Guns N’ Roses “Welcome To The Jungle” (Demo) buy appetite/mp3s
Nominally, this classic could be about the experience of any newcomer to the big bad evil city. But the White Trash Wins Lotto tale of Hoosier expat Wm. Bailey has turned into such a rock ‘n’ roll archetype that it’s hard to divorce GNR’s first hit from the myth around his bussing it out to Los Angeles and facing the culture shock/toughening-up. (I believe that’s the open of Act I, yeah?)

Anyway, speaking of archetypes, the GNR lineup immortalized on Appetite for Destruction are among the firmament of definitively Los Angeles bands. Even in this early form (provenance unknown), “Welcome” packs all the sleaze and grandeur you could wish for–not unlike the city it takes as its subject.

Art Brut “Moving To L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Blogger faves of yesteryear Art Brut apply their just-this-side-of-joke-rock arch Brit wittiness to skewering the legend of the Golden West–or more accurately, mocking the rebels without a clue who buy into it. You gotta love the surf city call and response on the chorus.

I’ll admit, more or less without shame, that as a child I bought California’s promise. All myths were quickly dispelled upon my actually taking up residence in L.A., but for what it’s worth there’s a different kind of comfort, and surreal charm, to the city.

On the one hand, the living is kinda easy and there’s so much good stuff if yr willing to dig for it and put some miles on the odomoter. On the other, even the bad stuff is kinda like having front-row seats to the apocalypse. But I’ve gotten off-topic already.

(As an aside, there’ll be no tea with the Mozzer, as Morrissey no longer lives in L.A. You woulda thought he could live like a god out here; not sure what happened with that.)

Frank Black “Calistan” buy disc/mp3s
Here the once and future Pixie godhead (and my fellow Chussie/Angeleno transplant) Frank Black practices some speculative fiction, envisioning a future Los Angeles. Not to say nothing ever changes, but Calistan ain’t much different from the L.A. of 1994 or 2007–mondo trash culture, sun and fun on Cigarette Butt Beach, all the sprawl/traffic one could want, that impending apocalypse I referenced earlier.

It’s really fascinating: L.A. as an overlay of mission history, cowboy movie posturing, burnout village. As for those invisible planes cracking the concrete, only recently the seismic experts put out another scare release, and it’s still tough to get real nervous, even though we’re due.

(Rejected choices, now slated for a prospective at-times-painfully-obvious virtual mix dedicated to California: “Losing California” and “California’s Falling Into The Ocean.” Other Frank B. Francis listening in re his multiple L.A.s: “Ole Mullholland” and “Los Angeles” [duh].)

Elliott Smith “L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Although the popsmith was most readily associated with the Northwest gloom of Portland, E.S. overcame his “Angeles” misgivings and settled in L.A. a few years before his tragic death. His take on the city as a resident is complicated, obscure and imagistic.

There’s alienating glamour, personal trauma and some of those cryptic military references that were scattered across 2000’s Figure 8. But the takeaway is the moment of wide-open optimism and the biggest riffy riff in his solo canon. Even for those who feel lost, sometimes the possibility in a sunny day is undeniable.

Baby “Free Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Here’s the obscure pick, which actually sorta inspired this post: bubblegummy glam from Baby–not the Cash Money impresario, but rather the sort of going concern from ex-Shudder to Think frontman Craig Wedren. (I know hip hop picks are woefully absent in this mix, but believe it or not most of my hip hop is on cassette. Sorry Mom, Sorry God.)

Anyway, Baby know the route to my heart: pinch a little from “Just What I Needed” on the verse, pinch a lot from “Pretty In Pink” on the chorus, sing about stuff like kisses with the help of some undeniable backing vox, toss and serve.

I’m at somewhat of a loss to explain what it all has to do with the character of the City of Angels–OK, kisses, seismic references, I’m with you, and stained glass who? But then again, good luck parsing any Wedren libretto. Of course, when it comes to L.A., moments of surrender to glorious and empty-headed hedonism aren’t exactly out of character either.

Bran Van 3000 “Drinking In L.A.” buy disc
This song always makes me think about halcyon days, hosting my Western Mass buddy the Mad Dog something like 10 years ago on a trip to L.A., when I took him directly from the airport to a Koreatown bar. At the time Canadians BV3K were his favorite band, and therefore destined like the ones before them to break up tragically or unceremoniously.

It’s amazing how quickly things feel ancient nowadays. A little more than a year (and 1.7 billion Internet memes) ago the Lonely Island dudes put together the ultraviral “Lazy Sunday” digital short, sorta single-handedly reviving folks’ interest in the eternally flagging Saturday Night Live. In its wake, a bunch of subpar West Coast answer raps were produced, although it’s sort of hard to think of why that was necessary at this remove.

Where am I going with this? It occurred to me later along that “Lazy Sunday” was sort of an East Coast answer rap to “Drinking In L.A.” Our brethren from the Great White North had already nailed the hazy, desultory feeling of being in yr mid-20s and sort of directionless in L.A. Like, I wonder how that script turned out.

The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” buy disc/mp3s
No doubt that brainy Northwest dudes get off on downing Los Angeles. Problem is that a lot of head Decemberist Colin Meloy’s talking points are dead-on, if amplified to grotesquerie.

This place can have its evil moments, cloying and/or soul-deadening. It can feel like the modern-day dystopia, all the fakery, all the brutality, what have you. But while Meloy concludes the whole scene is vomitous, there’s still a hint of grudging affection in the Bacharach-goes-canyon rock arrangement.

Mike Doughty “No Peace Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Doughty, a dyed-in-the-wool New York type who used to front Soul Coughing, finds a different way into wasted L.A. These revolving-door-rehab blues could be renamed “The Ballad Of The Coreys,” and that’s what’s kind of amazing. We go from a caricature to something really fucking human.

Or maybe I’m just getting something in my eye. It’s stark and wonderful–a voice, an acoustic guitar, strings, a few organ flourishes and a little Catholic block to even us out on the sides.

X “Los Angeles” buy disc
Another definitive L.A. band, this time O.G. Angeleno punk flag-bearers X, with a song named for the town–that isn’t especially about the town. Hell, we spend half the song on a flight that’s probably more metaphor than real escape. Los Angeles is here the backdrop for someone’s break from reality. The city got to be too much for her. But the song’s “she” compiles a list of those who’ve wronged her that balloons to include, well, everyone who isn’t her.

(I’d pick up a thread–that L.A.’s too much for some folks’ constitution in part because they can’t handle the ongoing clash of cultures–but I can’t really knit it into anything.)

This song’s connection to L.A. is really more as a sonic snapshot of a company town bleeding from its seams something dark, jittery, ugly-beautiful and absolutely freeing.

Randy Newman “I Love L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Speaking of L.A. as company town, and speaking of arch, ladies and gentlemen I give you Randy Newman and another of his ostensibly misunderstood masterworks.

G-d bless the guy who gets to have it both ways, so take yr pick: sarcastic needle busting the sun-and-fun balloon with sharp tongue in cheek or saleable commodity when the tourism folks or the local ball team needs a jingle. Hell, L.A. has a distinguished tradition of supplying major artists with enough hack work to keep their drink tab paid.

The sound of Toto backing him up on this? That bloat? I think the joke’s on Toto.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Free Fallin’ ” buy disc/mp3s
And we’ve come right back around to desultory. Tom Petty collaborated with ELO genius and fine-ass-Jewfro-haver Jeff Lynne, and the Valley of the City/City of the Valley/Camelot(?) got itself an unofficial national anthem.

Now, the little lady is a self-identified Valley girl, so I’ve been spending a lot more time on that side of the hill, and it turns out that it’s not as bad as teen movies starring Nic Copolla would have you believe. However, that smoggy sunset “Free Fallin’ ” feeling–you can’t escape it.

The Spinanes “Madding”
Lois “Rougher”
Mark De Gli Antoni “They Wave”

For those of you who enjoyed all or part of Sabado de Gloria week, I thought I’d close out with one more Elliott Smith-related post, here collecting a handful of guest vocal type situations.

Elliott harmonizes on the sultry, syrupy “Madding,” opener to Portland indie pop fellow-travelers the Spinanes’ 1996 record, Strand, maybe as a return favor for main Spinane Rebecca Gates’ backing vox turn on the recorded version of “St. Ide’s Heaven.” (Strand being a decade old reminded me again that I’m a grey old man. Hooray!)

Gates’ songwriting has always fascinated me. She’s got the same sort of personal vocabulary, and resistance to cliché, that I’ve been attributing to Smith all week. And she’s got a combination of mystery and forthrightness to her lyrical voice that, delivered in her own husky tones, is undeniably sexy. So as Elliott’s whispery tenor blends perfectly with saidsame dusk ‘n’ husk, we get an unsettling lullyaby, to someone who, inscrutably enough, has head afire but “I know yr tired.”

Also from 1996 is Lois’ “Rougher,” first track on Infinity Plus, recorded in Elliott’s Portland house and again featuring him on strums and harmonies. The band Lois is built around Lois Maffeo, a prime mover of the K Records scene who was in fact in a short-lived band with R. Gates (it all comes back around) and played for a while with Courtney Love (the band, not the train wreck).

“Rougher” is a bit of wistful acoustic pop. It’s shot through with the regrets and resignation of picking up the pieces after the break-up, but there’s a lightness to the chorus that gives the song a warmth and shine. And somehow two voices, two acoustic guitars, imply something bigger and fuller.

The oddball track in this post is from 1999’s Horse Tricks, the solo album by Mark De Gli Antoni, keyboard and sampler operator for once-upon-a-time NYC avant/alt/jazz-hoppers Soul Coughing. “They Wave” bops along on a minimal, glitchy groove, and then at the 1:50 mark (d’oh!) a sad, sweet and bizarre little piano tune fragment by Smith floats into the background of the mix.

I’m not sure what exactly to make of it. It’s less a “you got yr chocolate in my peanut butter” thing and more like “you got yr whiskey in my buddha rhubarb butter.” I’d imagine there was a plan here, but it feels a bit more like worlds colliding, and awkwardly. De Gli Antoni’s record was pitched as avant composing (it’s on John Zorn’s label), so maybe it’s simply beyond me.

Feel free to set me straight in the comments section, or just enjoy the strangeness.

Donate to the Elliott Smith Memorial Fund.
Strand at Target. (and at iTunes.)
Infinity Plus at Gemm. (and at iTunes.)
Horse Tricks at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)

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.)

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.)

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) requests “Rose Parade” requests/tuning break “No Name #3″ “The Biggest Lie” banter “Coming Up Roses” requests “Alameda”

A little local Portland color is painted into this portion of our Elliott Smith set from Low Saturday 1998. It is, after all, the City of Roses and Microbrews, home to its own annual, well, “Rose Parade.”

Smith uses this opportunity to set up a contrast that’ll ring true for most of us, sort of drawing the team lines in life. On the parade route we have the favored sons on display, false and fancy even if all is not right. The parade is passing by dwellers of the lowlife, rowdy, rundown and pushed to the margins.

OK, so snobs v. slobs is a storyline of enduring power–or at least it endured through most of our favorite 80s movies–and it’s not because there are exactly two kinds of people in the world. It’s that anyone can relate to feeling alienated, and as much as people tend to identify with strength, there’s always space in the human heart for the misfits and underdogs of the world.

Smith finishes off this scene with a heavy dose of self-loathing: “when they clean the streets/I’ll be the ony shit that’s left behind,” and the whole thing is indeed kinda dusty and down-in-the-mouth, but sing-song catchy enough to leaven the mood.

After demurring on a request for “Freddy’s Dead,” Elliott launched into an older song, “No Name #3″ from his solo debut, 1994’s Roman Candle. In its gentle and trebly stop-start strums and ghostly whispers, the song borders on the atmospheric. And indeed its lyrics manage an almost Impressionist retelling of some kind of emergency, a deep domestic trauma.

The details as they’re presented, the things we look at when we have to look away from something horrible, carry an undercurrent of defiance–something matter-of-fact and untouched by grief in “everyone is gone/home to oblivion”–even as the I of the song incants, “come on night.” The wail of police sirens really wasn’t the worst backing vox for this one.

Not a Hüsker Dü cover but rather the closer from Smith’s self-titled 1996 record, “The Biggest Lie” is a sturdy, almost traditional breakup tune. Against Elliott’s own twist on at least the second-oldest pop chord progression (I vi IV V, FWIW), the tune is set among some of the typical details of our modern urban life–public transport, the hum of commerce–but expands them, quite naturally, into metaphors for yr good old timeless themes–separation from love, feeling used up at love’s end.

Or, put another way, Elvis C. said, “you won’t take my love for tender,” but before “The Biggest Lie” I didn’t think I’d be moved by references to a credit card.

Elliott invited Largo’s Friday night resident, Most Musical Man on Earth Jon Brion, to accompany him on vibraphone starting with “Coming Up Roses,” and, hey, there’s roses and the moon again, hallmarks of Smith’s Portland days in song.

As with many tracks off of the self-titled record, “Roses” uses addiction as a large-scale metaphor or subject matter, although it’s a bit oblique this time around. Nothing’s fully spelled-out, there’s just a compulsion on the biological level, ominous signs from above and “a kind of trouble/nobody knows.”

The song’s got a bit of an upbeat feel by the time the chorus swings around, and it got such a reading here with the glassy, echoing tones of Brion’s vibes chiming along. But the roses this tune always brings to mind look more like a plume of blood swirling into the chamber of a syringe.

“Alameda,” off Either/Or, falls within an entire of subcategory of Smith’s songs that address a subject and give ‘em a good fuckin’ talking-to. It’s hard to say whether these were aimed at friends who’d let him down, at characters invented to illustrate a type and a problem, or at himself, but these are harsh words devoid of self-righteousness.

In “Alameda” we’re talking about a manipulator who keeps the world at arm’s length, always looking for an angle, and the emotional wasteland that results. It still feels distinctly like a slice of the lowlife, and you don’t get much more cutting than to say, “nobody broke yr heart/you broke yr own ’cause you can’t finish what you start.” Of course, the character study is so fully drawn that the putdown “I never pay attention” is canceled before its song, like the million songs out there that go to great lengths to tell someone “I don’t care.”

And out of this–the rejection of falsity, the demand to open up to people, to meet the outside world on its own terms–a litany of accusations coalesces into something like a philosophy.

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