What in the World… is the latest
album by McDermott, a singer-
songwriter from Chicago who
arrived on the scene in the early
1990s with the song “A Wall I Must
Climb” that reached #34 on the
Billboard Mainstream Rock tracks
chart and had airplay on MTV be-
fore they stopped playing music
videos. He seemed to be on the
path to stardom, but just as quick-
ly as the positive press had come,
it disappeared. He felt like a has-
been at age 23. Like many artists
before him, he soon found himself
plunging into drugs and alcohol
as his career stalled.
By a strange quirk of fate, the fa-
mous author Stephen King fell in
love with McDermott’s second al-
bum, Gethsemane, after receiving
it as a gift from one of his sons.
Stephen King even praised it in
the liner notes to McDermott’s
third album. “My first listen to
Gethsemane is one of the great
events of my life as a rock music
fan. It wasn’t so much the record it-
self, good as it was, as the man on
the record. Not since I first heard
Bruce Springsteen singing ‘Ro-
salita’ had I heard someone who
excited me so much as a listener,
who turned my dials so high, who
just made me feel so fucking hap-
py to have ears.”
Listen to “What In The World...” by Michael McDermott
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 70
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