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 “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)” banter “Lost Highway” banter “No Name #1″ banter “Alphabet City” banter “Thirteen”

Late into the evening of Low Saturday 1998, Elliott Smith had gotten past the tension that he’d complained about earlier in the night. I’ve seen the whole range of performances by Elliott, from transcendent to the shambolic, but I never saw him as talkative and at-ease as he was at that show.

So he’s joking with the audience, sharing his beer with a gurl sitting in front of the stage, and playing some country covers, with love and a wink. First up was his rendition of Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)”–an interesting choice set among the personal tour of the lowlife found in Smith’s own catalog.

I won’t pretend anything more than a passing acquaintance with Jr.’s material, but this half-joking review of the greying of country music’s outlaws, which first popped up on record in 1981, is tuneful fun. There’s also a certain mournful feel. It is, after all, an elegy to the loss of youthful exuberance, healthy or not. But Elliott was clearly connecting more with the humor–some of it unintended, such as the reference to George Jones’ drying out.

After a false start to change keys, Smith went from Jr. to Sr. with “Lost Highway,” actually namechecked in the previous tune. The song is actually a Leon Payne composition, but it’s most closely associated with Hank Williams Sr. Even though he lost the thread again for a moment after the first verse, Smith imbued “Lost Highway” with a spooky kind of intensity.

These aren’t waters I want to wade into too deeply, but the contrast here is Bocephus’ rocking-chair rock, the woes of someone who’s lived to grey, versus Hiram’s haunted cautionary tale, the sort of thing we label “prescient” coming from those whose excess dooms them too young.

Well, as Elliott said, “OK, that’s it for country songs.” Smith recounted a hilarious, or hilariously sad, story about the King in his own days of decline, then picked things back up with “No Name #1,” a favorite from solo debut Roman Candle, backed here by Jon Brion again on the vibes.

This more-or-less untitled weeper sports a verse built from another masterfully personalized reworking of that old set of doo-wop chords. But then everything here is communicated in a very personal set of signifiers: unnamed trouble and heaps of alienation sketched out with people who are barely there, a party that must be fled and a guest appearance by Kali the annihilator. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’ve been at this kind of party.

“Alphabet Town,” off the self-titled album, maps out a hard-boiled sort of romance, an assignation that might start in a dive bar on a deserted corner of a decaying city but comes from the arid places of the soul. I mean, wiser folks than me said something about, if you can’t be with the one you love, loving the one yr with, right? This, though, feels a little truer to life.

A few words, dialogue that’s all monotone come-ons, peppered with some elliptical stage directions, and a scene where the brokenheart falls into the comfort of a stranger. At the same time, there’s something almost cinematic happening when the mind’s eye swoops in like a camera, “her hand on yr arm/she put her hand on yr arm/she put her hand on yr arm.”

Another note on memory, to close this little project as I opened it: after finishing “Alphabet Town,” Elliott apologized that it was tough to get into the Largo show, intoning sheepishly, “There was a big industry… uh, people bought a bunch of tickets that I didn’t know about.”

At this remove, a snapshot of the machinations of a company town leading up to one Saturday night in April are less interesting than ever. It’s really only with this cue that I vaguely remember some sort of kerfluffle (wha?) among E.S. obsessives in L.A. about tickets (does Largo ever actually issue tickets?) being held aside for label employees, maybe even some last minute hustling by artist and venue management to right things.

It must’ve been a big deal back then, and I’m sure I waited hours on the Fairfax Ave. pavement to secure my spot at Smith’s feet, but in my head that night’s bathed in some sort of golden glow. I guess it’s always 72 degrees and sunny in the land of nostalgia.

But are we here to talk about music, or about my navel? (OK, a little bit of both.)

So as a perfect closer to the evening, Elliott sang a sweet take on “Thirteen.” Elsewhere and a long time ago, I called this Big Star tune the most perfect pop song not appearing on a Beatles record. An editor wisely challenged this bit of, well to a rational mind, obvious hyperbole. Makes me look like an old fart, an indie schmindie soft rockist with safe, calcified taste. Well, bring it all on, throw me over, hit the red button on yr browser. Because years older, wider, maybe wiser, I stand fucking by it still.

I want to talk about the simple beauty of the melody; the balance between the innocence of sentiment and tinges of sadness; how it’s all in the teenage pledge “rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay”; no, how it’s all in the “Do you like me? Check one: __yes __no” of the final verse…

But really it’s been a long week wrestling with memory, crashing into the limits of my vocabulary, dancing out-of-time about the most stunning architecture. I’m copping out. Just listen and enjoy, and thanks for reading.

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