Saturday, November 12, 2005

Mazzy Star - Fade Into You

*** (of four)

I have a friend named Emma whose number-one preset on her car stereo is the Michael Bolton station. Which spits out all the adult-contemporary classics - and about fifteen way-too-heavily rotated current chart-sitters - you love from Gloria Estefan, Kenny G, Richard Marx and Queen Of Bitches Celine Dion.

Celine, by the way, sings an obnoxious newer ballad called "Have You Ever Been In Love" that Emma enjoys without irony. ("What's wrong with the lyrics? 'Have you ever been in love'? That's a legitimate question. I like it. The words are good.")

So I burn and stash CDs all over Emma's car with the music I know we can both agree on, and a prime example is the haunting 1994 stoner-rock track "Fade Into You" from Mazzy Star. Who proceeded to sink without a trace.

Too bad, too. I loved the groove of this song - Portishead meets grunge-pop - and always longed to hear more from Mazzy. But somehow in the eleven years since its release, I've never spotted a copy of So Tonight That I May See in a used-CD shop for cheap. Maybe it's just that good. Or maybe it just didn't sell any fucking copies.

Either way, I have the Kevin Kerslake video for "Fade Into You" on precious VHS and can visit it any time I want. Keeping with the heavy-lidded, molasses-slow feel of this ethereal ditty, Kerslake's shots are all in slow motion, colors washed out in blues and reds and lots of browns.

Mazzy Star - girl singer and beatnik guy band - are out in the dessert, rolling down an abandoned highway and occasionally stopping so the guitar player can sit on the roof of the car and strum aimlessly. There's also night performance footage in the desert and plenty of shots of the singer standing alone, staring out into nothing and just generally acting like a lost puppy. It's all sooooo trippy, man. Sooooo trippy.

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