MM Sin-e review

April 9, 1994

JEFF BUCKLEY

LIVE AT SIN-E

Big Cat ABB61XCD/4tks/27 mins/MP

FOLKIES-Arran sweaters, sandals and a face that would disgrace even Captain Birds Eye after a night on the lager. Jeff Buckley-young and electric with the kind of fanny-moistening good looks only a Hollywood surgeon could chisel. And he can write a good tune too. Nirvana!

  The highlight of Buckley's two recent London shows was to watch someone actually working for their wage-going for notes which, by rights, they had only an even chance of hitting, yet, in the process, creating an atmosphere which left everybody in the room stunned into silence.

  This four-track mini-LP (fat bastid of a single?) retains the edge an abandon that characterized those shows yet, because it was recorded in a tiny bar in Greenwich Village, loses none of the intimacy that makes JB so special live. Take the lovelorn "Mojo Pin", with its dreamily insistent guitar motif that sounds like it's been beamed in from the edge of sleep or "Eternal Life" which starts off like the most depressed Hendrix reflection then turns inward into a drama-filled confrontation with his own mortality.

  Buckley's version of Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do" is a fine example of what I was on about earlier, his cavalier approach to creating time-stopping, wonderous moments.

  He actually picks out the individual instruments from the thick mesh of the "Astral Weeks" big-band arrangement and wails, hollers, cries, and croons their parts. Somehow, none of the churning urgency of the original is lost. It could so easily be a grand folly but isn't, simply because of his sheer brass-neck, his intuitive knowledge of what made the song so brilliant in the first place and the small fact that he could sing the wallet out of Pavarotti's back pocket.

  I get blank looks trying to order a vodka in Paris, but I think "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" is one of those heart-destroying paeans to lost youth that only the frogs-Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel (I know he's Belgian) knock out so lovingly.

  Jeff Buckley has created one of the albums of the year with just a Telecaster and a voice that sounds like a choirboy singing from the rafters of a whorehouse. Buy it and melt.

MAT SMITH

94/95 tour itinerary

Itinerary booklet for the Autumn 94/Winter 95 tours...how I wish I had this!

Mahare Buckham flyer and ticket

Some rare gig things from his high school days courtesy of Jason Hamel 🙂

1982

1983

David's autograph

Grace Under Pressure

The Advertiser: December 15, 1994

By Mike Gribble

  Jeff Buckley met his dad, 70s rock contemporary Tim Buckley, only once but in music both have been struck by a similar sense of love-sickness and devotion to raw, spontaneous passion. Jeff Buckley's debut album, Grace, is a soaring, unique mix of styles, without consistent or specific direction, but is underscored by lyrics pleading for understanding.

  Buckley's voice carries flecks of operatic strains, rock angst, and even reveals glimpses of child-like hesitancy. Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas paints Buckley's soundscapes with sparse and well placed caresses of strings.

  "A trademark of my presence has been that, at first glance, people either hate me and run away screaming, or we sit down and talk and get on with knowing each other," says Buckley, 27. "I've lived in bars since I was 14, doing gigs in southern California. I remember any gigs I did had a lot of range to them but I didn't do things with the same focus I have now.

  "Music is a force of nature; it's not really an art. The conventions built around music are art forms. I experience music as being like the wind, or ocean, or fire.

  "It comes perfectly natural to humankind. It gets into the bloodstream and you can hate it, or it can totally elate you.

  "Initially, songs come to me very easily but bringing them to full bloom takes a lot out of me. The way you see the song in your mind and the shape it takes...if you see any apprehension in the song, that's usually the way it came out when I first did it and I don't like to change it. I don't like to say it any better than that. I'm hard-pressed to find a different expression for it.

  "If it's a little rusty at the beginning, if it's like stars gathering in the galaxy, that's the way it comes out.

  "I love the place music takes you. It's like a whole other universe where all musics exist. Music takes time and it takes moments for people. It hovers like flies over a picnic before it goes in for the kill and you really...like, really experience it."

• Jeff Buckley will perform at the Big Day Out in Sydney and Melbourne. Adelaide fans should start requesting an SA visit through Sony Music.

Lex's autograph

"Met Jeff on his Lucky 13 Tour of Australia... he played an In-store in Melbourne (Gaslight). You had to purchase a release to get a ticket, which was a laminate. I bought CD singles...and got 3 laminates. 

    He played about 40 minutes, then signed autographs...the band played acoustically/ stripped back. Its was amazing.

    I asked Jeff for a guitar pick, as I play guitar... he spat this pick out of his mouth into my hand...ummm ewww...but EPIC !! I have a lot of clippings from when he died, and stuff when hed tour, also tour posters and the Lucky 13 Tour shirt."

"The reason he wrote on the CD cover 'Lex I can't really play pool' was because I had asked him, if he could play pool. I had just watched him and I didn't know what else to say....I could say 'OMG you're amazing' hahahaa...he said he couldn't play pool, and that he hung out a lot at a pool halls across the road from a venue he played, and always like it, so they took a photo and used it....I think the club was the Sin-é."-Lex Frumpy on FB (note: in this case, the photo used is by Merri Cyr, taken December 4, 1994 at the Stephen Talkhouse show)

Fall 94 tour flyer

A flyer for the fall 94 "Grace" tour

(Edits: Sony National Branch Meeting was on Dec 7, not 💯 about the Ace of Clubs, but it seems to have been scrapped in favor of the Sony thing, Club Babyhead was on the 14, Irving Plaza was on the 17, Maxwell's on the 18 and was the finale)