Mark Kozelek knew John Hughes
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Into the ever-buckling file of unlikely surprises goes the fact that Mark Kozelek—that bard of despondence whose voice has graced songs by Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, not to mention lots of great solo stuff—actually knew John Hughes. While playing by himself to a typically hushed and reverent crowd at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night, Kozelek paused to dedicate a song to the late filmmaker. "I'm going to tell you a little inside story," he said, before going on to explain how Hughes actually helped save Red House Painters stay together. When the band was in limbo in the mid-'90s, having left their label 4AD, it was Hughes who swooped in to help by way of his own Island Records imprint Supreme Recordings.
"The longest phone conversation I ever had was with John Hughes," said Kozelek, remembering a 5.5-hour talk about the band and Songs For Blue Guitar, the awesome Red House Painters album that Hughes helped put out on Island/Supreme in 1996. Kozelek then launched into that album's cover of the Cars song "All Mixed Up," a fitting tribute for all it evoked about the strange mix of moods at play in the 1980s.
