999,844: Morphine — French Fries w/ Pepper

Most of what's been written about Morphine have been cliches repeated ad nauseum, much to the annoyance of the band. Did you know, for instance, that Morphine did not use an electric guitar? Rather, that they used a baritone saxophone and a strange, two-string slide bass? It's true! More incredibly, somehow they use these uncommonly combined instruments to create music notes. The kind of music notes you might hear inside of a bar, while drinking whiskey, after you've been dissed by your lover.

Sadly, frontman Mark Sandman is no longer around to bristle at the inane questions of hack reporters, but in life he cultivated a mystique—purposefully or not—by only reluctantly talking about his past lives as a cab driver or commercial fisherman, concealing his age (Sandman was at least a decade older than most other indie rockers of his musical generation), and expressing himself through cryptic, often monosyllabic lyrics that, if you wanted to further forego critical originality, you might compare to beat poetry. When a college roommate and I were new to Morphine, we used to play them in the car and then try to guess the title of a song without looking. Naming the most oft repeated word or phrase worked about 80 percent of the time.

Undoubtedly simplistic and spare, Sandman's lyrics sometimes cut to the heart of a profound truth. One time, the man even called his shot. Structured a bit like "It Was a Very Good Year" if you took out the affairs, 1997's "French Fries w/Pepper" found Sandman looking back over his life and reflecting on what was happening on 6/6/66 ("I was little/I didn't know shit"), 7/7/77, and so on. Peering into the future, "About 9/9/99", Sandman hoped he'd be "sitting on the back porch drinking red wine".

With a Rod Serling-esque twist—turned out to be God's back porch and wine from heaven's vineyards—he made it just in time. After a stressful series of sessions for what would be Morphine's second major label offering, Sandman took to an outdoor stage in 103 degree temperatures, played one song, and dropped dead while starting a second. It was 7/3/99—plenty of time to get settled in the rocker—the rocker of the angels. Also check out the sweet sax groove and the ethereal wordless vocal leading into the choruses.