RIP Leroi Moore.
About thirteen and a half years ago, I was as low as I had ever been. I’d had a nervous breakdown of sorts and found myself 2,500 miles away from home living with someone I completely loathed.
Those were hard and lonely days. I was working two jobs so I didn’t have to be home and so that I would be so tired at the end of the day that I would just fall into a quick and dreamless sleep. Dark days, indeed.
I had a couple of friends from work, so it wasn’t all bad. One of those friends invited me out to a show and even though I hadn’t really heard of the band except for That One Song On The Radio All The Time (remember this was 1994-1995 and the Internet was something that we were just getting used to), I decided to go.
The Dave Matthews Band saved my life. Not in a literal way, since I’m rather fond of myself and never a suicide risk, but in a very real way nonetheless. Their music gave me a way to get out of myself, away from my own head.
Shortly after that show, I started figuring out how to get home. That sucked – it was hard, it required quite a bit of humiliation and begging on my part, but I got home and started putting my life back together. It didn’t happen overnight and I stumbled along the way (a lot), but I had a soundtrack.
Toward the end of the 90’s, DMB got a bit too big for their britches and started to suck. I was disappointed, but by then Freddie and I were spending a lot of extra time and spare cash chasing Phish around the Northeast, so I didn’t miss DMB as much. Besides, all the music they put out after “Before These Crowded Streets” was putrid and horrible, so no big loss, right?
I read in an interview awhile back that Dave Matthews agrees with me. It remains to be seen if he and his band do anything about it.
RIP, Leroi. The show will go on, but it won’t be the same.