Jeff Buckley.

We share the same name (no relation), but there the similarities end.  You need to listen to his music.  I have his one and only album, “Grace” (again, no attribution, I need an agent!) and it is a work of art.  I can honestly say it has opened new horizons in the way that I think about things.

The  6th track, Buckley’s arrangement of Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah” (no attrib! I must learn to sell my soul to the demon marketing god!) played through my head the entire day of my uncle Robert’s recent funeral.  It reminded me of how grateful I should be, regardless of to whom or what it should be directed– whether it’s God, the chance of having known Robert or how thoroughly and deeply my father’s oldest brother could have touched my life and the lives of the nearly 200 people who show up to say goodbye to the cantankerous old bastard.  It is for that reason, this track touches me in a very special way.

My most played songs from the album?  “Last Goodbye” (3) and “So Real” (5) followed by the title track (2).  I’m really learning to appreciate the Doors-like last track of the album, “Dream Brother” and it’s quickly climbing the charts.

Just watch his vids on YouTub (sic: intentional) and prepare to be addicted.

If you are looking for an album to obsess over, an artist to fetishize (without going at least $100 in the hole to buy their catalogue), a piece of newly crafted art tragically fallen off its pedestal broken forever whose shards you can take home and weep over– Grace is your album and dear, departed Jeff Buckley is the art.