shy. 'Cause you know there's got to be one.

And best of all, best of all Vegas Hat Man, someone here posted the most tantalizing of rumors several weeks ago:

rumors are flying
they are in the studio weekly now
april 2007 will spring

I wonder: was that intended to be a haiku?

Finally, a treat. I never got around to posting anything about that magical, joyous event that was Come The Freak On 2006 in St. Pete, but here's some video from the second evening of Jenny performing "It's the Love." For anyone who never saw Pee Shy back in the day, it's a tiny glimpse of what you missed. Just squint and pretend that Cindy's somewhere off to the side holding an accordion, and that it's Mary instead of Eric holding the guitar:



By the way, Jenny totally rocked the clarinet on the Homehunters' song "Burden," too.

it's too much for a young heart to take

Or even a no-longer-young one. But let me start at the beginning:

I knew something was up tonight when I saw my screen door ajar. A bundle of something was propped up inside, gently swaddled by rubber bands and a concealing blanket of magazines and a Cushman's citrus catalog, left on the front porch like an offering to some neglectful god. Its secret lay deep inside, in the exact center of the pile, white and gleaming with a boldface injunction against uncaring fate:

"VERY FRAGILE. **vinyl record enclosed** PLEASE don't bend or stuff."

Yes! My Caulfield Sisters split 7-inch from American Laundromat had arrived.

It was a great pre-Christmas gift and is a beautiful artifact. The vinyl is blue and translucent, as advertised, with a whimsical cover illustration to accompany the title Divine Candy. It does seem indeed to be from a limited edition of 500 (it's numbered and everything), so definitely rush to order this if you haven't already. Sell your body if necessary.

The true treat is the music, of course. This is the performance of the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Some Candy Talking" that was streamed live on KEXP on April 5, 2005 (a date I have thenceforth celebrated as Caulfields Day, incidentally). But for any of you jumping to ask "Wait a goldarn second, hoss! Isn't that the same performance I've already listened to a higgledy-jillion times on my iPod-like thingie and/or my computer?", the only valid response is: Nope. Not like this.

Really, listening to this performance on vinyl in front of real speakers is a revelation, almost an entirely different experience. Cindy's voice is so much stronger. You can hear all of Mary's backup vocals (even the parts that didn't seem so obvious before). Kristin's drums sound like they're in the room with you. That accordion feedback seems to rumble when Cindy hits the lower registers with it. Wow!

This is instantly my favorite Caulfield Sisters recording of all time, if only because this feels like the closest thing to seeing them perform live. Which, speaking wistfully, I hope to actually do someday. Plus, they do such a damn brilliant version of this song.

The flip side, Julie Peel's cover of the Breeders' "Divine Hammer," is mighty fine as well, sort of a jump-up-and-dance counterpoint to the Sisters' delightful walk down melancholia lane. Julie's apparently French, so it looks like we have the Brooklyn Breeders meeting the Bordeaux Breeders ... um, meeting the Breeders. Could anyone possibly resist this?

And it gets better! It seems the label has "had so much fun pressing this one" that it's now starting a split-7" series. The next one is called So Long City Skies and features John P. Strohm and some band called Dylan In the Movies. It comes out in January and will be on black vinyl.

Where else will the series head? No idea, but it's off to a great start. Thanks, all!

P.S. Back to the Sisters: You can still listen to the whole KEXP performance on the station's website (linked above), or download it as an mp3 from the Sisters' site (though that version seems to have some gaps in a couple of places, including the middle of "Dumbfound You"). The bonus is the interview, including that "broke wind" joke, John's enthused "Way to hooooooooooo!" exclamation and the discussion of traffic in Midtown. You'll find yourself exclaiming: I wanna get more of that stuff ... of that stuff ...

all the way to china, and i dug

Wow. Whatever happened to summer?

No matter, and don't mind me while I dust some of these cobwebs off. Once again I find myself apologizing for all these months of blog silence, but this time I have an excuse: I had sworn upon the altar of God that I would not post again until A) Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House; B) Thomas Pynchon came out with a new novel (admittedly Salinger would have been a more appropriate choice, but like that was ever going to happen, so I went with the reclusive author behind Door Number 2); and C) the Caulfied Sisters finally got some of the respect they deserve from the Alaska news media.

If you think about it, it's sort of miraculous that it all came together this quickly.

Anyhoo, to sum up what's happened in the interim:

• American Laudromat's website got blowed up, sadly (server woes, they said). For now they're operating from a MySpace page, and it looks like they just set up a blog.


• Kristin's come out with her first solo album, Ports of Call, a lovely work and a marvel of subtlety. "Domesticity Song" might be the saddest song ever.


• As promised, Say It With Fire is now available on iTunes, and includes as a bonus track a shiny new version of "First Bridge of Summer." Well, I'm not sure if anything about it is really new or if it just sounds brighter in that AAC format that Apple uses instead of the previous mp3 encoding. The drums might seem a little more prominent (did Kristin redo Billy's parts?), or maybe that's just my imaginings. No matter what, it's a treat nonetheless.


• Cindy's been engaging in an experimental-ish song/sound/poetry side project called Musical Typing with Suzanne Thorpe of Mercury Rev. Cindy describes it thusly: "When your bass player has a baby, this is what happens." In contrast to the Sisters' more straight-ahead tendencies, these songs bury Cindy's voice under waves of sound, so that they end up feeling like one of those dreams where you know you're saying or writing something incredibly important, something that will change your life forever if only you can seize those words and drag them out into your waking world, but then you awake and all you're left with is: "The lawn chairs of death? You're going to need these for later?" I mean that in a good way.


• Speaking of absent players, the Sisters themselves have issued a long-awaited message to their fans, announcing a forthcoming split 7-inch with their cover of "Some Candy Talking." The flip side is Julie Peel covering the Breeders' "Divine Hammer." Anyway, it's on blue vinyl and is a limited edition of 500. Can you say extra-special Christmas stocking stuffer? I thought you could.


• The Sisters also announced a show with Hopewell for Nov. 10 at Matchless (it was supposed to be a "Beacon's Closet-palooza," Hopewell's website said), but it didn't happen for some reason. I hope everyone's OK.

All right, I think that takes care of most of the major cobwebs. Everyone go have a safe Caulfield Sisters holiday season. I hear that "Box of Glass" is the new choice for Christmas caroling.

nobody looks when eternity's dying

"Somebody laughs again,
somebody's hurt again,
somebody's stranded or just breaking down
and you in you're bubble,
you're offshore in your bubble
and rolling away"
-- Nailbiters, "Someone Else"

This has been a week of mourning for Mike O'Neill, the astonishingly gifted songwriter, guitarist and singer who led some of the greatest bands ever to come from Tampa Bay -- Monday Mornings, Nailbiters and The Unrequited Loves. Others have spoken of this more eloquently than I ever could, but this is a huge, huge loss for those who love independent music in Florida. He was our Paul Westerberg and our Elliott Smith, a songwriter whose music was tortured, heartfelt and painful, and usually buried under a chaotic shroud of twangy, roaring guitars.

Mike was 41 and by all accounts (bolstered by years of his own lyrics) had suffered for a long time from depression. On Monday, July 17, at either 6:52 p.m. or 6:48 p.m., he drove from St. Petersburg toward Bradenton, parked on the center span of the 200-foot-high Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and jumped to his death into Tampa Bay. It probably took him 3.5 seconds to fall. It looks as though he'd updated the Unrequited Loves' MySpace page earlier that day.

His friends have set up a MySpace page to post memories, condolences, photos and a rotating collection of his songs. It's become the electronic hearth where people have gathered to share their sorrow. So has Jenny's wonderful Internet radio show, which aired a 3-hour tribute to him last Sunday (the podcasts are available here, and she's also posted some anguished thoughts on her blog).

Another tribute page is up at Tampa Bay Muse, co-proprietors of the web radio station Strange Agents Radio, where Mike hosted 10 episodes last year of a show called "The Loneliest Person" -- you can see his setlists here.

His passing is being noted on more websites and news articles and columns than I can count or link to. OK, here are a few more -- and here, here, here, here, here and here -- not to mention some collections of photos that a friend of Mike's has posted. And here's another photo. So I'll leave out the handful of sites that are being marred by ignorance, hate and all-around asshattery (what is it about depression that makes people unable to recognize the fact that it's a disease?). This is what some of those who knew him had to say:

• "I want you all to know that Mike visited me nearly every day after work when I was in the hospital. He would call ahead to tell me if his shedule that day was too hectic and give me a phoner pep talk. I'm not telling you this to let you guys know how 'close' we were, I am telling you to show what an extraordinary boy this was. By far, this was his worst year (mine too: lots of parallels with our lives, jobs, etc) , and yet, he still made time to be of service to people. He was in so much pain, and he would put it aside to come sit with me. And believe me, I knew it. I realized the irony that I was fighting for life and he was fighting it." -- Gina Vivinetto, on that MySpace page (where she also posted a song or poem she wrote for him)


• "you were something special, in so many ways. always a kind soul and a wonderful song writer. you were truly meant for the stage. never before have i seen someone walk into a gig 5 minutes before they had to play, looking like you just woke up, aimlessly wandering around while setting up, making it look like the show was about to be a complete disaster. but then, like clark kent, the mild mannered mike would just explode with life. gone were the sleepy eyes, replaced with fire. the words and twang effortlessly flowing from the stage with such a passion. and when the set was over, he was back in disguise until the next gig." -- Gabe, on the same site


• "I never knew Mike O'Neill suffered so inside. And it makes me think...and wonder...if he truly had any idea how much people loved him. How much he mattered to people. How much his sometimes nonsensical conversations stuck with people and made them think and smile and question. And we all wish Mike would have reached out and asked us...if we cared. Because we all would have said yes. Yes Yes Yes Yes Goddamnit Yes. Stay with us. Sing your songs to us some more. Tell us your stories. Try harder." -- Jeremy Gloff

Mike had been a big part of Tampa Bay's music scene for a long time. Monday Mornings, which included Mike and his then-girlfriend Karen Collins, might have been the best band that ever took root in that area, although Nailbiters would be extremely close competition, as would Rosewater Elizabeth, Clang, Bullwinkle, Home and of course Pee Shy, along with other bands I'm probably being criminally negligent in forgetting to mention now. What an astonishing collection of talent that area produced in a few short years.

Monday Mornings could be overpowering live (even more than one can really tell from the unfortunate vocals-to-the-front production on their lone CD, despise our world?, which they objected to at the time), but they also played the occasional acoustic show in 1990-91 at Three Birds, the bookstore that Cindy co-owned on East Seventh Avenue. That album has always struck me as having interesting parallels with Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, with Karen playing the Kendra Smith role. Nailbiters' two albums, Unsorted and Every Wasted Second Gone, always had me imagining the path R.E.M. might have taken had they stuck closer to their garagey pre-1983 roots, maybe with some of GBV's dark energy thrown in. (The first album also inspired an especially odd review from the St. Pete Times, which wrote that "the only obvious problem here is the strong R.E.M. influence that colors much of the Nailbiters' work." Um, why was that a problem?) The Unrequited Loves seemed to have a stronger Sixties vibe. And who knows else might have come?

I never knew Mike O'Neill, and I feel like kind of a fraud mourning at such length here. I only knew the words, which frequently dwelt on some of the ugliest emotions humans can harbor, and the music, which exploded with so much life the songs almost couldn't contain them. Listen to the sung words spilling on top of each other in "Unsorted," or the soaring chorus of "Unsurreal," or the way the guitars fly apart in the final verse of "Drillinstructor." Or, for that matter, the "it's Disney magic!" soundbite that comes just before "That's Just Dumb." Just listen to them all. How sad that their creator somehow became so convinced that his place in the world was under the ground.

Rest in peace.

"And a dream came true for someone that afternoon
Then split down the middle
I shook at the sorrow of it
I stepped out of line
I stepped over the line and finally stepped out of myself
Nobody notices eternity's dying out"
-- Monday Mornings, "The Eternal Afternoon"