Your history with Jeff Buckley is probably similar to mine. It was late 1997, early 1998.  That great and mysterious door that opens once every ten centuries was closing with a slow, terrible moan. Chronic fear of death by computer glitch or accidental ICBM launch. Or intentional ICBM launch: both Kashmiri nations test nuclear weapons. Yet terrorism still something happening over there and, at least by that measure, we maintain our youth without knowing that we do.

A friend plays for you a CD of a handsome, winsome songwriter. The name (Jack Buckley? Jeff Shuckley?) does not ring a bell. Grace, it’s called.  Obscure musician. Sure, he had a semi-famous father (“don’t belie the one who left behind his name”), but tell the truth, in 1997 had you really ever heard of “Tim Buckley?”

Tracks 1, 2, 9 and 10 really stay with you.  You listen again.  You like it more.  And again, and more.  Again, more.  You buy a copy: maybe through Amazon, but probably at your local boutique.  Can this guy write a bad song?  That voice: operatic, troubling, troublemaking.  Like a heavy storm gale, albeit beautiful, with the occasional terrible gust like beautiful hurricane winds.  Great songwriting.  Great guitar work.  Great look.  Yet simple.  It’s all so perfectly simple.

In time you realize something big: this is one of the finest LPs you’ve ever heard.  You call the friend and tell him that it’s resolved: this is his best find in 10 years.  He says, “Yes!  And to think that Grace is his last album!”

“Sorry?”

“He’s dead.  He drowned.”

As tragedies go — at least musical tragedies — you’d be hard-pressed to find one that surpasses this one. Special interest groups will throw out all sorts of names, but Buckley left us with a single studio release, ten tracks, and, literally, a few sketches for another LP. That’s it.

We all know the rest of the story.  Coldplay has risen to superstardom singing material Buckley would have been embarrassed to write.  Thom Yorke cites Buckley as a vocal influence.  Ours — and let’s call it by name, here — is a passable first-generation clone.  Jeff Buckley stands with dream brother Kurt Cobain as one of the few musicians without whom it is simply impossible to imagine modern music. Look how many times those ten cuts have been repackaged, rearranged, rediscovered, and still we buy. The suits could release these tracks one hundred more times and we would still buy.

By point of fact, his estate has just released another such LP.

It’s called Grace Around the World, and it all but recreates his studio masterpiece in the form of twelve live recordings. “So Real” appears twice. “Grace” appears twice. Otherwise the original track listing is basically intact. Go give it a spin. Or go listen to Starsailor give it a game attempt.