During my days of running a music venue in Manhattan, I had the pleasure of booking Boston band Treat Her Right, a hugely talented group that in retrospect was ahead of its time. Lo-fi, jazzy, bluesy, unhinged and punky, THR created music that oozed a kind of gritty sexuality.

Mark Sandman was in Treat Her Right and over the two years in the 1980’s that I spent time with Mark, I came to know him rather well. Mark was an avid reader of the beats, Bukowski, John Fante and harboiled writers like Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson, the dark stuff. He also dug badass surrealists like Artaud and Rimbaud. It showed in the lyrics of his songs, which were miniature narratives of the darker side of modern life, fever dreams populated by broken-hearted lovers, alcohol and drugs. In his noirish tales of romance gone bad and the wreckage left in the wake of lives lived on the edge, the evil ways of the world were shot thru with glimmerings of sweet sex and black humor that gave one the sense that all was not hopeless. He could be very tender.

With his band Morphine, Mark continued to create a body of work that was remarkable in its musical and lyrical integrity. Sandman was a writer as gifted as those he admired. He was just hitting his stride as an artist of significant magnitude when he died of a heart attack at the very young age of 46. The night I learned of his death, I went to my bar and sat on a stool that Mark had sat on many years ago and I had a drink in his memory, a good Scotch…straight up. I recalled the way Mark talked, which was like he sang, deep and soulful, and what he said always mattered. Even his small talk was big. Words were a way out of the dark for Mark and his music was a cure for pain.

Cure For Pain a documentary on Mark and his music has been completed and will soon be released. I’m looking forward to it and so should you.
 

 
Here’s some raw video of Mark being interviewed:
 

 
Check out a very cool Treat Her Right video after the jump…