Jakob Muck - Off The Drugs (1999)

Introduction
After 3 years of heroin abuse in Vienna, which yielded some of the best and worst albums of his career, Muck went home to Minnesota to contemplate things. After a mysterious "radical epiphany" in a McDonalds car park one Sunday evening he kicked heroin for good by locking himself in a shed for 2 weeks of painful withdrawal. To make matters worse for himself he had neglected to let out the 5 families of swallows that had made a home inside and spent his days in convulsions, getting pecked in the face and covered in birdshit. Unable to distinguish between his hallucinations and reality in any case, it didn't make that much of a difference.

Emerging alive from the shed, Muck vowed to put his long-standing drug problem behind him and record the best music of his career. Self-produced, Off The Drugs was "an excoriating crucifixion of the self" according to Bono, and garnered universal rave reviews. Muck also scored his first Number 1 single with the self-confessional "Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell."

Unprecedented Sucess
Off The Drugs won a record 9 Grammys at the 2000 Awards including Record, Album and Song of the Year. While presenting the award for Best Rock Vocal to Muck for "Makin' Amends", a tearful Bono said:

"Thank you Jakob for your light and giving. Thank you for your grace and humility. Jakob Muck is like the blind lamb who lives on a cliff but does not go over the edge because a wise man built an electric fence at the edge of the cliff to stop sheep from falling off the edge of it. The lamb keeps walking into the electric fence because it cannot see, and has no sense of direction because it is blind, but it does not go over the edge because the electric fence is in the way because the wise man put it there to stop the sheep from falling off the cliff. So even though the lamb is blind, it does not go off the edge because it can't and that is because there is a fence in the way because the wise man put it there. Jakob, lamb, you keep on walking into that fence, just keep on walking into that cliff fence."

Tracklisting
1. Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell
2. Makin' Amends
3. Fixin' Shit Up
4. It's Good To Be Clean
5. Ditch The Junk And Then Junk The Ditch
6. Palpable Sense Of Yearning
7. McDonalds Car Park, Sunday Evening
8. Feeling A Lot Better, Thanks
9. What Was I At In Vienna
10. Shed Withdrawal Blues
11. Track Marks Of My Tears
12. Her, Eoin
13. Sunshine Is Nice