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) banter “Clouds” smoke break “Killing A Southern Belle” banter “Jealous Guy” banter “Needle In The Hay” banter “Pictures Of Me”

More than halfway into his set, Elliott Smith opened up an audience referendum about cover choices, his pop forefathers Big Star vs. his peers and friends Quasi. He finally settledn the latter and assayed “Clouds,” the closer on R&B Transmogrification.

Elliott gave an airy reading to the Sam “Puffy” Coomes composition. I’m not meaning to pun there, but it is a quirky, heartbreaking little song about love and loss that trades in metaphors of the atomic, the elemental and the divine. “Clouds” signs off with that distinctly Quasi fatalism that in the end we always go ping-ponging away from each other. At any rate, it was nice to hear Smith’s sweet and reverent take on his friends’ tune.

I believe I sat out the club-wide smoke break that followed. I know I didn’t smoke back then, at least. Refreshed, or freshly polluted, Smith launched into “Killing A Southern Belle,” a track from the self-titled record. I risk repetition (”no way!” you say) since I know these past few days I’ve already talked about songs of accusation and “busy fingerpicking” and quiet seething elsewhere. But those are the watchwords for “Southern Belle.”

Although I don’t think there’s any sort of demand that the subject of this song shape up–it feels a lot more like 100% pure hate. OK, possibly more cutting than that thing about breaking yr own heart ’cause you can’t finish what you start a few posts back is the bridge to “Southern Belle”: “how come yr not ashamed/of what you are?”

Smith again bemoaned the tension in the room, although my memory insists that it was all in his head. Funny that an audience could be too quiet for him. In a trip to L.A. only a couple years before, he struggled to be heard over a way chatty industry crowd at the Roxy.

Next up was a cover of John Lennon’s solo tune “Jealous Guy,” with assists from Jon Brion on piano and the assembled fans on that infamous whistling solo. Not to pick that Beatle-guy baggage back up, but of the Lennon solo stuff I’ve heard, I always prefer his love notes to Yoko over the Big Statements that most people associate with his legacy. Maybe I’m being too punk rock (bitter?) for my own good, but I get more of a buzz off the love thing than off hearing a dude who’s (deservedly enough) richer than G-d singing “imagine no possession” while playing a piano that’s worth more than anything I’ll ever own.

Now that y’all hate me, I’ll just note that it was cool hearing Elliott stretch out into a song penned by probably his biggest influence, a song both more straightforward and vulnerable than anything he put to record. He sounded relaxed, and it felt pure (and dareIsay innocent?).

“Needle In The Hay” is the opener and tone-setter for that 1996 self-titled platter. Churning strums underpin a tale of junkies on a desperate search for a fix. The depiction here is completely unromantic. It shows no glory in these shambling, mixed-up kids who roam the Portland streets trying to hook up with their connection.

There’s inside slang–”the cure”–and a few on-the-nose turns of phrase–the needle, “getting good marks”–that work nonetheless. These words, the slightly obscured personal asides, the handful of concrete details, they all give “Needle In The Hay” its deeply sad, lived-in but worn-out feel. Something about this song always makes me feel a little dirty, something unsettling about a scene so ugly being rendered with such beauty.

The poppy bounce of Either/Or’s “Pictures Of Me” would have been a respite from the last song’s darkness. But then again, it comes with its own weighty hints of trouble. “Everybody’s dying to get the disease” after all. It’s another scold of a song, which feels like a sequel to “Alameda,” played earlier in the set.

I’ve never fully gotten what the pictures in the chorus refer to. Other fans out on the Internets infer a message about hating something about someone else that actually reflects something that’s wrong with you.

I’ll buy that for a dollar, I guess, but then again, as a whole, Smith’s songs pretty stubbornly refuse line-by-line interpretation. Somewhere along the way, he dreamt a fog essential to his music, mystery that draws listeners in, but leaves them to find their own meaning. It’s worked on many of us.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Elliott Smith music on iTunes.
S/T at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)
Either/Or at Newbury Comics. (or mp3s at Insound.)