#Jeff Buckley gear

[guitarbomb]

Jeff Buckley Guitar Gear - A Deep Dive into Grace

Jeff Buckley was a major influence on many musicians and guitarists. We take a deep dive into the gear he used.

Jeff Buckley’s Grace album is a tour de force in songwriting. It also features some exceptional guitar playing and recorded guitar tones. We take you through that gear and talk about how to grab some of those tones and integrate them into your rig. Jeff Buckley  Jeff Buckley’s album Grace is often seen as the perfect debut album by many because it is so fully formed. With the perfect balance of…

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer park Steve AU part 45

part 1 | part 44 | ao3

Nancy, Jonathan, and some guy with the longest hair Steve's ever seen are standing in a loose circle with Eddie and his bandmates, talking and sort of dance-nodding along to The Power of Love by Huey Lewis (a fact that Steve absolutely intends to mock his boyfriend for the second he gets the chance), and Steve, like, mentally girds his loins.

He and Jon are cool with each other, and he and Eddie are obviously, uh, plenty warmed up to one another by now, but the rest of them...

One's a stranger, one's an ex who seems drunk as shit and is currently so invested in spinning around to the music that she hasn't opened her eyes to notice him, and the other three are thawing to him at a truly glacial pace. Steve hasn't so much as been invited to watch a rehearsal yet because Eddie's 'still working on them' and needs 'a bit more time, but don't worry, they'll come around.'

They don't openly scowl when he and Robin approach, though, so Steve takes that as a win.

"Harrington!" Eddie calls, bowing deeply to add, "Lady Buckley."

Steve would feel stung by the surname if not for how downright giddy Eddie sounds. God, he loves tipsy Eddie; fucking Disney cartoon boy.

"Munson," he plays along, giving him a sly grin and a shoulder bump as he sidles up next to him. "Didn't know you were allowed to leave the basement at these things."

Jeff interrupts his air-guitaring to glare at Steve, bur Eddie holds out a hand and assures him that Steve's just fucking around. Before Steve can apologize or defend himself, Long Hair Guy leans in across the circle, his eyes wide and intense and bloodshot to hell.

"Dude," he greets. "You have. Such beautiful hair."

Steve barks a laugh. Robin rolls her eyes. Jonathan also rolls his eyes, but it seems more fond and less annoyed. "Can't take you anywhere," he mutters to the guy, then asks them, "You guys met Argyle yet?"

Steve holds out a hand. Confusion washes over him as he processes what Jonathan just said. "Uh." Argyle. "Like the sweater?"

"Yeah, man," Argyle smiles, dopey and slow. Sure. The guy in head-to-toe tie-dye and a neon green fanny pack is named Argyle. Why not? "My parents wanted a sheep, but they got me, instead."

Jonathan laughs like it's the funniest joke he's ever heard. Steve's pretty sure he's too sober for this conversation.

They exchange handshakes, and Robin asks if she can touch the guy's hair, and they all slip into easy, friendly conversation, naturally splintering into smaller groups of twos and threes. Steve's just getting the rundown on all the 'sick new gear' the band got for Christmas when the song changes, and god, this night just could not get better.

"Oh, fuck off!" Eddie groans in the DJ's direction.

Steve has to practically swallow his lips to keep himself from cackling, and then he gives up and does it, anyway, because Eddie looks like he just sucked a lemon while watching a dog die as his bandmates all start sing-shouting along. "We're talking away..."

"No." Eddie wheels around and points a finger at Steve, because Steve's singing, too.

Steve just sings louder. "I don't know what, I'm to say!"

"Oh, my god." He scrubs a hand down his face, dragging the skin down until Steve can see the pale pink of his inner eyelid. "Nobody I know has any goddamn taste!"

"Maybe you don't have any taste!" Robin teases, bouncing around and swinging her arms haphazardly to the music.

Nancy backs her up with a mumbled "Yeah!" but she's still spinning around in such tight circles that Steve doubts she has a single clue what's happening in the argument right now. Which is kind of endearing, actually. He likes how willing she is to stick up for people.

The chorus kicks in; Gareth air-drums the switch to half time just before Frank does an honestly super impressive falsetto of 'in a day or twoooooo', and Eddie despairs while Steve laughs his fucking head off.

—

part 46

tag list in separate reblogs under '#trailer park steve au taglist' if you'd like to filter that content. if you want to be added please comment and let me know (must be over 21; please either verify in the comment or have your age visible on your blog)

[thisapplepielife]

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest.

It Was His Year

Day #21 - Hate This Town | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: M | CW: Slightly Graphic Imagery, Blood, Injuries | POV: Gareth | Pairing: Steddie (If You Squint) | Tags: Missing Scene S4 Finale, Evacuation, Canon Divergence, Eddie Munson Lives

Gareth runs out to his mom's minivan, carrying another load, and his hand hurts, even with his fingers taped together. At least one is broken, he's certain. Fucking Jason Carver.

The town has cracked wide open and everyone is panicking. Fleeing. Packing their cars, ready to haul ass out of this godforsaken place. Goodie and Jeff are helping load up his drums, and what gear they have between the four of them.

But Eddie is nowhere to be found.

Hasn't been around for days, and Gareth's worried. Something's going on, something more than an earthquake. Something more than an evacuation. He gets that Eddie's been hiding out, and for good reason, but this isn't just about that. Can't be. 

Eddie wouldn't have hurt Chrissy Cunningham. Not a chance in hell. Eddie's mouth runs a good game, but Gareth knows him. Really knows him. And Eddie was ready to finally get out of this sorry fucking town. Graduate.

It was his year.

And now he's missing, and the fucking Scooby Gang that is always somehow in the middle of every disaster that befalls Hawkins, are missing, too. 

Dustin Henderson is never this quiet. Something's up. 

Something big. 

A couple miles outside of town, Gareth slams on the brakes, and Goodie braces himself against the dash, "What? What is it?"

"Steve Harrington," Gareth says, because that was Steve Harrington's BMW hauling fucking ass in the opposite direction, towards town.

"So?" Goodie says.

"That wasn't Steve Harrington driving. That was Nancy Wheeler," Gareth says, starting to make a three-point turn in the middle of the highway, getting honked at by everyone behind him. He throws his hand out the window, flipping them off, then follows the BMW as it barrels back towards town. 

"No, no. Over my dead body. We're not going back. Tell me you're joking? The streets are caved in," Goodie says, looking for back-up from Jeff.

"Gareth, maybe we shouldn't-" Jeff tries.

But it's too late, he's giving chase. If anyone knows where Eddie is, it's that group, Gareth's sure of it.

After dodging streets that don't exist anymore, he sees Steve's car parked under the awning of the already bustling emergency room. Gareth gets out of the driver's seat, and looks over at the group that's surrounding the familiar car. They seem to be in costumes, like they went and raided The War Zone outside of town. Robin Buckley is standing there as Dustin is fucking bawling, holding onto the open door of the car. 

And Nancy Wheeler? She's absolutely screaming, arms waving, pointing. Barking orders to an already overwhelmed staff. 

That leaves Steve Harrington, and Gareth can see the soles of his boots as he's in the backseat of his own car, on top of Eddie, as Eddie's limp, boot-covered foot hangs out of the vehicle. The leather upper torn, shredded to the bone. 

What could even do that? What the fuck has happened here?

Gareth runs to the other door, the still closed one, and when he opens it, Steve barely looks up at him, doing chest compressions, breathing for Eddie.

Steve looks feral. Soaked with blood, smelling of kerosene and fire.

Death.

Eddie's neck is bandaged, his cheek, and Steve drags Gareth's hands to Eddie's neck, pressing them down. Gareth puts pressure, while Jeff hovers behind him. Goodie nowhere to be seen.

Gareth holds on tight, but he thinks Eddie's dead. He's not sure there's anything he, or Steve Harrington, can do about that. 

But Steve keeps working, arms pumping against Eddie's ribcage, and Gareth tries not to cry. 

He's in a daze, when he realizes Goodie is standing behind him, with his dad. Dr. Goodwin. Of course. He's not the kind of doctor Eddie needs, not by a long shot, but maybe he can get him into the right hands.

"What did you kids do?" Dr. Goodwin asks, but there's no answer to that. Between all of them, they're able to get Eddie pulled out of the backseat, and loaded up onto the gurney.

Steve Harrington bullies his way beyond the staff only doors, and Gareth doesn't understand why, as he stands there, the doors gently swinging, as Eddie's taken away.

Jeff is scrubbing Gareth's hands at the public bathroom sink, and Goodie is wiping at his neck where Eddie's bloody hair rubbed against his face when he helped pull him out of the car. His bandana is in Gareth's pocket now, soaked in red. This is fucked. It's all so fucked.

"What happened? It looked like he'd been attacked by an animal," Gareth mutters, "Did Carver do this?"

"I don't know," Jeff says, and yeah, Gareth thinks, none of them know anything. Not anymore.

By early morning, Eddie is hooked up to machines and tubes, and Steve Harrington is sitting at his bedside like a guard dog, still filthy. Still itching for a fight.

"We're his friends. His band. Corroded Coffin? Hellfire Club? With Dustin?" Gareth tries. Steve Harrington doesn't look well, he's glassy-eyed and pale. He has one dirty hand on Eddie's bedrail. Gripping tight.

"We can stay with him, you could go change clothes. Take a shower? See a doctor yourself?" Gareth offers, because Steve Harrington is sweating, and looks like he can barely sit, let alone stand. 

And then Robin Buckley is here, fussing, calling him a dingus and leading him to the sink in the corner of the room. Lifting his shirt.

Jesus H. Christ.

"Oh shit," Gareth says, seeing the angry, weeping wounds on Steve's sides. At the rope burn around his neck. "Goodie. Maybe get your dad again."

It takes weeks, more than a month, and they all take turns sitting with Eddie, before Eddie finally opens his eyes and blinks, looking around. It's a full-house.

Gareth leans over him from one side, Steve from the other, "Eddie? Are you okay? What year is it?" Gareth asks.

Eddie coughs, but smirks, ever so slightly. Voice hoarse from disuse, "It's '86, baby. I told you this was my year."

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @corrodedcoffinfest and follow along with the fun! 🦇

[steviewashere]

Walking To The Bright Lights In Sorrow

Rating: Teen and Up CW: Major Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Discussions of the Death Penalty, Eddie's Death Seen as a Suicide (I think that's the only way I can describe it) Tags: Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, (Except Vecna Dies, Too), Angst, Mild Comfort, Dead Eddie Munson, Grieving Steve Harrington, Ghost Eddie Munson, Moving On, Goodbyes, Love Confessions, Eddie Moving on To the After Life, Steve Harrington Has Nightmares, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Steve Harrington Loves Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, Missed Opportunity, Promises Title from "Grace" by Jeff Buckley For @steddieangstyaugust Day 2 Prompt: Ghost(s)

🪦—————🪦 In the hollow of night, woken fresh from a nightmare, Steve started to have conversations with the dead air in his bedroom. It started as short, assuring affirmations in a scratchy sort of mumbling, something to calm him down. But now, it’s to somebody.

Eddie Munson.

He’s not wearing the green vest or the combat boots or the black bandanna. He’s not covered in blood and looking beyond Steve’s shoulder. No, Eddie’s clean and vivacious and in his usual everyday—the black leather jacket and the Hellfire Club t-shirt and dark blue, near black denim jeans. All that’s missing is the vest, but Eddie has turned him down every single time he’s offered it up.

The vest was clean, Steve made sure of that. Every patch in its place. All the buttons, the pins were stabbed through the material; just as Eddie left it. Just as Eddie gave it to him. And Steve knew, within half-conversations with Dustin, that battle vests really meant something. It was armor, a safety blanket, a flag, and a promise. To stay true to oneself.

But it seemed like Eddie didn’t need Steve’s help on that front. Because he swore, beyond everything, that Eddie was alive in his room. He was speaking and flailing and grinning. He was joking and laughing and holding himself casually. Sometimes, he swore that Eddie would reach out to him, like he was gearing up to brush back his hair or soothe a palm down his tense bicep or hold his trembling hand, but then he’d hesitate with some awful, sour sort of realization. He’d give up right then and there.

It happens again tonight.

It’s four in the morning. The sun not up yet. Early December, almost Christmas, and Steve is somehow sweating himself out of his clothes. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, gripping to the mattress with his aching fingers, looking at the carpet below his bare feet. And he notices when Eddie joins him because he settles on the mattress, too. Makes the bed dip. His weight barely anything, but Steve has known how to gauge him months ago.

“The bats,” Eddie’s voice croaks. It’s not a pretty sound. Almost a rasp, something on the verge of…death, but Steve makes himself stave that thought off. His voice echoes, too. Like a whisper in a cathedral. Hauntingly close.

Steve nods his head in response. Whispers, “I couldn’t stop them from getting to you…again.”

Eddie hums beside him. “You couldn’t stop them in the first place, Steve,” he states, “they came for me when you weren’t there.”

“I should’ve been”—

“No,” Eddie’s quick to murmur, “no, Steve. It was my choice. Nothing would’ve changed my mind, I promise you that.” It’s the same thing he says every time Steve has the nightmare about the demobats. It’s the same dismissive murmur. It’s the same factual thing. Steve hates it, but won’t say that. Doesn’t think he really can.

There’s silence in the room now. Tense and rigid and thick. He wants to cut it with a knife or tear it apart with his bare hands, but can’t even lift his fingers away from the mattress, can’t even make them curl into his own palms.

The mattress shifts next to him. Eddie’s cold, fog-heavy, wind-like presence icy on Steve’s arm. It’s the closest thing to touching they can get. All he wants is to rest his head on Eddie’s shoulder, wants to smell his hair, wants to trace his fingers over the soft parts of his cheeks where those wounds are noticeably not present. Though, part of him is petrified of what happens if he does. A part of him wonders if it’ll be like in Hollywood—the ghosts touching their loved ones and then disappearing into a nothingness. A yearning, empty nothingness.

“I passed by Dustin’s before I came over here,” Eddie breathes into the space. That echo ever present, ever stomach curdling. “He was sound asleep. All curled up under his blanket. He was…there was this faint smile on his face and it’s probably the best thing I’ve seen since his head banging during our crazy, alter-dimension performance. I didn’t stop inside, though. Didn’t want to wake him.”

He swallows. Doesn’t know why Eddie’s telling him this. But he just responds low and careful, “He’s been keeping himself busy with Hellfire. Got a lot of responsibility now, y’know? I watched him do that master stuff or whatever…he’s got a talent for it, at least I think so.”

“Dustin was always going to be my pick for when I graduated,” Eddie says, a soft smile present in his voice. It soothes something racing in Steve’s veins, but he’s not ready to sleep, not ready to see Eddie’s face close behind the blackness in his eyelids. “I’ve heard a bit here and there of his campaigns. He…uh…he makes me an NPC a lot, doesn’t he?”

Steve sucks in a sharp breath. Murmurs, voice crackling, “He always saves you. Always, Eds. You always join the party members as a companion. Sometimes, you’re the only one still standing.” He finally lifts his gaze from the floor to look into Eddie’s eyes. His dark, yet cold and ghastly eyes. “I don’t think he can handle you dying again,” he admits, “I don’t think anybody can. Not even me.”

Eddie blinks at that. His mouth barely twitching into a frown before going neutral again. Lets out a soft, aching sigh. “The only thing I regret about dying is that all of you guys are so hung up on it,” he says, voice gone flat. Devoid.

Cold.

“Jesus Christ, Eds. That’s”—

“Brutal?” He finishes. “Yeah, Steve, I know. But it’s the truth.” His body shifts again, crouching to stand. And in the blink of an eye, Steve is looking up at Eddie, at him standing and hovering. Hands on his hips, gaze pointed out to the backyard, watching the curtains shiver from the small opening in the window. “I was going to be sentenced to the death penalty, you know that? They were going to ask for my last meal. Which I’d say the same thing I requested—Honeycombs, YooHoo, maybe some beer if they’d allow it. Then they were going to execute me. I think that’s more brutal, don’t you?”

And then he stares directly into Steve. Into. His gaze burns. Despite the icy edge to his irises. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe—he doesn’t need to do that anymore anyway.

A moment later, he looks away and continues, “I didn’t want that. I wanted to go out on my own accord. And I wanted it to mean something. It did, in the end, it ended up saving the world.

“I, Eddie Munson, former freak of Hawkins and three time senior—I was a hero at the end of the day. Even though you told me not to. I know what you told me. But sometimes you gotta bend the rules in order to make things right.”

“But, Eds…Eddie, the town still thinks”—

“Fuck what they think, Steve. I know what I am.” He moves at that. Crouching on the ground in front of Steve. Down on his knees. Face looking up to Steve’s sad gaze. His hands hover over Steve’s bare knees. “I know what I am,” he repeats, a murmur. “I don’t regret my death. I don’t regret what had to be done. I just hate that all of you always remember, you guys are constantly mourning. Over me? You’re mourning over me? We hardly knew each other!”

Steve sniffs. His lips wobble when he opens them to speak. There are tears sitting in his waterlines, hot and spiky and ready to spill. “I wanted to know you, Eds. I like when you’re here. I like dreaming about you because then we can talk and I can”—

“Baby,” Eddie coos sadly, “baby, this isn’t doing you any good.”

“It is!” Steve crows, “it is and now…now that you saw me tonight, I can go back to sleep and it’ll be fine.” He even scoots up the mattress, carefully, and situates himself under his blanket. “See? Cozy and warm. I’ll go to sleep and everything will be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

There’s a stunned, slow moment of silence. Eddie isn’t on the floor anymore, instead sitting on the edge of the mattress. All his movements hidden in between blinks, when Steve’s shifting and can’t see him. He can hear Eddie audibly swallow, hard enough that it sounds like he’s consuming rocks. But he doesn’t speak.

“Right?” Steve asks again, soft this time. So soft that it nearly gets lost on its way over the comforter. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. I’ve got a funny story to tell you and we can”—

“Steve,” Eddie finally breathes. He looks over. Dark eyes hauntingly crestfallen. Piercing Steve like the sharp end of that stupid syringe. It makes him ache in all the worst ways. Just on the cusp of a heart attack. Eddie’s right hand shifts from his lap, moving slow over the blanket, hovering on the left side of Steve’s face. Contemplating. “Steve, I want to go. I…I’ve seen all I need to. You’re the last one.”

“Eds,” he murmurs.

“I want to go home, sweetheart. I want to see my mom. I want…I want to be in my childhood home. I want to dance with her. I want to go. Please.” And with the faintest of touch, he swipes his cold, ghostly thumb under Steve’s eye, into his hairline, over the top of his ear. He doesn’t disappear, but Steve doesn’t even want to blink. “I’ll still be in here, when you want me,” he says, tapping at Steve’s temple. “But I can’t be in here anymore,” and he states that with a wide arm gesturing around the bedroom.

He blinks, finally. Tears spilling hot and fast over his cheeks. Lips trembling. Nose stuffed up and snotty. Eddie’s still not gone, not yet, at least. “Okay,” he squeaks. “I just…I think I”—

“I know,” Eddie whispers, “I know, baby. I feel the same way.” His touch gets heavier, firmer on Steve’s cheek. In slow motion, his legs begin to wisp away. Steve hates that he was right about this part. “I love you, too, Stevie. I’ve had so much fun with you all these nights. I just want to rest, too.”

Steve closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Eddie go, but he nods his head slow against his pillow. Sinking into the last bit of touch Eddie will ever give him. “Promise me something?”

“Anything,” Eddie breathes, voice far away.

“Save me a spot?”

His thumb presses hard into Steve’s cheek. There’s a smile to his voice again, “Always, Stevie.”

“Okay,” Steve sighs, relaxing into his mattress. “Goodnight, Eds.”

The only response is the faint brush of wind from the window.

It’s almost like a kiss.

🪦—————🪦

[steddie-fanfic-recs]

What A Catch

by Sharpbutsoft (BuckysButt)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Characters: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Jeff (Stranger Things), Gareth (Stranger Things), Unnamed Freak (Stranger Things) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - No Upside Down (Stranger Things), Security Guard Steve Harrington, Rockstar Eddie Munson, Alternate Universe, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Bisexual Eddie Munson, Bad Flirting, Angst, (but so very little like really this is mostly fluff), Getting Together, Author clearly doesn't understand what job in security entails but that hasn't stopped them, Corroded Coffin Concert (Stranger Things) Words: 4,792 Chapters: 1/1

Summary

Steve can’t say he loves metal music, his favorite tunes tend to hang out in the rock n’ roll genre, though he’s not so stuck up as to blanket hate the top forties. Robin still swears up and down he’ll enjoy Corroded Coffin, with a suspicious glint in her eyes. “But watch out for the frontman,” she’d warned as he geared up before opening, situating his earpiece radio so they’ll still be able to communicate during the show. “He likes to stage dive.” Written for medusapelagia as part of the Steddie Holiday Exchange 2023 on tumblr

[mused-amused]

Jeff Buckley: Knowing Not Knowing

From Inside the Music: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians about Spirituality, Creativity, and Consciousness

©️ 1997 Dmitri Ehrlich

Early in the spring of 1997, singer and songwriter Jeff Buckley headed down to Memphis to begin pre-production on what would have been his second full-length album. A few weeks after Buckley arrived, his bandmates flew in from New York to join him. He was in high spirits: the songwriting was going well, and he was reunited with his group. The same night his band arrived Buckley went out for a late-night stroll to a Memphis harbor and waded into the river. He had always admired Led Zeppelin, and was singing "Whole Lotta Love" when a boat passed in front of him. He lost his footing, perhaps dragged into the water by the boat's wake, and was never seen alive again.

He was thirty years old, two years older than his father, the folksinger Tim Buckley, had been when he died of a drug overdose.

I first met Jeff Buckley and saw him perform about two years before he passed away. It was near midnight and Buckley was sitting in the back office of a Tower Records store in lower Manhattan. Buckley had become a scion of the Lower East Side antifolk scene, and was preparing for an in-store performance in support of his album Grace.

But first he needed to do something: he insisted on listening to a crackly old recording of "The Man That Got Away" by Judy Garland, on the pretext that he wanted the store manager, who had given the CD to Buckley, to un derstand how magnificent a gift it was. Buckley needed to demonstrate the album's beauty. He had also picked up gratis CD reissues of vintage Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone records, and two albums by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who had a major influence on Buckley's singing. While Buckley could occasionally summon the same kind of ecstatic vocal power that was Khan's trademark, his singing had more in common with Garland's delicate, vulnerable warble.

Buckley was an unglamorous star. That night he was wearing a wretched pair of weathered combat boots-the sort you occasionally see homeless men selling-a frumpy gray cardigan sweater, and jeans that hadn't been washed in a long time. Ditto his hair. In an oddly white-trash bit of accessorizing, Buckley's wallet was attached to his belt by a chain, in the style favored by motorcyde gangs. Three days of beard growth rounded out his anti-coif, but his sex appeal remained intact: a nervous girl approached to ask if, as she suspected, he was a Scorpio. Another pressed a poem she had written for him into his hand. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket, as though he would cherish it forever. Maybe he did.

Buckley was at an odd moment in his career when he died. Having moved to New York several years before from California, where he was raised by his mother, he crawled his way up through the ranks of the insular lower Manhattan music scene. He had become a mini-star in that highly circumscribed microcosm, perched on the cusp of national and international success. That night at Tower Records the line between Lower East Side local hero and international stardom seemed pretty thin. On one hand, his debut album sold several hundred thousand copies (al-though more in Europe than in America), and there was & throng of photographers and autograph-seekers pressing around him. On the other hand, he wasn't above hauling his own gear onstage, more or less indistinguishable from the half dozen stringy-haired sound men and roadies who were putting the sound system in place.

Buckley had no video in heavy rotation on MTV, largely because he insisted that people judge the music on the way it sounded before supplying them with an accompanying image. For the same reason, he refused to even suggest a single to radio deejays. "What I'd love," Buckley said, "is if a deejay had a lineup of songs, and he'd just use one of my songs as part of a really nice evening. But that's the way I would deejay, not the way they do it. They usually have playlists."

For a guy with folksinging in his blood, Buckley had assembled an arsenal of prog-rock guitar effects you'd expect at an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer show and had set his amp at cat-spaying volume. (In fact, he had been raised on Led Zeppelin and Kiss.) Several dozen more stringy-haired people with assorted rings in their lips and noses (his fans) materialized. As he stepped onto the makeshift stage, a grumpy security guard began clearing some fans from a stairway, but Buckley interjected: "Wait! Those are my friends! Can they stay there? I give them special permission." What started as dispensation for four friends ended up being extended to anybody who wanted to stay.

The set began with a ghostly wail from Buckley, and a mildly Middle Eastern guitar line. He sang with a vibrato that quivered like the tongue of a snake. It was so atmospheric that you hardly realized his bandmates were rocking their tits off. That was the tension: Buckley ululating in sensual falsetto, the band churning out mid-seventies Led Zep knockoffs. He seemed a strangely ethereal cherub in the midst of all that visceral thrash.

After the show, Buckley signed autographs, taking several minutes with the thirty or so fans who lined up for an audience with the tousle-haired singer. Rather than just scribbling an autograph, he wrote a personal note to each person. Everything he did seemed to place poetry before commerce, but I couldn't help wondering if it was all an elaborate ruse, a crafty stance aimed at those disenchanted wich the slickness of pop posturing. Didn't Buckley, after all, want to make a lot of money and sell records?

"If it happens it'd be great," he said later that night, over omelettes and wine at an all-night eatery, "but we just play to express. I want to live my life playing music, so that we can be immersed in it. In order to learn how deep it goes, you have to be in it."

As to why he took so much time with each of the fans who asked for an autograph, Buckley articulated his basic anti-rock-star stance: "The way I experience a performance is that there's an exchange going on. It's not just my ego being fed. It's thoughts and feelings. Raw expression has its own knowledge and wisdom." He trailed off, as though humbled by the mere thought of his audience wanting to hear him play, or asking him for an autograph.

"I’ve been in their position before and all I wanted was to show my appreciation to the performer. So I feel like it's kind of generous of them to even be asking me for an auto-graph.

"It's true that there's also the people who want a piece of you," he conceded. "But it's pretty hard to keep feeling protective all the time, because there's really nothing to protect yourself against. Sometimes people shout at me on the street, and they feel they know me through my music. But that doesn't substitute for a real personal rela-tionship. I don't feel like people know me, I just think we share a love for music in common, and for some reason they key into the way I play. I feel appreciative when people come up to me, and I feel good when we connect. Usually, it serves as a nice comedown after a performance. Any other conduct would bust the groove, because I'm buzzing when I get offstage, and I'm consciously protecting that connection because that's what got me through the performance in the first place. It's an invocation and worship of this certain feeling, this direct line to your heart, and somehow music does that more powerfully than anything else. It's like a total, immediate elixir."

By all appearances Buckley conformed to the stereotype of the poetic artist: largely lacking the practical, thick-skinned psychic barrier that separates most of us from the harsh realities of life. With a rabbit-like nervous disposition and a hypersensitive vulnerability that bordered on tragicomic, he looked like he was about to burst into tears at any moment. His face was contorted and slightly tortured-looking during most of the interview, though I got the impression that it wasn't so much the experience of being interviewed that was torturing him but the pain of grappling with his own thoughts and the world around him.

Relationships were at the heart of Buckley's world.

Although he was marketed as a solo artist, the attitude he had toward his listeners mirrored the relationship he formed with his three-piece backing band. "Playing with a band is all about accepting a bond, accepting everything the way it is. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of taking chances with each other. It takes seeing each other in weak and strong lights, and accepting both, and utilizing the high and low points of your relationship."

It wasn't only interpersonal relationships that Buck-Ley held sacred - he was aware of making his music in relation to all the sounds around him. The environment was Buckley's co-composer: to his ears, no melody or rhythm was separate from the sounds going on in the background.

“It’s not like music begins or ends. All kinds of sounds are working into each other. Sometimes I'll just stop on the street because there's a sequence of sirens going on; it's like a melody I'll never hear again. In performance, things can be meaningful or frivolous, but either way the musical experience is totally spontaneous, and new life comes out of it, meaning if you're open to hearing the way music interacts with ambient sound, performance never feels like a rote experience. It's pretty special sometimes, the way a song affects a room, the way you're in complete rhythm with the song. When you're emotionally overcome, and there's no filter between what you say and what you mean, your language becomes guttural, simple, emotional, and full of pictures and clarity. Were you to transcribe it, it might not make sense, but music is a totally different language."

"People talk all day in a practical way, but real language that penetrates and affects people and carries wisdom is something different. Maybe it's the middle of the afternoon and you see a child's moon up in the sky, and you feel like it's such a simple, pure, wonderful thing to look at. It just hits you in a certain way, and you point it out to a stranger, and he looks at you like you're weird and walks away. To speak that way, to point out a child's moon to a stranger, is original language, it's the way you originate yourself. And the cool thing is, if you catch people in the right moment, it's totally clear. Without knowing why, it's simply clear. That sort of connection is very empirical.

It comes from the part of you that just understands imme-diately. All these types of things are gold, and yet they are dishonored or not paid attention to because that kind of tender communication is so alien in our culture, except in performance. There's a wall up between people all day long, but performance transcends that convention. If pop music were really seen as a fine art or if fine art were popu-lar, I don't know what the hell would happen this wouldn't be the same country, because if the masses of people began to respect and really open to fine art, it would bring about a huge shift in consciousness.

"Music is so many things. It's not just the perfor-mer. It's the audience and the architecture of the song, and each builds off the other. Music is a setting for poi-gnancy, anger, destruction, total disaster, total wrongness, and then—like a little speck of gold in the middle of it-excitement, but excitement in a way that matters. Excitement that is not just aesthetically pleasing but shoots some sort of understanding into you."

Buckley's songs were composed with made-up chords, bright harmonic clusters that seem too obvious not to have been written before, yet they rarely feel formulaic. There's a lot of open strumming, suggesting that the songs were written largely for the sheer physical pleasure of playing them. He and his band modified the arrangements during each performance, playing with an elasticity and openness typical of Buckley's personality. "Hearing a song is like meeting somebody. A song is something that took time to grow and once it's there, it's on its own. Every time you perform it, it's different. It has its own structure, and you have to flow through it, and it has to come through you."

Buckley's entire career reflected his outsider's approach to the music business. When he arrived in New York, rather than recording a demo or finding an agent, he simply began to perform for free. He played at a small café on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and before long, crowds were lined up out the door. As a result, representatives of record companies sought out Buckley, rather than the other way around. "There is a distinct separation of sensibility between art as commerce and art as a way of life. If you buy into one too heavily it eats up the other. If instead of having songs happen as your life happens, you're getting a song together because you need a certain number of songs on a release to be sold, the juice is sucked out immediately. That approach kills it."

Still, it took a strong belief in one's art to sit in a small café and trust that the world's record companies would come calling. Buckley played down his seemingly effortless approach to career as though it were common-sense. "I just wanted to learn certain things. I wanted to just explore, like a kid with crayons. It took a while for me to get a record contract, but it also took a tremendous amount of time for me to feel comfortable playing, and that's all I was concerned with. And I'm still concerned with that, mainly.”

"I don't think about my responsibility as a musician in terms of any kind of religious significance. I don't have any allegiance to organized religion; I have an allegiance to the gifts that I find for myself in those religions.

They seem to be saying the same thing, they just have different mythologies and expressions, but the dogma of religions and the way they're misused is all too much of a trap. I'd rather be nondenominational, except for music. I prefer to learn everything through music. If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their love for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real. But I don't believe in a big guy with a beard on a throne, telling us that we're bad; I certainly don't believe in original sin. I believe in the opposite of that: you have an Eden immediately from the time you are born, but as you are conditioned by your caretakers and your surroundings, you may lose that origi nal thing. Your task is to get back to it, so you can dam responsibility for your own perfection."

Buckley considered the development of awareness to be the main goal of his life. "I think of it as trying to get more aligned with the feeling of purity in music, however it sounds. I think music is prayer. Sometimes people make up prayers and they don't even know it. They just make up a song that has rhyme and meter, and once it's made, it can carry on a life of its own. It can have a lot of juice to it and a lot of meaning: there's no end to the different individual flavors that people can bring to the musical form.

"In order to make the music actual, you have to enable it to be. And that takes facing some things inside you that constrict you, your own impurity and mistakes and blockages. As you open up yourself, the music opens up in different directions that lead you in yet other directions." Asking most pop musicians if they're satisfied with record sales is like asking models about the aging process: they say they don't care, but it's hard to believe. For commercial recording artists, sales are the only objective indicator of whether they're doing things right—that fans are sincerely motivated to walk into record stores by the tens or by the millions, pull out their wallets, and pay for the music. But with his quiet, unaffected voice nearly a whis-per, Buckley steadfastly maintained that he really didn't want to sell a million records and it was strangely believ-able. When he talked about multiplatinum-selling bands who felt "disappointed" by a mere five million copies sold, the disgust he felt for commercialism was palpable. "The only valuable thing about selling records, the only thing that matters, is that people connect and that you keep on growing. You do make choices based on how many people you reach, meaning, now that I have a relationship with stangers worldwide, I have to try not to let it become too much of a factor and just accept it. The limited success we've had in the past is definitely a factor, it's just there. It justis. The whole thing is such a crapshoot, you can't really control what your appeal is gonna be. My music ain't gonna make it into the malls, but it doesn't matter. I don't really care to make it into the malls.

"Whether I sell a lot of records or not isn't up to me. You can sell a lot of records, but that's just a number sold-that's not understood, or loved, or cherished.”

"Take someone like Michael Jackson. Early on he sacrificed himself to his need to be loved by all. His talent and his power were so great that he got what he wanted but he also got a direct, negative result, which is that he's not able to grow into an adult human being. And that's why his music sounds sort of empty and weird.”

"Being the kind of person I am, fame is really over-whelming. First of all, just being faced with the questions that everybody faces: Do I matter? Should I go on? Why am I here? Is this really that important? All that low self-esteem shit. You're constantly trying to make sure that your sense of self-worth doesn't depend on the writings or opinions of other people. You have to wean yourself off acclaim as the object of your work, by learning to depend on your own judgment and knowing what it is that you enjoy. You have to realize what the difference is between being adored and being loved and understood. Big difference.”

“I don’t really have super pointed answers to the big questions. I’m in the middle of a mystery myself. I’m not even that developed at having a real psycho-religious epistemology about what I feel. All I can tell you is that I feel. It's just the same old fight to constantly be aware. It's an ongoing thing. It'll never be a static perfect thing or a static mediocre thing, it just has its rise and fall."

Pics from the book. Amazing that Jeff is in the same section as Allen Ginsberg and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He would have been so honored.

[sunburnacoustic]

For anyone interested in the technical side of how Matt writes and composes on the guitar, here are a few interesting interviews he gave to guitar magazines.

The second one isn't an interview with Matt, it's really just a guitar magazine doing the detective work a guitar magazine does, it's a little generic but it's still mildly interesting. There's obviously a touch to Muse's work and Matt's instrument writing that no broad formula could ever capture, but for a bit of analysis, you might like these.

[dreamsister81]

THE LEAP INTO LEGEND

By Holly George Warren via the Coda Collection, 2021

He was the man with a thousand voices — or so it appeared. I experienced Jeff Buckley live a few times — and that first night, in 1993, a Monday at tiny Café Sin-é across from my East Village apartment in New York, is forever seared in my brain. Not knowing anything about him beforehand, I sized him up as just another cute guy with a guitar. Nearly three decades later, it has become increasingly apparent that I have never seen — nor do I expect to see again — a vocalist so spookily gifted.

Jeff Buckley leaves behind a story that seems scripted from myth. He is the SoCal boy descended from an angel-throated folksinger (Tim Buckley) who had died of a drug overdose at 28, when Jeff was only 8. He comes of age poor, toils in obscurity as a metal-band guitarist, seemingly unaware of — or resistant to — that which percolates within him. Landing in New York in his early 20s, he uncorks a five-octave voice to rival his father’s, and writes bold, baroque rock songs — multi-tiered, Zeppelin-esque anthems and keening, sex-drenched romantic balladry. He delivers them, alongside a crazy quilt of diverse covers, with operatic skill placing him among (some would say above) Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant. The latter would become a fan, as would Bono, Bowie, Lou Reed, Chrissie Hynde and Elvis Costello. At the height of his quick fame, natural forces — i.e. the Mississippi River — take him from this world, in an incomprehensible, freak 1997 drowning in Memphis. He would leave behind one studio album, “Grace,” and join the galaxy of brilliant comets who died too young, like Nick Drake and Gram Parsons.

Back to that Monday night in ’93. My singer-songwriter husband shared the bill with a sweaty 26-year-old Jeff Buckley at our St. Mark’s “local” — an Irish tea-and-coffee place by day that served beer and wine at night to about 30 people who’d pass the hat for neighborhood troubadours. No stage, just a spot where a table was shoved aside from the brick wall. My spouse lent him his capo so Buckley could play John Cale’s version of Leonard Cohen’s not-yet-ubiquitous “Hallelujah.” In my memory, the songs preceding this ranged from Porter Wagoner’s “A Satisfied Mind” to a Duane Eddy riff to an Edith Piaf chanson (in French), delivered with both offhand skill and devil-may-care goofiness, as around a boozy campfire or in someone’s smoky living room. Then came “Hallelujah.”

The disarmingly supple voice kicked into gear, encompassing all the sexual yearning and spiritual quest of that tune. Owning it. Murmuring, crooning, unabashedly howling — sometimes all within one line. The room collectively swooned. Rather than milk the moment, as the last echoes of “Hallelujah” faded, Buckley jokily — albeit expertly — picked out the intro to “Stairway to Heaven,” stopping to chat with the audience mid-song.

This was his routine, apparently. Slay, then lower expectations. I wonder now if the intentionally amateurish aspects weren’t so much impish boy stuff, but rather Buckley discovering his superpowers in the moment, onstage. Freaked out, he’d step back from that ledge, not yet ready to fly. Maybe he knew his low-stakes obscurity — what he later called his “café days” — would be short-lived, something to be savored.

Sure enough, within months, limos lined St. Mark’s Place on Monday nights, crowds spilled out onto the sidewalk and we watched from our fire escape as Jeff Buckley was spirited away to the big leagues. It all seemed foretold.

The footage of Buckley performing two years later with bassist Mick Groøndahl, guitarist Michael Tighe and drummer Matt Johnson at Chicago’s Metro on May 13, 1995, is peak Buckley. “Grace” has been out nine months, with Buckley touring nonstop ever since. It shows in the band’s effortless mastery of its boss’ often challenging material — the whisper-to-a-scream “Mojo Pin,” the spellbinding drama of “So Real,” the delicate, pandemonium-inducing “Lilac Wine,” all tracks from his debut.

By now, Buckley is in full possession of his preternatural voice, or rather, it is in full possession of him. Falsetto here, purr there, and a wail sourced from the Sufi Qawwali devotional music he loves and champions. Buckley rarely moves far from his mic, concentrating his energy on singing and executing impressive guitar work. But by the last third of the set, fully on, he steps into abandon: an instrumental of his work-in-progress “Vancouver,” segueing into the Alex Chilton/Big Star cover, “Kanga Roo,” which finds him excitedly pogoing (like a kangaroo?); a full-throttle version of the MC5 gangbuster “Kick Out the Jams,” on which he’s joined at the mic by a stage-diving guitar tech. Unlike most rock artists, he ends the show not with the typical rave-up, but rather sends his band away and leaves the crowd agog with a solo “Hallelujah.”

Between songs throughout the set, he resembles that guy I first saw in ’93, joking, listening to requests, vulnerable, smiling at the ardor beyond the stage lights. He gracefully handles the enthusiastic yelling and passionate outcry from the packed house, only once telling an obnoxious guy to fuck off (which gets a big laugh). But whereas at Sin-é, Buckley made holding back a riveting thing to watch, at Metro, he fulfills the promise he’d shown. He steps to the edge, and he flies.

Jeff Buckley “Live in Chicago” Setlist

Dream Brother

Lover, You Should’ve Come Over

Mojo Pin

So Real

Last Goodbye

Eternal Life

Kick Out the Jams (MC5 cover)

Lilac Wine (James Shelton cover)

What Will You Say

Grace

Vancouver

Kanga Roo (Big Star cover)

Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen cover)

[nicks-disks]

Introduction post <3

Hey, I'm Nick and any pronoun's good for me. I'm a minor, biromantic and asexual, and I'm an Indonesian living in Australia which is pretty neato. My favourite colour is Red, and my main playlist on Spotify is (currently) 45 hours long.

My account will really just me be posting/talking about things that I don't get to talk about often, like fandoms I'm in or music I really like. I'll also be drawing fan art/writing fan fiction so if you're interested there'll be a lot of that.

I'm very very new to Tumblr, like stupid new, I barely know how to format a post so please bare with me.

My main show fandoms but they progressively get worse:

BBC Ghosts, Dead Poets Society, Watcher, Gentleman Jack, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The French Dispatch, Jojo Rabbit, The Thick Of it, Cunk (on everything), The Grand Budapest Hotel, M*A*S*H, Man Who Fell To Earth, House MD, Top Gear/Grand Tour, Robert Erwin, 12 Angry Men.

My favourite musical artists (they're all red flags):

David Bowie, Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Radiohead, The Style Council, Tchaikovsky, The Smiths, The Cranberries, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Strawberry Switchblade, The Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground, King Crimson, ELO, Pulp, The Kinks, The Doors, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Crowded House, Nirvana, Sound Garden, Blur, Pig With The Face of A Boy, The Clash, The Jam, OMITD, Soft Cell,Led Zeppelin, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Joan Baez, Smashing Pumpkins, B-52's, Supertramp, Tom Cardy, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Duran Duran, Elvis Costello and Horrible Histories (they count as musical artists).

Some of my favourite ships are:

Buffy x Faith Anne Lister x Anne Walker Todd Anderson x Neil Perry Steven Meeks x Gerard Pitts The Captain x Lieutenant Havers Adam Kenyon x Fergus Williams Hauptmann (Captain) Klenzendorf x Freddy Finale Ben Willbond x Never Playing a Straight Character Any of the previously stated musicians x myself /j

Instruments I play:

Bass guitar, electric guitar, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, piano, ukulele and recorder. Honestly, I fully believe I play recorder and ukulele the best, I absolutely shred.

I love history, I love it to pieces. I'm a history girly in the sense that I can, will and happily talk about the history of make up in varying cultures and it's evolution, or the French Revolution and Napoleon, or historical art movements, or Ancient Greece and Rome, Henry and his Wives, Lady Jane Grey, so on and so forth, but also I'm a modern history boy and I will talk about tanks and planes and warfare and trenches and planes again I really really like planes. I LOVE Eastern world history, specifically different types of asian history, and if you do too then you're cool as hell. I enjoy historical and current politics (fat red flag), psychology (woah there's another one), and also I love love love transportation, specifically boats and planes and trains, but planes are my favourite. Also bikes.

If any of these things interest you, I would ABSOLUTELY be interested in talking about any of them! I plan to be as active as possible on here, but I'm still in school so I'll probably be a bit spotty. Feel free to interact, ask questions or completely dunk on me, I'd love to gain some mutuals <3

[glass-needles-and-futurisms]

11, 28, 36, & 54 for muse asks :)

11. Favourite song that's never been played live

How have they never played Shine live??!!?!!?

28. Favourite Muse piano part/song(/organ, for obvious reasons)

oh god why would you do this to me

... Space Dementia, just. Space Dementia. I also really love the Citizen Erased outtro and that subtle background piano in the final verses of Sing For Absolution, you can hear it starting around 3:28 here.

36. Favourite song to sing along to

Already answered this here 🙂

54. Mirror Manson or Glitterati? (or any other Muse gear?)

Glitterati, though if we're talking Muse gear in general I'm a Chrome Bomber fangirl.

Also, a special mention to the white Oryx and the Jeff Buckley Telecaster.

[hoffmannwrites]

On My List

1  - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 + 1 Masterlist

Author’s Note: Last chapter was kinda a cop out but I just think it's really funny to think about Steve going on autopilot to save Eddie after almost losing him and Eddie being totally fine. Steve overreacts every time Eddie cuts himself shaving or stubs his toe for the rest of their lives, because it is his God Given Right to do so as a Loving Husband.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson

Description: 5 Times Steve and Eddie kiss as friends, and one time they don't.

Warnings/Tags: Everyone lives, Nobody dies, 5+1, Kissing, Fluff, Idiots to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, some pretty brief mentions for drinking, smoking, being inebriated (the gang is drunk here but nothing too bad, just in a fun way), uhhh they're gay your honor, no beta we die like Barb, let me know if I missed anything?

Happy New Year

The third time Eddie and Steve kiss is the first time they do it intentionally. New Years has rolled around and Steve has been goaded into hosting a New Years Eve party by Robin, citing “celebrating life”, “spending time together”, and “you’ve got such a big freaking house dude and you love to host!” as her reasons why it had to be at Harrington’s. Steve didn’t actually love hosting, he was just annoyingly good at it (he’s a Virgo, he was born for this). So they spend the 31st setting up the beer pong table (they buy extra pong balls too), putting out some random snacks they bought, and hanging just a few random decorations (Robin got her hands on a disco ball and Steve had never seen her look so excited). While they’re setting up, they talk about everyone who’s coming and Steve pointedly asks if Vickie is going to be there. “Of course she is, she’s my girlfriend,” Robin says nonchalantly. Everyone pretty much knew they were together at this point, but only Steve really knew. Robin and Vickie made a point not to be too affectionate in public, just for the sake of living their life in peace.

“First New Years together,” Steve continues. “Gearing up for a big New Years smooch? Going out with a bang and starting the year off right?” Robin blushes at the thought and is suddenly really focused on putting Doritos in a bowl. “We haven’t really talked about it,” she replies.

“Oh come on, Robbie. You don’t talk about it, you just do it! Don’t ruin the magic of love!” Steve adds, voice mildly muffled by him being halfway in the fridge, filling it with Tab. Robin just shrugs, but Steve isn’t letting her off the hook that easy. “Whatever, man. The spare bedroom is always open incase you guys want a little privacy,” he offers. “But not too much privacy! Don’t defile my home, Buckley!” he quickly backtracks, while Robin continues to just ignore him in embarrassment. 

By the time 11:45 rolls around, everyone is too caught up in their own little groups to notice the time is getting close. Max and Eddie have been debating god knows what for at least twenty minutes, Argyle is trying to tell Jeff about this car that runs on water, and Robin, Nancy, and Vickie are talking about the Iran-Contra affair, of all things. (Nancy really hates Reagan, and the second she is even a little tipsy, she will tell everyone). Steve is paying attention though, and makes sure everyone has a drink in hand so they can do a little toast. But Steve’s not really great with words, never has been. Eddie though- Eddie loves a big announcement. So Steve steals Munson away (more like rescues him, if the conversation they were having is as intense as the look on Max’s face makes it seem). 

“Listen. I wanna make a toast- announcement- thing and I don’t really know what to say, but I figured you’d be good at it,” Harrington says to Eddie, hoping he’ll understand what he means. “Aw, you like the sound of my voice, dontcha, Big Boy?” Eddie says, all smiley and squinty eyed.

“I literally never said that. At all. You’re just good at talking,” the younger man replies, acting like the nickname doesn’t phase him at all (it doesn’t, he swears. It’s normal to get all tingly when someone calls you that.)

“All right, all right. Anything in particular you want me to say, or should I wing it?” 

“Just that, I’m really happy that everyone made it out alive. This year was a lot and I’m happy to be done with it, but also happy to, like, start a new one with everyone, or whatever.” 

Eddie looks at Steve a little dumbstruck for a second. “That was kinda beautiful, man. I can work with that.” 

Eddie walks back into the middle of everything and climbs up onto the coffee table using Mike and Dustin’s heads as leverage. Steve tries not to freak out about the fact that there are dirty Doc Martin’s on his mother's brand new Ethan Allen coffee table as Eddie loudly clears his throat. 

“I would like to make a little toast before we hit midnight. This year has been goddamned insane. And I hope we never have another one even close to it! But some pretty cool things happened too. I got to meet pretty much the coolest guy ever, with a van who rivals mine,” he nods to Argyle, who smiles and lifts his can of Coors in acknowledgement. “We all got to watch the sweet flower of love blossom between friends.” He didn’t point to anyone in particular at this, but Robin and Vickie smirked into each others shoulders, and Lucas made googly eyes at Max, who punched him squarely in the thigh, but blushed anyway. “We pretty much saved the whole fucking world, through the power of music and also friendship!” He practically squealed, as the younger kids whooped and hollered, leaving just a few of the guests only a little confused, just assuming it was some dumb inside joke. “I finally graduated high school,” he continued, and the hooting only got louder for that. “But! But!” He yelled over the din quieting everyone down. He looked almost somber now. “Most importantly. We can’t forget. Harrington’s hair has never looked better! I mean come on, look at that volume! Let’s get a round of applause for that!” He shouted, while the small crowd erupted into applause and hoots.

Once it died down a little, he started up again. “For real, guys. I’m really happy we’re all here,” (that sentiment was especially impactful for those there who were in the know) “I’m happy I get to finish this year with you all, and even happier to start a new one. Here’s to ‘87, baby!” And with that, Eddie raised his can and everyone followed suit. He hopped off the coffee table and wandered over to Steve. “Did I do good?” he asked.

“Perfect.” Steve replied, the corner of his mouth turning up just a little. “And great timing too,” he gestured to the TV where Dick Clark was counting down from 60. Eddie automatically started counting down with him, loudly enough that the entire party joined in by the time they hit 15.

“3..2…1…Happy New Year!!!” He exclaimed, shouting wildly and turning to Steve, who just happened to be looking at Eddie like he had hung every fucking star in the entire sky. And it was Eddie this time who grabbed Steve roughly by the back of the neck with his left hand and crashed his lips into Steve’s messily. Steve was too surprised to do anything but kiss back, not quite adding in any tongue or anything, but definitely moving around enough that it counted as a real, bonafide kiss in his book. It was real enough that by the time they separated, Steve looked a little glassy eyed and heavy lidded and Eddie lips were pinker and maybe even the tiniest bit swollen.

“Can’t start the new year without a kiss, amiright Stevie?” Eddie shot him a wink and disappeared into the crowd with a flourish. Steve just stood there for a few moments, head reeling, eyes darting around searching for Robin to see if she saw what just happened. But as his eyes landed on Robin, the also landed on Vickie who was still kissing the other woman like there was no one else in the room. Steve smirked a little and turned to go find a conversation to join, still so confused, but content with waiting to debrief with Robin later. 

A/N:

I did some math (astrology) and I now Headcannon that Steve was born on August 27th, 1966 at roughly 1 AM. This makes him a Virgo Sun, Capricorn Moon, and Cancer Rising (which is why he’s so baby girl coded). It also gives him a stellium in Leo (which explains the hair and the being sexy) and Virgo (which explains the being a mom). Yes; this took me a lot of time to figure out. No, I don’t regret it. 

Doritos slap. So does Tab.

Argyle talking about the car that runs on water is based off my favorite running bit in That 70s Show and Hyde's obsession with that damn car and the conspiracy around it.

I am still made about the Iran-Contra affair and Ronald Reagan is my sworn mortal enemy.

1986 was the year when Coors got national distribution, and therefore the first year you could legally get it East of the Mississippi. (Also, go watch Smokey and the Bandit). 

I have no idea how NYE works in any time zone other than my own. Luckily, most of Indiana is on Eastern time. But for anyone out of ET, but still in America, wtf do y’all watch? Do they just air Dick Clark later? Do you have a different special you watch? Please enlighten me. 

[sweetdreamsjeff]

I found this song on iTunes back in 2015. This song is by the artist Aloric.

The artist had mentioned he wrote this song in honor of Jeff's Grace album and his well...read the story below.

He dedicated it to Jeff and then shortly there after Aloric deleted the song from their playlist. It is one of my favorite and glad I d/l a copy. I hope you also enjoy it. (the song got taken down in Soundcloud. I will make all attempts to upload it in another platform tbc)

First Signs of Love No. 177 Aloric – Grace

24 November, 2015

Earlier in the year we featured the track ‘Who?’ by London’s Aloric, an appropriately titled first single from the mysterious artist.  The songwriter has just released his second offering, ‘Grace’.

At first listen this seems to be a song perhaps a little too heavy on the Jeff Buckley influence.  The epic track, coming in at over seven minutes, is certainly vocally and musically reminiscent of Buckley’s signature sound.  Yet delve a little deeper, and a far more interesting story emerges. 

‘Grace’ was written as a tribute to Buckley, and told rather uniquely from the perspective of the singer when he was 8 years old.  It was at this age that the young Jeff was taken to meet is estranged father, Tim Buckley, for the first and only time.  This is a story of absence and rejection; father Tim never really making the effort to connect with the young Jeff.  The chorus is particularly heartfelt;

“Go on and walk out,

As you’re forever gone,

I was your Grace, but you never were.”

The song reaches a wonderful crescendo in the outro, and recalls the moment when Jeff rose above his own name, finding his voice and identity rather ironically at a tribute concert for his late father, a connection that was really only ever in name.  Despite his tragically short career, it is certainly the younger Buckley that will be remembered by most.

“Alight, dear blues; here’s truce, with you.

Tonight, in lieu of you, I’ll bloom.

I’ll bloom”

Featuring sweet falsetto vocals, and a wonderful clean guitar tone, ‘Grace’ is a truly beautiful song.  The track has sparse and almost abrasive drumming throughout, providing contrast to the soaring violins and vocals.  At around five minutes in, the song really shifts gear, quickly building with drums, guitar and some truly stratospheric vocal notes.

This is a track that is strong as a standalone; however the true beauty lies in knowing the story behind the song, giving the listener a better understanding of the inherent sadness of the story. 

‘Grace’ is obviously inspired by the album to which it shares a title, yet there are elements of the light/dark contrasts of Sigur Ros, and perhaps even later Radiohead.  However this is clearly a song that is supposed to sound like Jeff Buckley, but as a tribute rather than an imitation. It is almost like a story that the dearly missed singer never managed to tell, which has now been told for him.

Visit the Aloric Bandcamp page to get the track for free, and follow on Facebook or Twitter.

Lyrics – Aloric ‘Grace’

Nicholas Cheek

[lilacpin]

welcome to my blog ..

-

she/her - unlabeled - intp

: ̗̀➛ i like video games, music, dc (gotham related content specifically), and other random nerd stuff like etymology and neuroscience. (i also collect cds, retro video games & consoles, and comic books)

: ̗̀➛ some of my favorite games are metal gear solid, the last of us, nier, silent hill, hitman, & batman: arkham

: ̗̀➛ some of my favorite artists are kendrick lamar, sade, jeff buckley, chet baker, deftones, fiona apple, asap rocky, slowdive, the weeknd, & portishead

: ̗̀➛ dni if you’re racist, homophobic, or just a hateful weirdo overall.

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thanks for reading ♡

[singeratlarge]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Nick Akrap, The Beatles 1963 “She Loves You” UK single, Kobe Bryant, Scott Caan, Barbara Eden (glad to have met you), Jeff Buckley’s landmark 1994 album GRACE, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes (good to have met you), Roger Greenaway, Bobby Gubby (Buck’s Fizz), Mark Hudson, Ezra Idlet, Jimi Jamison, Vaani Kapoor, Gene Kelly, Brad Mehldau, Vera Miles, Keith Moon, River Phoenix, Malvina Reynolds, Terje Rypdal, Danny Solazzi of The Characters (great to have gigged with you), Rick Springfield (great to have gigged with you), the first webpage (1991), Gretchen Whitmer, and my Pennsylvania friend, musical colleague, and visionary John Bechdel. A wizard of keyboards, synthesizers, and tech, he has worked with a remarkable list of music acts: Ascension of the Watchers, Brian Brain, False Icons, Fear Factory, Killing Joke, Ministry, Nukes, Prong, and other notables. I’ve recorded in John’s remote country studio—a mind-blowing enclave of future-primitive gear. This video is a Krafterwerkian collaboration with John, Davy Jones (Monkees), and myself: https://lnkd.in/gQnneB-9  (it also includes the artwork of fellow Pennsylvanianite Nathan Wagoner)...Meanwhile, HB JB and thank you for your incredible electronic gifts to the world.

#music #thankyou #tech #collaboration #johnbechdel #ministry #killingjoke #johnnyjblair #davyjones #monkees #kraftwerk #nathanwagoner #birthday

[thelairblog]

IF YOU REMEMBER THE JEFF BUCKLEY BAG (SHOWN) YOU HAVE BEEN A FRIEND OF THE LAIR FOR QUITE SOME TIME..

THE DESIGN TRAJECTORY OVER THOSE EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN YEARS WAS THIS; FIRST BELTS, SMALL CLUTCHES AND SKIRTS (DID YOU OWN ONE?), FOLLOWED BY HANDBAGS AND CHOKERS (REMEMBER CHOKERS?)

THE LAIR'S LEATHER ERA, WHICH OF COURSE WE ARE STILL IN, STARTED HEAVILY IN 2012 AND RAMPED UP CONSISTENTLY UNTIL AROUND 2016. WE WE'RE PUMPING OUT SO MUCH GEAR, AT TIMES WE WOULD HAVE 5 TECHNICIANS WORKING IN THE STUDIO, WHICH IN THOSE DAYS WAS LOCATED ABOVE THE STORE. WE WOULD ALL CRAM ON ONE LARGE TABLE, AND HAVE OUR INDIVIDUAL WORKLOADS TO HIT.

[hiwasseeriver]

on my picnic date we were walking around the park and talking about looking for four leaf clovers and she mentioned she found a four leaf clover and i was like awww nice. and she was like it was after our first date actually :) and i immediately went into cardiac arrest and had to be evacuated by helicopter. i am going home from work every day and listening to jeff buckley. i am actually thinking about her all the time. yearning is in 4th gear, its too late for me, this is an all-timer infatuation