This week Paper Covers Rock is presenting a live Elliott Smith show in five installments. Mp3s in each entry will expire when the next installment is posted. All apologies from the writer/recordist, etc.

Elliott Smith (Live @ Largo, 4/11/98) intro “Tomorrow Tomorrow” (Aborted) banter “Between The Bars” “Waltz No. 2 (XO)” “Division Day” banter “Angeles”

I remember the Elliott Smith show at Largo on the day before Easter in 1998 as one of the greatest concert experiences of my life. The venue was standing sitting room only, so my friends and I ended up seated on the floor in front of the stage, at Elliott’s feet.

(You’ll note that I’m pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool fan, so these posts may take the form of a minor hagiography. Like I said, all apologies.)

So I was a little surprised to go back to my recording of the show and find that he didn’t finish the first song of his set, “Tomorrow Tomorrow,” stopping with the lament, “Too much fuckin’ pressure.” These are the sort of things that don’t always hitchhike along with memory–the nervous energy in the air, the bad vibes. Although you’d expect they would.

What we got then, the first verse and chorus, is Dreamworks-era E. Smith–he’d apparently wrapped recording of XO just that day–that harkens back to the Kill Rock Stars days. Busy finger-picked acoustic guitar that sounds like two or three musicians playing the parts. Slightly oblique lyrics about boundaries blurring and relationships fracturing. A serpentine, sepia-toned melody.

With the ice broken by a swing and a miss, Smith continued with a fan-favorite off 1997’s Either/Or, “Between The Bars.” In this gentle strummer, he gives voice to a seducer–or maybe to demon alcohol itself–promising a ruined kind of solace. And as usual, there’s a struggle at the level of the very nature of identity: we’ve gone from “no one wants to see/you inside of me” to “the people you’ve been before/that you don’t want around anymore” by the second song of the night.

It’s not the foremost of his music’s charms, but the sly pop music references within Elliott’s songs always warmed my shriveled music-geek heart. There are a few of them in “Waltz No. 2 (XO).” This partial revisit to “Miss Misery” territory tells in its first couple verses the story of a domestic drama played out in karaoke song choices. (I like karaoke, used to frequent a K-Town box place called XO.)

A wife confronts her cheating husband via “Cathy’s Clown.” This is an Everly Brothers tune, but it’s fairly obvious that she’s singing the Reba McEntire version, which turns the Everlys’ “look what a fool yr making of me, gurl” sentiment around into “look what a fool yr making of me runnin’ ’round with that tramp, you bastard.” Gives you a little more appreciation for Reba, don’t it? Then the I of the song takes the mic, levying his own accusation with Linda Rondstadt’s “You’re No Good”–”the revenge to the tune” has “Waltz No. 2″ basically quoting from the other song’s chorus.

I don’t know whether it’s harsher as some sort of an allegory or in the literal image of people working out their issues through some not-so-passive aggressive karaoke.

“Division Day” is a much more solitary tale, and what Elliott used to call a “fast song.” It’s also a sad, sad song, chronicling alienation, depression and betrayal, all inside the head of a man who’s on the verge, just about given up hope.

Another special attribute I’d like to claim for Smith’s music is that he knew how to give these pitch-black moments a musical treatment that lightened the load a little. And his characters, even in their bleakest hour, retained enough attitude–here a deep sense of moral indignation–that you couldn’t write them all the way off, even if they’d written themselves off. This is part of where I always located the punk rock in his folk pop.

In “Angeles” Smith voices his deep distrust of the big-time music biz–not in any way a unique stance, but the man spoke from experience. His rock band, Heatmiser, had “sign[ed] up with evil” at Capitol Records and didn’t really come out the other end. They broke up, disenchanted, with an excellent but underpromoted swan song (1996’s Mic City Sons) dumped onto the market. Even as “Angeles” was recorded for Either/Or, Smith knew that lingering contractual obligations from that entanglement spelled an end to his indie days as a solo artist.

Make no mistake–Elliott wanted his songs to be heard. He’d just been through the runaround once, and knew that seductive sweet-nothings about the road to stardom coming from the agents of conlomerates were worth exactly the paper they’re printed on.

Then again, it doesn’t take a genius to know better than to buy into the promise of always being happy.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
XO at Newbury Comics.
“Division Day” single at Cinderblock.