Morphine: Journey of Dreams

Filmmaker Mark Shuman, a former Austin club owner, recounts the career of Boston jazz-rock outfit Morphine in this documentary that is both appreciative and melancholy. Saxophone player Dana Colley first became associated with singer and bassist Mark Sandman as a guitar tech for Treat Her Right, a blues-rock group that featured drummer Billy Conway. Sandman formed Morphine, playing a two-string slide bass, as a side project with Colley and drummer Jerome Deupree. After Treat Her Right broke up, Morphine became their main project. Conway started out as a fan, but would fill in whenever Deupree's arthritis flared up. Eventually, Deupree quit, and Conway stepped in full-time (Deupree would return part-time during the making of 2000's The Night). Unable to secure a record deal, Morphine self-released their 1992 debut, Good. Sabine Hrechdakian, a graduate student at the time, remembers Sandman pursuing her as relentlessly as his music career, and a relationship ensued. The band followed up by recording their classic Cure for Pain (1993), and went on tour, selling out venues across the U.S. and Europe as word got out (and radio airplay and record reviews proliferated). Colley, who kept a journal during that time, reads passages about their experiences on the road, which included high-profile TV appearances. After releasing 1995's Yes, the band signed to DreamWorks where the pressure to sell records threatened to tear them apart, but they continued to record and tour until a fateful show in Italy from which Sandman would not recover. To Shuman's credit, he recognizes the bandleader's gifts, but doesn't paper over Sandman's relentlessness, which could leave hurt feelings in its wake. A solid music profile, this is recommended. Aud: P. (K. Fennessy)