see you later

How much emotional pain must a person be in to plunge a steak knife into their own chest? Not once, but twice?

For whatever reason, that's what happened one year ago to Elliott Smith.

So today is primarily a celebration of his life, or at least the part of his life that was shared with the public. I did not know the man personally, but I appreciated the music and art he created in his 34 years of life. So today will be spent listening to the music, both studio creations and live performances. And it's a great day to stop and remember just how much his art has been a part of my life.

You know how previous generations will tell you how they remember exactly where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been shot? Both "discovering" Elliott and hearing the news of his death are those kinds of moments for me.

I discovered Elliott on a CMJ sampler disc while living and working in Dallas, spring of 1997. "Rose Parade" was the tune and that's all it took. Thru the summer of 1997 I dug up his previous solo discs and eventually worked my way back thru the Heatmiser stuff, adoring all of it.

Between 1997 and 2003, I'm happy to say that I saw Elliott perform in the following live settings:

solo acoustic at The Horseshoe in Toronto
plugged in (with Quasi as his band) at Lee's Palace in Toronto
plugged in (with his regular band) at Key Arena in Seattle during Bumbershoot
plugged in (with his regular band) at The Phoenix in Toronto

The day I'd like to forget is October 21, 2003. I returned to work after a morning meeting and got the computer up and running. Loaded all the usual programs, including a media player that streams internet radio. The song that was playing was an Elliott Smith tune, altho I don't recall which one. My first reaction was "that's odd" because this particular internet radio station almost never played ES tunes, so that struck me as very strange. I checked the radio station website and viewed the playlist for the previous hour or so and found it all to be ES tunes. And at that point it was pretty much "oh fuck".

So I clicked over to my usual daily music news source, Pitchfork, and found the day's headline as "Elliott Smith Dead at 34". OHHH FUCK.