Mark Langen's gravestone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in California reads: Here Lies the Night Porter. This nickname was given to him half-jokingly by his friend Kurt Cobain. It happened on one of the occasions when Langen came to him late at night to deliver drugs. "He saw me transform from someone whose main concerns were music and women into a completely different animal," Langen wrote years later in his book Sing Backwards and Weep, about his days as a dealer.
Langan also adopted Cobain's nickname on "When Your Number Isn't Up," the opening track of his 2004 album Bubblegum. In it, he paints a bleak picture of a lonely man, half alive, half dead, waiting his turn. Until his death in 2022 at the age of 57, Langan was one of the last survivors of grunge - the lead singer of the Screaming Trees who lived to see fame burn his friends - Kurt Cobain, Lane Staley and later Chris Cornell. Langan never had the success they did, and that was his blessing and perhaps his curse. He also didn't scream like them - his singing was much quieter and slower, deeper and at times terrifying. And although over the years he was increasingly seen as a lone wolf, Langan collaborated with many musicians - just look at the impressive guest list on his sixth solo album Bubblegum - his longtime partner Greg Dooley of The Afghan Whigs, P.J. Harvey, members of Queens of the Stone Age (Langan was also part of the band at the time) and also members of Guns and Roses. They all took part in the album that was the furthest from the word Bubblegum and became Langan's most successful album.
Recently, on the 20th anniversary of its release, Bubblegum saw an expanded reissue that includes Here Comes That Weird Chill, a short album released a year earlier with songs recorded during the same sessions, outtakes, a closing with Beck, and also rare recordings of Langan made in hotels, in the wee hours of the night while he was on tour with Queens of the Stone Age. For the new package, Gil Matos returned to the pinnacle of the Night Porter.
