Turning The Lights Back On…

Hey Everyone,

It’s been a long time since we’ve updated our site. Unfortunate, because there’s been no word of any further music or Sparklehorse releases. We’ve sought answers and we get a stone wall. So in the meantime all we can do is remain here and try to make sure Mark still has a place on the web for the fans who loved him and who still value his tremendous gifts, his contribution to music, his enormous influence, his kind soul and his gentle spirit.

As we don’t want to keep running the same video clips and songs you’ve seen and heard a hundred times, we’ve launched a playlist series on Spotify (the most commonly used platform and why we chose it) to mix in tracks from Sparklehorse, Dancing Hoods, DNOTS and other Mark-related projects with artists that Mark admired, collaborated with or did similar music stylistically. If you care to give a listen, our playlists are available here. We have a regular weekly series and will have some “special editions” as well, such as the one we just posted for Halloween. Please check us out. We aren’t the youngest or the hippest, but we think we’ve got pretty good ears. Hope you enjoy….

Sparkle-On-Org Radio

john murry – “shade and honey”

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year!!! It’s been an awfully long time since we’ve had a new post here but tonight we have something to make up for it. Our very good friend John Murry has shared his wonderful cover of “Shade And Honey” with us. Hope you all enjoy it.

Shade And Honey (by John Murry)

Produced by Mark Pistel and John Murry at Room Number Five, San Francisco, CA

Updated January 17: John asked us to enable downloads for this track, so you can now download the MP3 by mousing over the area just to the right of the play button and clicking on the magic arrow.  Cheers…

 

Time’s arrow…

Wow, can’t believe it’s been end of July since we had a post here. A thousand pardons all. Sometimes real life and day jobs (not to mention technical snafus involving glitchy laptops) tend to interfere with our outside interests, and it can become hard to find time to devote to running the show here. But no more excuses! We’ll try to stay on top of things a bit more in the coming weeks.  And for your listening pleasure today we have a cool rarity to share with you: A recent contact email reminded us of the Sparklehorse show at Berbati’s Pan in Portland, Oregon in November of 2001, I show that I myself was fortunate enough to attend, and also the one time I got a chance to meet Mark. Our reader, Dan, presented Mark with a painting that night. He recalls:

“…I met Mark and gave him a painting inspired by “It’s A Wonderful Life”. The painting was given to him at Berbati’s Pan around dinnertime. I returned later than evening to see Sparklehorse perform with their white lily’s all around and there in the middle of the stage with a spotlight on it, the painting I had given Mark…”

Very cool stuff Dan.

So from that illustrious night, we present a live Sparklehorse cover version of the Guided By Voices’ classic “Smothered in Hugs”, hope you dig it…

Smothered in Hugs

“junebug” – live in stockholm 1998…

Today, we are rolling out a new streaming audio feature on our site. For music that we share here, we will now be posting audio streams rather than offering MP3 downloads. We’ve been wanting to go this route for awhile now but for lack of a suitable WordPress plugin, and now we seem to have found something workable.

So without further adieu, here’s Junebug from the well-known Dragging Pianos – Live In Sweden recording, from 1998…

Junebug