New Music Mondays Throwback Edition.....Jeff Buckley

Good Monday music lovers! This week I thought I would take a different approach with New Music Mondays. I decided to write about a artist that changed my view of music forever.

Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician. After a decade as a guitarist-for-hire in Los Angeles, Buckley amassed a following in the early 1990s by playing cover songs at venues in Manhattan's East Village, such as Sin-é, gradually focusing more on his own material. After rebuffing much interest from record labels and his father's manager Herb Cohen, he signed with Columbia, recruited a band, and recorded what would be his only studio album, Grace.

Over the following two years  the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1996, they stopped touring and made sporadic attempts to record a second album in New York with Tom Verlaine as producer. In 1997, Buckley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to resume work on the album, to be titled My Sweetheart the Drunk, recording many four-track demos while also playing weekly solo shows at a local venue.

One sad evening while awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during a spontaneous evening swim, fully clothed, in the Wolf River, where he was caught in the wake of a passing boat. His body was found on June 4, 1997. Thursday June 14, 2012, I will be in Seattle at the Crocodile Lounge watching one of many events celebrating the music and passion of Jeff's music at "Eternal Fair and The Crocodile Present A SEATTLE TRIBUTE TO JEFF BUCKLEY."

 I think at one point in everyone's formative years you come across an artist that opens the world for you, someone that lets you see deep into yourself and your dreams and, as the notes fade beautifully in your ears, they leave you changed as a person.

So I leave you this week with two of my favorite songs from this amazing artist: "Forget Her" and "Lover You Shouldve Come Over".

I will see everyone next week for another New Music Monday.

xoxoxoxoxo Najamoniq
"I try to make my music joyful—it makes me joyful—to feel the music soar through the body. It changes your posture, you raise your chin, throw your shoulders back, walk with a swagger. When I sing, my face changes shape. If feels like my skull changes shape—the bones bend. "Grace" and "Eternal Life" are about the joy that music gives—the, probably illusory, feeling of being able to do anything. Sex is like that. You become utterly consumed by the moment." -Jeff Buckley