from Michael Grace Jr.....

-----

Friends, fans & colleagues,

This correspondence is to announce the end of a pop group.

Andrea Vaughn has left My Favorite.
And thus, by all rights, that chapter should be closed.

The Faves
"With Love Despite Fierce Resistance"
1991-2005

-----

That is a long time for dancers to hold a pose, in the illumination
of golden lights, in the wilderness of feedback. It is also more or
less my whole life post junior prom. It shall take some getting used to.

The whole unbelievable truth will perhaps be revealed someday in the
form of book either I, or a couple others, might threaten to write.
Or perhaps it will stay where it's always been覧just beneath the
surface of the stormy waters, swimming towards Atlantis.

After more than a decade of making music and memories together, life
suggests (or demands) changes. And in the cracks that faith won't
fill, fractures will occur. You can't build palaces upon rubble. Few
things live forever. And that which does覧never dies. Thus mourn
judiciously, and celebrate what you can.

We end this band the way most great cult bands end, with a
combination of frustration and regret, pride and fulfillment. But
mostly we part as friends, and brethren.

I have had the great fortune to have my songs come to life alongside
some remarkably talented and dedicated musicians and people, who
fought the good fight alongside me with great passion. Lads with the
remarkable ability to find a link to my haunted imagination, in their
own. My Favorite was truly the golden chain we all formed together.
You have not seen the last fruits of that collaboration.

Andrea gave me and our music nearly half her life. She gave this band
her labor & her love. She was a uniquely talented artist, the kind of
popstar Jane Austen would have created. She gave my words a
courageous vulnerability, and a kind of dignity, which no one will
ever be able to rid them of. I will be indebted to her personally and
artistically for all we shared, in so many different ways.

She was the Anna Karina to my Jean-Luc Godard, the poetry in my
Alphaville.

We wish her nothing but happiness.

-----

The Future:

That leaves us with a partially recorded could-be masterpiece, one
that never truly felt much like a My Favorite record to me in the end
anyway. It is also an album which Andrea ended up not recording very
much for. An unfinished novel missing a main character.

During the last two years of this band's shaky solidarity, I began to
plan覧sadly覧for this moment. I wrote the name of an imaginary band
called The Secret History in the margins of my New York Times. I
thought of what I would do, what I could do, if I had to start again.
In the next couple months, this will all begin to take shape; a new
project, old faces, a new website and diary, a resurrection of the
record, a search for a new Nico, a crime to end all crimes. The last
battle.

You will hear more about all this soon...I promise. But what is
definite now, is that there is no more My Favorite. There couldn't be
for me (and probably for you) without Andi.

The last "performance" by My Favorite was during an episode of the
CBS soap opera 禅he Bold & The Beautiful' which aired at the end of
August. One of these links works better on PC, and one MAC.

http://www.lostdetective.com/videos/HCK.html
http://www.lostdetective.com/videos/HCK-wmv.html

It was a hilarious, yet strangely affecting thing for me to watch;
the ghost of a teenage bride swirling about on stage. The audience
clapping like we were giving some kind of metaphysical encore. The
one line of dialogue: "Maybe there will be a miracle today." In
fiction, we get happy endings. In life we ask only for second
chances. For a band that truly was a soap opera, well the good lord's
sense of humor, and empathy, never ceases to amaze.

To all of you: The true BOLD and BEAUTIFUL

To all of you who have cared about My Favorite for any part of the
decade plus since we crawled out of the toxic waste of Long Island
together覧I thank you from the bottom of my heart. From Peter Green
to a shy pop kid in Sweden; it took every one of you to make us what
we were.

There were amazing moments. Too many to number or describe. Someday
I'll get around to doing it.

Speaking on behalf of the band, I know the whole gang deeply
appreciated all that we have shared together, and all the support
that we have received over the years from the aforementioned friends,
fans and colleagues. No matter what personal or professional
frustrations or heartbreaks we endured, there was always an email or
letter waiting to inspire us when we got home, a story about how we
were part of the soundtrack of your lives, and how we gave you
strength and comfort. I hope you realize that YOU did the same for
us. Very few people, who pick up a microphone in their parents'
garage, get to be told that they are in a band that profoundly
MATTERS by a few thousand of the smartest, best looking people in the
world. As much as the music industry marginalized us, YOU championed
us, and given the choice...I would choose YOU a million times in a
row. You are My Favorite, and I believe in...well...you.

Speaking on behalf of myself, my life has been truly changed, and
blessed, by those of you who walked in that downpour of grey glitter
alongside me. With a song in our hearts (or headphones), we never
walked alone. Thank you dears.

When I started down this road, all those years ago... a tender
teenager in horn rimmed glasses and a second hand Fred Perry,
surrounded by misfits and prophets, glue sniffers and geniuses... all
I hoped to do was share something of the urgent loveliness and
sadness of our lives, surrounded as we were by a plainness of
architecture, and ugliness of spirit which defined the suburbs, and
(sadly) much of America itself. There was almost something glamorous
in defying it, in defining it, as we did. I was consumed with being
that dark star, that obscure saint. I wanted to make an art that was
as rainy and lush and real and spectral as the coastal towns that
comforted us at twilight. I wanted to be a sword swallower, and
nostalgia was to be my sword. I wanted to do something courageous.

Sadly it was always much easier for me to do that in my art, than in
my life. But I'm working on that. If I had known then, just how much
loveliness and sadness this band would bring to me personally, I
don't think I would have believed it. And I'm not sure I would have
ever stepped on a stage. But I did, and I had company. We were
glorious failures. But we were glorious.

So that's that. Sitting here on a park bench underneath the elevated
subway line, in horn rimmed glasses and a Fred Perry, the world
appears to me still a divine creation; a place of great turmoil, and
great possibility. A place where each cross we bear brings us closer
to that which is unbreakable within us. I hope I've earned enough of
your trust that you will follow me to what comes next. If I've
learned anything from all this, it is that one should never hold
back, or be frightened of, that which is in one's heart. Die with
your boots on. Live with your boots on. The spaces around us are our
sacred battlefield. Strike boldly, but strike only for Love. That's
what The Secret History will be.

Stay gold,
Michael Grace Jr.
Faculty & Alumni
School Of The Hearts
State University of Nowhere

http://www.lostdetective.com