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.

Low (Live @ Spaceland, 10/31/98 aka The Misfits Show) “Words/Turn/Over The Ocean”
(all three as one file)
“Over The Ocean” (album version)

Here’s a little seasonal post with a dash of “I was there” egotism. Halloween, fast approaching, got me thinking about the Misfits, maybe my favorite punk band. And naturally, the Misfits got me thinking about Minnesota’s glacially-paced Low.

Make sense?

Eight(!) years ago, rather than doing the typical Halloween party thing, my g/f-at-the-time and I went to see Low play Spaceland. I can’t remember much about their main set, mostly that we found seats in order to fully enjoy it. They make pretty music, but their spare, slow, pristine style doesn’t make for dancing. It’s tough to even sway.
By 1998 they hadn’t really diverged much from their signature refinement of Galaxie 500, and you sort of wondered whether was the only kind of music those three people could make together.

So their encore was one of the most memorable concert experiences of my life.

The band-members turned their backs to the audience and… did each other’s make-up? We couldn’t really quite tell what they were doing. The bassist helped the guitarist clip a Danzig-style devillock onto his bangs–things were starting to become clearer; the Sharpie tattoos of stuff like the Black Flag logo were starting to make sense. Then the group reached into a bag and started chucking pieces of candy, rather aggressively, out into the audience, screaming, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” (Unfortunately not captured in today’s mp3s.)

And then the slowest band in the world played a revved-up, messy five-minute encore as the Misfits.

And it was good.

These were not Misfits covers, but the band doing their own songs as the Misfits. Three adults rocking out with the abandon of hyped-up children and poking a little fun at their own collective persona. Conceptually brilliant, and much more fun than a Low show is supposed to be. I apologize a little for the crappy quality of the mp3s I found, although the low (oops) fidelity might complete the impersonation.

They bring back a great memory for me. I hope they capture, and this post communicates, a little bit of why.

I Could Live In Hope (home to “Words”) at Newbury Comics.
Long Division (home to “Turn”) at Newbury Comics.
The Curtain Hits the Cast (home to “Over The Ocean”) at Newbury Comics.

Earlier tonight an excited crowd that spilled over onto the Sunset Boulevard sidewalk caught Elliott Smith in a rare local appearance at the Echo, playing a benefit for, as he put it, “someone’s medical bills.” (Money was being raised for Jennifer Tefft, who books at Spaceland.) Happily in his cups and acoustic guitar in hand, Smith put on an assured set that hopefully marks his return to form from disappointing-to-disastrous shows over the past year or so that have tarnished his reputation even among devoted fans.

The devotees filled the club nonetheless and cheered enthusiastically even after he opened with a shaky run through the Oscars™ song, “Miss Misery.” Their reward was a set that showed off songs slated for the long-delayed LP6 such as “A Passing Feeling” and “Don’t Go Down,” and resuscitations of neglected winners from his back catalog. Three songs in came “I Figured You Out,” a Smith composition that has only seen the light of day via Mary Lou Lord’s cover; he wrote it then quickly wrote it off as sounding too much like the Eagles. It is strummier than his typical fare, but its detailed accusations of a former flame play quite well leavened by its sunny (but not lite) melody. Otherwise, seldom-played tunes such as the delicate “Good To Go” from his second record, down-and-out slice-of-life “Punch and Judy” off Either/Or, the thrumming-to-atmospheric “Something To Lose” from his rocking Heatmiser days and the winsome “No Confidence Man,” a song exclusive to a little-heard 7″, were assayed beautifully. (more…)

It’s easy to lean back on some clichés when describing the stage persona of Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne: there’s a combination of Midwestern decency and Southern hospitality that one might expect from a native of Oklahoma. Here’s a man who, without being hokey, can thank his audience for allowing him the chance to sing for a living. His perhaps overly earnest, but utterly charming, desire for his fans to have a good time makes him the perfect host, and his band a wonder to experience in concert, as evinced last night at Hollywood’s Knitting Factory.

Over their career, the Lips’ sound has moved from twisted, frenzied distorto-rock to a pop style more palatable but arguably no less skewed, creating somewhat of a dilemma for them. After the intricate layering of Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin, how would three guys recreate such an orchestrated sound live? They settled on playing along to backing tracks, but amping up the entertainment value of their art.

So on a cool summer night, lucky Angelenos packed the Knitting Factory as the Lips split the difference between stripped-down and full-on spectacle. By ‘02, most would say that we should be so post-everything that the idea of (what was) a rock band integrating prerecorded rhythm, guitar and keyboard parts into their show shouldn’t draw much comment. There is, on the other hand, the risk of an underwhelming karaoke debacle — the “why didn’t we stay home and listen to the record” factor.

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