It's A Sad and Beautiful World

My friend Mike and I went to a Flaming Lips show at The Canopy Club back in 2003. We decided not to take I-57 all the way down, instead traveling I-55 to Route 47, all the way south. I don't know why. We drove through a hellacious rainstorm, semi-trucks showering gallons of water onto the windshield when they passed. It was by far the worst rainstorm I have ever driven through.

In between the riotous opening band and the Lips insane set, a guy with a guitar and a laptop appeared and played a few songs. I know it’s cliché but when he started to play, all the crowd noise faded from my ears and all I could hear was him. It was a short set of just three songs, but it was delicate, hypnotic and truly beautiful. For the rest of the night, even with the Lips’ sonic and visual chaos all around me, all I could think of was finding out who that guy was. I searched like crazy when I got back from the show at around two in the morning.

I found a single listing for the show billed as The Sun/Mark Linkous/The Flaming Lips. Further investigation yielded that Mark Linkous was the man behind Sparklehorse, a band I’d heard of but never listened to. I hoped on Amazon and bought everything I could find. He hadn’t released anything in two years at the time of the show, so I felt lucky to have seen him play. And I guess that’s how I’ll always remember him and his music; as a fragile, beautiful island in a sea of chaos.

This is an almost identical version of "Sad and Beautiful World" that he played that night. It still gets me.