"Thanks Palestrina. It'a a beautiful night. It's great to be here and I want to dedicate a super-sexy song to all of you". These were Mark Sandman's last words before dying, in front of the audience of the "Nel nome del rock" festival. It was July 3rd 1999.
47 years old, the leader of the Morphine departed from life with the bass in his hand, under the terrified eyes of thousands of people run to Palestrina (Rome) to see one of the cult band of the nineties. So an heart attack demolished the man who created a new sound, original and unmistakable, a balance between rock, blues and jazz. A baritone experience, as it was defined by Sandman, because of the register of his voice and of all the instruments.

"Don't stop it all, Mark lived for the music, died with music". So said  Dana Colley, the saxophonist of the band, to the organizers of the festival the day after the tragedy. And this seems to be the spirit beyond the postume album The Night, lately issued by the Morphine's survivors, recorded a few days before Sandman death. A work by which Sandman intended to widen the typical Morphine sound, inserting richer arrangements, with parts of piano, organ, exotic instruments, and feminine choir. As it is stated in the cover of the record.
A spleen devoid of the teens depression, but attracted by the dark and charming side of life. Something on the border of the smoky jazz, the old blues of the losing thirties and the Tom Waits chansonnier of the nineties.

But how the Morphine's experience was born?
In the beginning of the nineties Mark Sandman has a certain reputation in the Boston underground circuit. He does not finish the College, and earns his living as a taxi driver or working on the fishings boats. In the same time he undertakes a bold experiment: to play rock in a band devoid of the main instrument, the guitar. The group calls itself Treat her right, and gives life to an essential bluesrock, without its emotionalities, but arranged in an almost cocktail lounge way. The band produces three albums ("Treat her right","Tied to the tracks" and "What' s good for you") but they pass rather unnoticed. However, they deeply influenced the background of Sandman, who passed for a short period with the Superground of Chris Ballew (future member of the President Of The United States).
The Morphine were born in 1992. The first band includes Dana Colley to baritone sax, Jerome Dupree on drums and Sandman on the bass guitar and vocals. Inspired by such particular Africans instruments with a single string, Sandman comes to the conclusion that that single string encloses in itself all notes. He decides, therefore, to try to play with a fretless bass guitar (without keys) with only two strings.

It's not only the instrumentation, but all the musical architecture of the Morphine to break off with the traditional outlines of rock. The drummer, Jerome Dupree, precise and skill like a jazz player, dedicates himself to the tom, very small cymbals. The skins are hit in a muffed way so as to give space to the dialogue, nervous and feverish, between the bass of Sandman and the baritone sax of Colley. The result is a music without chords, bare and irregular, but the right sonorous background for the sad baritone of Mark Sandman, who for timbre and style can be placed in between Nick Cave and Tom Waits, alterning the smoothness of the crooner to most wicked blues of the taverns.
In a short time, the Morphine prevailed in the underground scene of Boston, then of the United States, and finally of all the world, thanks also to one inexhaustible live sessions. Their sound is unique and immediately recognizable. A mixed infuence from blues, cool jazz and even lounge music. But Sandman come out as a great songwriter too, his lyrics are intense, they evoke decaying, nightly, claustrophobic images, rather then true stories, but fit for the mood of the music. Their first album Good is a sort of "new blues, built on the mechanical contrast of bass and sax. In this way are born charming songs like "Have a lucky day" or "Do not go quietly under your grave".

On the same path, their masterpiece: Cure for pain (1993), with Billy Conway (former-Treat her right) at the place of Deupree. The album, marked by the ipnotic and syncopated "Buena", worths the Morphine the worldwide reputation. Five songs of the album are in the soundtrack of the film "Spanking the monkey", Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, 1993. Put steadly in the palimpsests of college radios, "Cure for pain" is celebrated by the famous review "Rolling Stone" as the main underground happening of 1994, with 300,000 copies sold. The album, that turns towards a more traditional song shape with more intense chords. It is dominated by the sax of Colley and the obsessive boom of Sandman's bass, a sort of body to body to give life to nocturnal and sinister atmospheres, more than ever. The title-track reveals the charming and sad soul of the group, the spirit of Nick Cave flutters on "Mary won' t you call my name", while the metaphisic jam "Miles Davis' funeral" is the Morphine's present to one of their undisputed spiritual fathers.

The third album Yes (1995) continues on the same path but emphasizes the melodic structure, that in the past times the trio expanded in excess, and proposes more rythmical and lively songs, like the ouverture "Honey". Sandman finds a place for the country ballad, "Radar", composed in the Stan Ridgeway's way, but tortured by the gloomy sound of his bass.

The following album Like swimming (1997) shows here and there signs of weakness, even if the "noir" jazz of the trio holds its style. Maybe that's why Sandman had decided to evolve the formula of the trio towards new territories, as partly The Night confirms. Then the night of Palestrina has come and the baritone experience tragically ended.
The survivors have decided to continue with the name of "Orchestra Morphine" to go on "hunting the sound that had continued damning us since we were born" as their leader used to say. Now in Boston has born a foundation to teach music dedicated to Sandman. Yes, music, "an emotion starting from your instrument, transmitted to your body and from your body to the bodies (and instruments) of the others". Word of Mark Sandman, the unforgettable spirit of Morphine.