Chris Dye “End Of My Rainbow”

What strikes me here is the palpable sense of disappointment, from someone who’d caught a heavy dose of it. Angeleno Chris Dye’s¹ alt-rock band, Dashboard Prophets², recorded one album in the mid 90s, only to have their label fall apart shortly after its release. Seems that no one involved fully recovered, and this cut from his 1997 home-recorded solo album, 11 Strings 4 Tracks and the Truth, lays out the bile and the resignation in jangly acoustics and cigarrette-stained throat, in jaded puns, exploded clichés and dessicated aphorisms. It’s sort of “Welcome To The Jungle” via Sebadoh.

I’m not going to fuck around. I relate pretty heavily to this song. You don’t need to know about the ideas never brought to fruition, the people I’ve let down–you can just look at the gaps between posts on this site. I worry sometimes I’ve gone around the bend, age-wise, even creatively, and pissed away one too many years. Sometimes you blame it on the L.A. air, the lotus-eating atmosphere. It might not be exactly what Dye put into the song, but it’s what I get out of it.

And to hear someone take his bad fortune and make something beautiful out of it, well, it’s pretty comforting. Inspiring even.

11 Strings 4 Tracks and the Truth at Big Rig Records.