Back in 1994 my then girlfriend and I were in the studio audience for Later, a live music showcase programme on the BBC. The show consisted of 2 or 3 songs by about 5 bands playing live in the studio. Rather than being seated the audience basically stands around the edges of the studio watching the bands, arranged in a circle, through the gaps in the set. We were there specifically to see Nick Cave and the

Bad Seeds and with time spare before the show we decided to have a look around the set to find a good vantage point.

While poking around we ran into this tall willowy figure with a leather jacket and a careworn face. We got chatting and it soon became apparent that rather than being another member of the audience he was in fact performing that evening. Now, I'll be honest, at that

stage I hadn't heard of his band Morphine but he had a kind of laid back cool about him and I was looking forward to hearing them. Not long after that I saw them again at the Reading Festival and by then I completely sold, got every album to date, and saw them play every chance I got live. There's something indefinably appealing about their organic bass heavy laid back blues.

Morphine, if you dont know them, had a line up of a bass-playing singer, a drummer and a
saxophonist and it was the singer/bass-player that we had met earlier that evening, one Mark Sandman. Just before midnight Saturday July 3rd 1999 Mark sandman died of a heart attack at a concert just outside Rome. He collapsed on stage in front of several thousand spectators and was pronounced dead

en route to a nearby hospital. I'm not going to pretend that I knew him, after all I couldn't have exchanged more than a couple of pleasantries with him, but the albums he produced with the rest of Morphine are amongst my favourites. I have never heard music that instils such a sense of melancholy and make you feel good nor met a man that left such a great impression in such a short space of time.