10. Miracle LegionGigantic Transatlantic Trunk Call
A lot of great musicians know Miracle Legion’s music. I first saw them at a great rock club that’s no longer open in Hoboken, New Jersey called Maxwell’s, that a lot of punk and post-punk and early alt-rock bands played at. It was probably ’86 or ’87, and I became friends with them really quickly, especially Mark Mulcahy and Ray Neal. I’ve seen them tons of times, and actually jammed once with Mark a long time ago and I once acted in a video of theirs many years ago. But the first time I saw them live, it was just something very real. Musically their sound was just very distinctive and original, and Mark is a wonderful songwriter and lyricist, and a tremendous singer. Along the lines of like Harry Nilsson, to me. He’s my generation’s version of that. He’s a tremendous singer.
This song was initially on an album called Me And Mr. Ray. My favourite album of theirs is Surprise Surprise Surprise, but I always loved this song. They do an acoustic version on their new album, Doublethink, which has just been out a couple of weeks, with acoustic versions of a lot of the great songs in their catalogue. Both versions are fantastic.
They’re still making good music. They always had maybe an even bigger following in England than they did in the States. They toured in England a lot, and I guess still do, but in the early days they were always going. I think Mark actually lived in London for a while.
