Marc Shepard

Marc Shepard is a songwriter, guitarist, and refugee from the pepsi generation who records at his home studio with occasional help from his so-called friends - as well as casual acquaintances and sometimes even complete strangers. His work (and far too much of his life generally) is rooted in a bewildering variety of rock and pop music that has inspired, obsessed, and occasionally tormented him over the years. After much trepidation and stumbling through the wilderness, Marc has at long last forged an eclectic if not a downright haphazard sound that evokes nothing so much as the music of the 60s and 70s. His songs are influenced by The Beatles (who else?), Jimi Hendrix (you mean like Lenny Kravitz?), Son House, The Byrds, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robin Hitchcock, XTC, The Scottish Royal Dragoons, and, of course, the immortal Gone Daddy Grunge. What holds all this together is a strong (if somewhat idiosynchratic) sense of melody, a "straight-ahead" guitar style, and lyrics that always have something interesting (or at least incoherent) to say.Marc's CD "Caught In The Middle" exhibits a nearly pathological obsession with "retro" rock, as well as a pristine absence of intelligible lyrics. (He did accidently write a love song once but denies this vehemently). The songs in this collection have been described as "pop/alternative" by some, "the brilliant efforts of a quirky genius with a psychotic core" by others, and were declared to be "sheer ideological nonsense, yet an opus of spiritual regeneration" by nearly everyone else. Mostly he's just trying to avoid playing the same chords over and over when he isn't otherwise engaged in acts of petty demagoguery or just railing against the heavens.