What a weirdly great day for musical archaeology it's been. Fresh off the news of Radiohead's 1986 demo tracks resurfacing, The Washington Post has shared a "new" song from the acclaimed singer-songwriter Elliott Smith called "Misery Let Me Down."
As the story goes, Smith appeared on the University of Maryland's WMUC-FM radio program Third Rail Radio in 1997 to record a session and presumably discuss his latest album, Either/Or, and prior to the full broadcast he played "Misery" as a two-minute warmup. While the full performance was recorded to MiniDisc and transferred to the show's library, the recording was ultimately lost by the time the station wanted to add portions of it to an Elliott Smith compilation in 2002. A former WMUC DJ eventually found the MiniDisc and mailed it to a current DJ at the station, and thanks to a correspondence between the DJ and a Smith fan who had been interested in learning more about the WMUC session, the track made its way to the SweetAdeline fan message boards and was confirmed as a "new" lost track.
Yeah, wow. So all that said, check it out now on the newspaper's site over here. Great stuff for sure from a talent we lost far too soon.
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