I happened to catch about half of this VH1 show (which I think was called "conspiracy theory" or something) this weekend about Nick Drake and his untimely death twenty-five years ago. The thing that really stuck out to me was something his sister said: "Those of us who were closest to Nick felt like we didn't know him at all. But people come up to us all the time now and say 'I really know him'". How arrogant these fans are. They really only know his music, this small part of him, when in reality he was a fractured and fading personality, a prisoner in his own home to the depression that eventually took his life. The big question on the show was whether his overdose of antidepressants was suicide or accident.

Anyway, Drake was an interesting character, but he's one of those artists that everyone and their brother is listening to now. That doesn't bother me anymore. Time was, I couldn't go near a band that was popular. I guess that's just getting older. I kind of backed into listening to him about three years ago, when I heard the Swans cover of Black Eyed Dog, a really haunting song about, as so many of his songs were, death. He was pretty far gone by the time he did this song, his voice so shaky that he had to go back into the studio to redo the vocals.

"But Kafkaesque!" I hear you cry. "I don't come to this site to hear fruity manic depressive guitar music from dead hippies! I crave wackiness and links to pictures of monkeys!" Well, my friend, you have to take the monkey with the hippie sometimes. That's just the way it goes.