Category Archives: From the Chip Midnight Archive

We lost another great one: RIP Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse)

Rolling Stone is reporting that Mark Linkous, the mastermind behind Sparklehorse, took his own life on Saturday. This is terribly sad news and comes just months after Vic Chesnutt (who had worked with Linkous in the past) killed himself. And, as in Chesnutt’s case, just a look at song titles and a listen to lyrics reveal that Linkous made no secret about his sadness – “Heart of Darkness”, “I Almost Lost My Mind”, “Sick of Goodbyes”.

Linkous was one of the first musicians I ever spoke to for my old site, Swizzle-Stick, and I found him to be a very interesting and enjoyable person to talk to. You can read that interview, done back in 1999, over on AtomicNed.com.

From the Chip Midnight Archive: Meat Puppets 1994 Audio Interview

meatpuppets

The Meat Puppets will perform an acoustic in-store at Used Kids at 6pm and then a full-blown rock set at The Summit a few hours later with the Retribution Gospel Choir (side project for Low’s Alan Sparhawk) opening.

Duffy’s been asking me for years to convert my old interview cassettes into MP3s for archival purposes. After hanging with the Meat Puppets and their manager, Dennis, in Austin during SXSW a few months ago, I decided that the interview I did with bassist Cris Kirkwood back in ’94 for MOO Magazine would be a good first “From the Chip Midnight archives …” feature. This interview was done shortly after Kurt Cobain killed himself. The Meat Puppets were being hounded with interview requests due to their friendship with Cobain but very few, if any, interviews were being granted. Fortunately, I had put in my request to speak with them BEFORE Cobain died and their publicist, Regina Joskow, let me be one of the few writers to talk to them.

MP3: Cris Kirkwood interview from 1994

While we were waiting for the Kirkwood brothers to finish up recording their Daytrotter session in Austin, Dennis suggested that rather than interview the band, I should take my ’94 interview, and every time they mention Too High to Die (the album they were promoting at the time), I should swap in Sewn Together (the brand new Meat Puppets album). If you give the interview a listen (a little boring at times, I’ll admit – but there is some really funny stuff scattered throughout), you’ll see how easy it could have been to pass it off as a recent interview.

You can check out the feature I did on the Meat Puppets in The Big Takeover (issue 64), on newsstands soon (I’m a subscriber and got my issue in the mail yesterday).