After producing the three albums I referenced above, Mazzy Star went on a long hiatus beginning in 1997 before reuniting, with an album ( Seasons Of Your Day) in 2013 and occasional live concerts over the past three years. Roback quickly promoted Opal backup singer Hope Sandoval to lead vocalist and reconstituted the group as Mazzy Star. The band went out on the road in the fall of 1987 supporting their sole album Happy Nightmare Baby a final gig that December in England at the Hammersmith Odeon ended with Smith hurling her guitar to the stage and abruptly announcing she was leaving the group. What I was unaware of was that by the time I got into Opal, the group had already long ceased to exist. It went with me on my six-month Navy deployment to South America later that year, and I got the opportunity to absorb the group's other wistful tunes, like "Strange Delight", "Northern Line" and my other fave, "My Only Friend". When I ran up to DC later that month (I was living in southeastern Virginia at the time), I found and purchased a cassette copy of Early Recordings containing this song at the old GWU Tower Records.
I thought that "Empty Box Blues" was a damn-near perfect song: whimsical, melancholy, and filled with an undefinable sadness and nostalgic yearning. Here's what I saw, and fell in love with: and luckily, I happened to be watching the show that night. However, Rough Trade had enough faith and confidence in Opal to utilize some of its remaining limited resources to finance the recording of a simple black-and-white music video for the song "Empty Box Blues", featuring Smith and Roback enjoying a quiet day together in the countryside and on the beach: As fate would have it, MTV VJ Dave Kendall deigned to air this video on the station's 120 Minutes program (dedicated to alternative music) sometime in mid 1990. “None of that matters, because we’re completely free.” “It doesn’t matter how well our records do,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1990. Neither the album nor the EPs sold very well, which was of absolutely no concern to Roback and his reclusive band mates. incarnation of Britain’s Rough Trade label, which went under in 1990. Opal was together for just three years in addition to their sole 1987 LP, the group also released a pair of "psych-folk-leaning" late-80sĮPs ( Fell From The Sun and Northern Line) that were later collected on the Early Recordings compilation, released on the U.S. Clay Allison played a handful of obscure gigs across the U.S., but by the time they determined they were ready to record, the name change had already occurred (the new moniker was reportedly derived from ex-Pink Floyd Syd Barrett's 1969 song "Opel"). Smith as lead singer and expanded on the Paisley Underground sound, released the album Happy Nightmare Baby in 1987."Opal evolved from Clay Allison, the band Roback formed in the immediate aftermath of his departure from Rain Parade. In the mid-1980s he founded the group Opal with Kendra Smith, the bassist from Dream Syndicate, and the drummer Keith Mitchell. Roback left the group after it released its first album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip (1983). Rain Parade was one of several bands in what became known as the Paisley Underground, a revival of psychedelic rock in California in the early 1980s. He studied art at the University of California, Berkeley, and formed the band Rain Parade, which included his brother, Steven.
"David Edward Roback was born in Los Angeles on April 4, 1958, to George and Rosemary (Hunter) Roback.
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