Sin-é

another dreamer with a six-string with ethereal aura and celestial tenor voice (NY Times)

it's just easier to go any place I want to, it could be like a human radio station

“Phantom” solo tour

Jeff did a solo “phantom” tour of small cafes and pubs starting in December of 1996 under alias names such as A Puppet Show Named Julio, Crit Club, Father Demo, Topless America, Smackcrobiotic, The Halfspeeds, Crackrobats, and Martha and the Nicotines. When asked why he toured and did not let fans know, he replied in a letter that was posted to the official Jeff Buckley web site:

“There was a time in my life not too long ago when I could show up in a cafe and simply do what I do, make music, learn from performing my music, explore what it means to me, i.e. have fun while I imitate and/or entertain an audience who don’t know me or what I am about. In this situation I have that precious and irreplaceable luxury of failure, of risk, of surrender. I worked very hard to get this kind of thing together, this work forum. I have loved it and then I missed it when it disappeared. All I am doing is reclaiming it.”

“They are simply my way of survival and own method of self-assessment and recreation. If they don't happen....nothing else can.”

The Phantom Solo Tour: All dates are 1996: 12/6 – Westborough, MA at Old Vienna as “The Crackrobats” 12/7 – Boston, MA at Kendall Square as “Possessed by Elves” 12/9 – Buffalo, NY at Spot Coffee as “Father Demo” 12/10 – Cleveland, OH at Barking Spider as “Smackrobiotic” 12/12 – Manyunk, PA at La Tazza as “Crit-Club” 12/13 – Baltimore, MD at Ze Bean as “Topless America” 12/14 – Washington, DC at Misha’s as “Martha & The Nicotines” 12/15 – Washington, DC at Soho as “A Puppet Show Named Julio”

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“I have read you, everyone. I love you, too. Especially the ones who channel dead spirits from space and also ones who want to murder me. All my hugs and kisses. In hell, baby.”

http://flowersintime.org/pictures.php?type=goodbye

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Remember me but forget my fate

I hope that people who liked him resist the temptation to turn his life and death into some dumb romantic fantasy—he was so much better than that. Not everyone can get up and sing something they take a liking to and make it their own, sing true to their heart and be curious about all different strains of music. Corpus Christi Carol was a completely conceived interpretation. I'd never heard the piece before and when I heard the original I realised what Jeff had done was even more amazing. He'd taken it into his own world. That's something my favorite classical musicians can do, be themselves but use all that expertise to make the music more beautiful. Jeff did that naturally. Only a handful of people are capable of that. I was amazed when he did meltdown. I asked him what he wanted to sing and he said he'd like to do one of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder in the original German! Absolutely fucking fearless. He was convinced he could sing it without rehearsal, just because he liked it. In the end he did a Purcell song, Dido's Lament, which is in danger of sounding incredibly poignant in retrospect: 'Remember me but forget my fate'. But he also sang Boy With the Thorn In His Side because he liked it, and Grace to show something of himself. When he started singing Dido's Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here's a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he's just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it. My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who'd never met before – Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player —all talking and laughing about music. He'd charmed everybody. I'd much rather remember that than anything.

Elvis Costello from Mojo Magazine, August 1997.