February 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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February 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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A reluctant Sport Murphy releases 3rd LP 10 February 2003
Texas born singer/songwriter Mike 'Sport' Murphy and his nephew Peter Vega were raised as brothers and remained very close into their adult years, both ending up in New York city. They appear together as kids in a home photo on the cover of Murphy’s third full-length, Uncle. When Peter died at the World Trade Center in September 2001 performing rescue work as a member of Brooklyn Ladder 118, Murphy “...decided to withdraw from the world, and that included making music.” But the trauma was only one factor in his decision. He already had one foot out that door—in his own words, Murphy “loathes” the music industry. He’d rather just make records for the folks he knows. Six years ago when he finished his wonderfully eclectic solo debut Willoughby (a Charles Ives-to-Brian Wilson project that followed a several-year stint fronting NYC folk/punkers The Skels), Murphy self-released the LP and then simply handed it out free to friends. But the good folks at indie label Kill Rock Stars (Olympia, WA) picked up Willoughby and gave it wider distribution in 1999, gaining Murphy some recognition in the US press and winning him some new fans. Murphy composed a second LP for KRS, Magic Beans (2000), and was working on a third. But when the press and the public “generally ignored” Magic Beans, Murphy says he stopped work on its follow-up and “...destroyed the recordings and the arrangements.” Then the suicide pilots brought down the twin towers. Murphy wrote recently, “After Pete’s death, the thought of making songs remained unappealing, and I certainly didn’t want to mine my family’s heartbreak for the sake of tune fodder. Only the idea of 'speaking' to Pete enabled me to view another work as anything more than meaningless, and that’s all I’ve tried to do.” Murphy’s new 22-track album, titled simply Uncle, offers a patchwork scrapbook of Murphy’s years with his younger brother, an outpouring of grief and anger, and a celebration of family and friends in the face of evil and unfairness. Directed as it is to Pete, Uncle feels clean of demagoguery and cheap bandwagoneering. The themes that run through this record—of evil and love—are timeless. By way of simple honesty of emotion, Murphy has kept these songs unburdened by the sort of gang-mentality self-righteousness imbuing, for example, Paul McCartney’s embarrassing anthem, Freedom. Murphy, like his friend Irwin Chusid (of Songs In The Key of Z), and like Kurt Wagner (of Lambchop), plays with muscial genres and styles with sly joy. On this disc you’ll hear simple folk ballads (No Fair), Brian Wilson/Bruce Springsteen tributes (Paul La Grutta), quirky novelty (Behistun), evocative pop (The Late Days Of Summer), and a nine-second ditty called You Lousy Stinking Scumbag. Scattered among the songs are recordings of Pete and Sport as children. Some two dozen friends, including one in particular at KRS, helped Murphy bring this collection to fruition. There’s a lot of sadness in this mostly-quiet record, but there’s joy, too. Murphy says, “Uncle is an album for an audience of one and he’ll never hear it.” | Sport Murphy | | SM on Kill Rock Stars | | song-by-song commentary by Sport | | Sport's blog | | CD from Amazon.com | | top of page | |
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