Weekly Song Recommendation: Mark Mallman - Mother Made Me Do It

I haven't done a music recommendation post in a while.  It's certainly not weekly, but I'm not changing the naming.  I don't know, stopped feeling inspired, I guess. Well fuck if I don't feel inspired now.

I've always been a fan of Mark Mallman's.  It started, like many of artists I enjoy do, seeing a show of theirs without knowing who they were beforehand.  This is a prime example of the Gabe Kangas music/movie introduction theory.  It is as follows:

Don't miss the previews.  One of the new movies may be your new > favorite movie ever. Don't miss the opening act.  You're going to > the show anyway and they may be your new favorite band. Don't just go > for the opener.  The headliner may your new favorite band.  You're > there anyway.

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Simple enough.

That was in Chicago.  Last fall I was in Seattle and Mallman happened to have a show at a club there a night I was free, so of course I went.  Loved it like the first time.  Grabbed the newest cd.

And then all was quiet until this weekend.  Mark Mallman presented Marathon 3: The 78 hour song.

Live from The Turf Club he played music 78 hours straight.  Him, along side his 400 page binder of lyrics he had prepared, rocked it.  The backing band would change every hour, and aside from ~1min bathroom breaks (while the song continued via the band) and the time a doctor pulled him off the stage (he sprained his ankle... and that whole not sleeping for 78hrs thing) he was on stage playing his song.

I can't really recap it in all its glory, since I wasn't physically there.  But through the magic of Twitter and the live video stream of the event I was pretty invested.  But if you're at all interested check out the liveblog via CityPages.  Here's a photo they took:

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But I must say, watching this thing go down was a firsthand ticket to a man's journey into madness.  While his first couple days of 24/7 rocking looked like they didn't take a toll on him, this last day I could no longer decipher the genius from the madness.  His banter with the band started to consist of "I weigh 600 pounds, I think I'm going to die.  This isn't healthy."  He had a conversation with his dead grandmother.  He talked to his guitar player about going to Bennigan's to eat, but realized they were out of business.  It just kept getting weirder.  His voice was going out as time went on and I wasn't sure if he was going to make it the full 78 hours.  I mean, look at the guy.

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But he did.  And it was awesome.

So in the honor of a man who when asked why he would do something so crazy replied with "because", I recommend you check out this song from his "Live from First Avenue" album, the first album of his I got.  I like it because it has that live energy that I experienced this weekend remotely, but... you know, coherent.

If only everyone loved their craft so much they wanted to see what the extreme of it consisted of.

Mark Mallman - Mother Made Me Do It