Marty Anderson is Okay

An E-Mail Exchange That Describes the Facts Surrounding the Illness

Kamps: Dear Marty, could you please describe your medical regimen and the various drugs you take?

Anderson: My medical regimen? Um ... Currently I am on Pentasa, Flagyl, Prednisone every day. Morphine, Vicodin, Valium are when I need them, but keep in mind I've been on pain killers off and on -- mostly on (at least to some degree) -- for 6 years now, so it takes quite a bit to get an actual "relief" effect on this type of physical pain. T.P.N. is the white bags, the lipids (fats) are what make it white. It's an acronym. But I forget what the P stands for. Total, (something), Nutrition.

I see my docs about once every few months. I go in weekly to have my PIC line and my dressing changed (that is what is in my arm: the IV PIC line is a small plastic tube that I wrap around my wrist, and the other end goes in my arm, into my vein, up around my shoulder, and directly into my heart. Infection is the biggest danger. No protection. But I am careful). I also have the IV site cleaned and caps replaced weekly etc. So I have that pick line coming out of my arm 24/7. That is where they draw the blood too. They do that every week as well. 3 vials! I've been meaning to ask if they could take blood work every two weeks. I don't want my hemoglobin going way down again. I need my blood!

Garrett, to be honest, I'm a little weirded out by telling the world I take all these poisons. Do you really HAVE to put this in? I guess it doesn't matter. I mean, it's the truth. So I don't really care I guess. I just feel strange and don't really think it's necessary.

The Short History of a Great Band

It is important to understand that this is not a story about a sick person having an epiphany on his deathbed, although it does include that. And it's not a story about a bizarre love triangle, although that, too, factors in. This is a story about Great Music.

I knew nothing about Marty Anderson when I discovered Dilute in 2002. The act's first record was called The Gypsy Valentine Curve, but the one my friend told me about was its second, far superior album, Grape Blueprints, so I picked that up and proceeded to have my brain sucked out of my head through my ears. Dilute was a four-piece comprising Anderson (then on guitar), the brothers Pelucci, and Craig Colla. Its sound on Blueprints is best likened to a firefly caught in a jelly jar: bright, frantic, always trying to break out of something it doesn't know the dimensions of, resting in some moments, going crazy in others. Dilute's music lured the listener in with sweet, finespun guitar lines, delayed and effected and woven into swaying rhythms, the whole thing a walk in the park until a thunderclap detonated and it started pouring distorted torrents of guitar noise and cymbal slaps and big chunks of bass. It was like weather, beautiful and destructive, and when it settled down the clouds would part and there'd be a song like "Explosion," which is two bright guitar lines dancing kitelike around each other as Anderson sings, in his puckish warble, "So bright/ Ooooohhhhhh/ So briiiighhhhht/ Ooooohhhhhh." Then the clouds would gather again for the 26-minute-plus "0 vs. 1."

Like I said, I didn't know squat about Anderson or his illness back then, just that I thought he was among the best guitar players in the whole wide world of indie rock, leading one of the genre's best-kept secrets. That was enough to make me want to pursue a story. But at that point I was already too late.

A Foreboding Exchange Via E-Mail With Jay Pelucci, Dated March 4, 2003

Hey Garrett,

Dilute doesn't have any shows lined up currently. We were offered a show with Pinback, but we couldn't do it due to health problems with a band member. Very big bummer. If by some miracle we are able to play a show in the near future, I'll let you know ...

Take care,

Jay

The Pain in Marty's Spine Is What Saved Him

It's an easy, though apt, observation that Anderson's singing voice -- a thin, reedy trill -- sounds as if its owner is in pain. The guy looks kind of sickly, too, with a pale complexion and those thick glasses, through which his eyes seem a little out of proportion. But old pictures of him reveal an attractive young man, with piercing brown eyes and a strong jaw, and it is this guy who talks to you when you ask about his music, his band, or his health.

In March 2004, Anderson went into the hospital. Surely he saw it coming. During the previous year he had been living with Weisman in Oakland. When that relationship ended, he went a little nuts. He moved back in with his parents in Fremont, threw away all of his medication, and tried to subsist on a diet of raw food, meditation, and yoga classes at the Sacred Space Healing Center on Haight Street, a regimen that lasted approximately one month before his parents had to drag him to the hospital: "My dad told me after I got out that when they first left me that first night, he thought I might not make it through the night."